Different Day, Same Shit.

Last time yours truly turned his attention to Steve King, the Republican congressman from Iowa bragged about having a sixth sense for spotting illegal immigrants and opined how America should sift through its incoming legal immigrant population like shoppers sifting through a scratch-and-dent clearance bin at the local Kmart.

Yesterday, Storm Lake's very own preceded to eat one of his wingtips while expressing concern over federal aid planned for Hurricane Sandy refugees survivors:

"I want to get them the resources that are necessary to lift them out of this water and the sand and the ashes and the death that's over there in the East Coast and especially in the Northeast," King said during a Tuesday evening debate in Mason City, Iowa.

"But not one big shot to just open up the checkbook, because they spent it on Gucci bags and massage parlors and everything you can think of in addition to what was necessary," he said later, referring to Hurricane Katrina.

Seven years after the storm opened a Pandora's Box of incompetence and self-service from a variety of state and federal officials along with a helping of racial antagonism, Hurricane Katrina remains a code word and a catch-all for anyone wanting to compare or comment on black America's supposed predilection towards profligate welfarism, helplessness and wanton destruction. In other words, it's a convenient way to avoid stepping over the "Ni-CLANG Event Horizon" while making your point about those ni*CLANG* and anyone looking to act like them.

For general reference, King was also one of 11 congressmen who voted against a $51.8 billion relief package aimed towards Hurricane Katrina relief back in 2005. He still sees it as "a good vote." He also has a penchant for opposing disaster relief and prevention bills:

King has opposed other disaster relief and prevention bills, including twice voting against a bill to authorize funding for the National Flood Insurance Program.

He's also the same gentleman who not only boarded the S.S. Legitimate Rape with Paul Ryan and Todd Akin by supporting the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," which would have banned Federal funding of abortions except in cases of forcible rape, but also invoked a certain incredulousness when it came to young victims of incest and statutory rape:

"Well I just haven't heard of that being a circumstance that's been brought to me in any personal way, and I'd be open to discussion about that subject matter," he said.

He might want to take some notes from the Guttmacher Institute on that one, or better still, quietly listen in on an interview with a young victim of incest and rape.

In short, Stevie K is exactly what you'd expect from a staunch conservative - a man who expresses his personal prejudices under the guise of fiscal and moral responsibility. Here's to hoping Christie Vilsack overcomes King's current four-point lead.

“One thing he’s gonna be asked is, why did he jump on [the hurricane] so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in…Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?” Brown says. “Why was this so quick?… At some point, somebody’s going to ask that question…. This is like the inverse of Benghazi.”

The above quote comes courtesy of former FEMA Director Michael Brown. If you all remember, our friend "Brownie" was in charge of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina. The slow response of the agency fell squarely on his shoulders according to a 2006 report from the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, leading to his resignation from FEMA two weeks after the hurricane struck.

And apparently, the man sees fit to chastise the president for "jumping too quickly" on Hurricane Sandy, just to get in an oblique jab on President Obama's response to Benghazi. Yeah, the GOP's still trying to make hay of his response to that tragic event:

Conservatives have been hitting Obama for weeks on his attendance at a fundraiser in Nevada following the assault in Benghazi, claiming at alternate times that the President either cared more about politics than lives lost or that he was trying to downplay the attack’s significance. Now the critique has mutated into a belief that Obama is currently “playing President” to score points during disaster relief in the run-up to the election, in contrast to his actions in September.

Actually, from the moment President Obama took the oath of office, it was decided by the unreconstructed throughout the GOP that he was, in fact, "playing president." Because no ni*CLANG* could ever be president of the United States of America, no matter how hard he faked it.

The bottom line of all this shit talk is an undercurrent of disrespect that now lays open like an open sewer or a beached whale carcass. I'm genuinely surprised that no actual politician has gathered the required minerals to cross the dreaded "Ni-CLANG! Event Horizon" openly and unapologetically call the current President of the United States a "ni*CLANG*." In that regard, there's not much the president can do to that would earn their respect or approval, as demonstrated handily over the course of an entire presidential term.

Michael Brown had his time in the sunshine and with a dubious track record such as his, he should be the last individual to have anything to say about Obama's handling of this and other natural disasters. I wonder what Kanye West would have to say about all this...

America has always had a distinct problem with its ethnic relations vis-a-vis blacks and whites, from the moment the first dark-skinned person set foot on this nation's soil for the sole purpose of bonded labor to today, as a descendant of once-removed relations of those people now sits in command of the most powerful nation on the planet. It never had to be this way, but once the founding fathers chose to ignore the issue of granting liberty to only a narrow subset of individuals that mainly included themselves and others like them, the die was cast. The fact that a large swath of Americans were happily indoctrinated to see their darker relations as inherently inferior beings and encouraged to uphold institutions that religiously enforced their lowered status in addition to their own was merely icing on the cake.

As much as I hate saying it, "racism," or America's inability to cope with "clearly inferior" human beings in positions of power and influence is thoroughly baked into the core of this nation. Bringing attention to this fact  is a dangerous endeavor, as is bringing attention to how many American individuals would sooner destroy certain institutions rather than see them occupied by those of certain skin hues. It's an irrational and frightening feeling brought on by a staggering combination of fear and a certain loss of power or personal standing. The last thing certain people want to experience is having their own personal status drop or stay stagnant as the star of the nation's punching-bag and draft-mule classes rise over their own.

Entire political wings have, in various guises, cultivated, promoted and endorsed acts that kept those of a certain hue embedded firmly in their assigned roles as expendable labor for the wealthy, an easily accessible whipping boy for the well-to-do and emotional vent and distraction for the lower classes. From the 1940s to today, the safe harbor for politicians and their supporters who sought to maintain this "status quo"  shifted from the Democrats (the former home of the Dixiecrats) to today's Republican party, an evolution that accelerated in pace after the signing of the Civil Rights Act by Democrat president Lyndon Baines Johnson and soon-to-be Republican president Richard Nixon's use of the infamous Southern Strategy.

Which brings us to the following clip of MSNBC's "The ED Show," featuring United States Army Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson as a guest. Wilkerson, an older white man with considerable military experience and credentials, makes the obvious known. It's a fact that would face scathing amounts of disputation if the below words were to have been uttered, as they have before, by people of a certain hue.

My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House, has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as Commander-In-Chief and President, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that's despicable.

Wilkerson was former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, who himself has lent his reasoned support to current U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election efforts. Wilkerson's comment came in response to New Hampshire Governor John Sununu's opinion of Powell's presidential endorsement:

"Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that's an endorsement based on issues or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama," Sununu said.

When Morgan asked him what that reason is, Sununu said, "Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."

Suggesting that a person of color's support for another person of color is based solely on their solidarity via skin hue isn't just ignorance squared on its face - it's also one of the oldest methods used by white Americans to discount and discredit people of color in high positions. To suggest that someone got where they are in life solely on their skin color is supposed to call their actual abilities and skills into question. It also quietly reinforces the incredulousness of black Americans being capable of high-level work -- according to prescribed beliefs reinforced over and over again throughout time, they're only suited to physical labor, menial servitude and occasional entertainment.

The funny thing about Sununu's comment would be its absence had Powell simply endorsed Mitt Romney. Not only would that had been in keeping with Powell's political affiliation, it also would have kept him firmly in the "one of the good ones" column as far as many of the unreconstructed were concerned. Having "one of their boys" (in more ways than one) stray off the plantation (in more ways than one) to support "one of their kind" is an unforgivable breech that must be responded to. In lieu of whips and foot amputations, Sununu's cutting remark served as the verbal whip to quickly but obliquely put Powell back in his preassigned place.

Meanwhile, a recent Associated Press survey highlights the remarkable levels of racial antagonism that remains against people of color, most notably black Americans. As it turns out, a constant "anti-black" narrative running in the background of the nation's consciousness for centuries on end takes great difficulty to shut down:

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

"As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

Experts on race said they were not surprised by the findings.

"We have this false idea that there is uniformity in progress and that things change in one big step. That is not the way history has worked," said Jelani Cobb, professor of history and director of the Institute for African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut. "When we've seen progress, we've also seen backlash."

Obama has tread cautiously on the subject of race, but many African-Americans have talked openly about perceived antagonism toward them since Obama took office. As evidence, they point to events involving police brutality or cite bumper stickers, cartoons and protest posters that mock the president as a lion or a monkey, or lynch him in effigy.

Wilkerson's correct and so are countless others who've said the same thing but without the added gravitas of being an older white male of prestige and authority - there are scores of people out there who, by their own sheer ignorance and embedded programming, simply cannot and will not abide by the presence of Barack Obama or any other black American as their leader. It simply goes against the embedded programming that declares him and his kind to be inherently inferior in mind and morals to ordinary, upstanding white Americans, causing them to overlook the moral deficiencies in their own people as long as it means keeping the blacks in their prescribed social roles, in turn keeping themselves a rung or two above them in regards to social standing.

This is the sort of attitude that had people courting a collection of political caricatures during the primaries and afterwards, throwing their lot in with a capricious, dishonest individual of thin moral character who finds far more comfort among his fellow landed gentry than with ordinary American citizens. Unfortunately, a significant portion of white Americans would rather cast their lot with wealthy people who at least look like them (with the hope of receiving whatever crumbs fall off their table) than to stand with others of similar socioeconomic stature due to these preconceived notions. It's helpful to note that the average poor white southerner kept throwing his lot in with the wealthy planters who saw them just as they saw their black counterparts: as labor and resources to be exploited as needed.

The fact that many people are busy psyching themselves up to defend the social status quo and, at the same time, relieve themselves of the triggers to Extreme Color-Aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD), is a scary and depressing sign of the lengths we'll have to go towards ensuring anything resembling ethnic equality. It'll have to start with several hard and long rounds of mental deprogramming, a task that this nation never seems to be up to.

The only thing the Deep South got from Hurricane Sandy (at least in my neck of the woods) were a few strong winds and a fierce cold snap. I can't say the same of the people farther up the East Coast:

At least 15 people were reported killed along the eastern seaboard by Sandy, one of the biggest storms to ever hit the country, which dropped just below hurricane status before making landfall on Monday night in New Jersey.

The storm interrupted the presidential campaign a week before Election Day - posing both risks and opportunities for President Barack Obama as he seeks a second term in a tight race - and closed U.S. financial markets for a second day.

As a weakened but still massive storm system continued its trek inland, more than 1 million people in a dozen states were under orders to evacuate. Sandy left behind a trail of damage - homes underwater, trees toppled and power lines downed - caused by epic flooding and fierce winds all along the Atlantic coast.

In the storm's wake, Obama issued federal emergency decrees for New York and New Jersey, declaring that "major disasters" existed in both states. One disaster-forecasting company predicted economic losses could ultimately reach $20 billion, only half insured.

"It's total devastation down there, there are boats in the street five blocks from the ocean," said evacuee Peter Sandomeno, one of the owners of the Broadway Court Motel in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey. "That's the worst storm I've ever seen, and I've been there for 11 years."

Sandy comes just a week before the presidential election. The election is so close that it could determine who wins, but just how that will play out is hard to know. This is the October Surprise. -Abagond

A lot of people were worried about the potential effects Hurricane Sandy could have on the election (i.e. people wouldn't be able to get out and vote in the storm's aftermath). To be honest, I not worried about that and neither is the president:


Right now, all the president has to do is his job. The election will take care of itself, for better or worse. With any luck, Mitt Romney's latest attempt to turn a national tragedy into a photo op will surely collapse on itself with the same speed and force as a red giant at the cusp of supernova. I'm sure the thousands in need of FEMA assistance in the wake of Hurricane Sandy appreciate Mitt's concern over the effect the agency has on the nation's fiscal well-being.

If anyone in the affected areas manages to read this blog post, stay safe. From the looks of things, there's a lot of work to be done in the coming days.

The treacherous Marxist Usurper, Baraq Hussein Superallah Obama al-Kenya, current Chief Administrator of the American Republic, has always maintained his place of birth as the former Kingdom of Hawaii, despite proof to the contrary of his actual birth in the deepest, darkest regions of central Africa. The Most Noble Willard Milton Romney of the Massachusetts Commonwealth, aspirant to the position of Chief Administrator of the American Republic, has finally uncovered evidence of Obama's true birthplace, as seen in the above footage.

Sir Willard gained the footage from a peasant who claimed his occupation to be a traveling used marital aides salesman. The salesman was accosted on his journey through the strange and mysterious continent by a random passerby who was later rewarded handsomely with several 14-inch rubber penetrative devices. Taken from Super 8 footage that was somehow processed through a potato and later transferred onto VHS tape, the footage finally confirms what patriotic Tea Partiers and viewers of Fox News knew all along.

Earlier attempts to prove Obama's true birth circumstances proved futile after genuine copies of his birth certificate were deemed false and attributed to prankster peasants who claimed to have faked those copies. Some time ago, the treacherous Marxist Usurper himself revealed a very-much falsified long-form birth certificate, which states his birthplace as "Honolulu, Hawaii." Sir Willard spoke out in protest during the reveal, stating that "we all know that Honolulu doesn't exist. It's just a made-up fairy tale place from a fairy tale president."

The GOP has a knack for utilizing fear as a prime motivator for their constituents' support. As such, there shouldn't be any surprise over the following story:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney told a rally in northern Ohio on Thursday night that Chrysler was considering moving production of its Jeep vehicles to China, apparently reacting to incorrect reports circulating online.

"I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China," Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. "I will fight for every good job in America. I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it's fair America will win."

Kinda ironic for a man who once specialized in moving companies overseas to tap into the average worker's fear of seeing their job hop on a slow boat to China just to get their vote come Nov. 6.

Romney was apparently responding to reports Thursday on right-leaning blogs that misinterpreted a recent Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said Chrysler, owned by Italian automaker Fiat SpA, is thinking of building Jeeps in China for sale in the Chinese market.

The Bloomberg story, though accurate, "has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. work force. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats," Chrysler spokesman Gualberto Ranieri said.

"Let's set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It's simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world's largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation."

So the Romney campaign takes a story about Chrysler considering building Jeeps in China for the Chinese market and spins it into a yarn about Chrysler moving all Jeep production out of the U.S. to China. That's one way to get a few votes from the low-information set.

Personally, I want to know how moving all Jeep production out of the U.S. and into China would work. Unlike cheap electronics, toys and plastic lawn furniture, shipping a fully assembled car overseas is pretty intensive work. Having a $2.50 plastic toy manufactured on a Chinese assembly line and shipped via boat into the U.S. is one thing. Having a $25,000 American car built on a Chinese assembly line and shipped via boat back into the U.S. raises plenty of questions (i.e. "What the hell where you thinking?")

The Japanese, Korean and German auto manufacturers eventually moved production of their U.S.-bound products to the U.S. -- when it comes to cars, it's usually much easier to build your products where you sell them instead of undergoing the expensive and time-consuming task of shipping them to overseas markets. Economies of scale and all that.

This is just one of many stories our friend Mitt might be glad to develop "Romnesia" over.

I know, I know. I haven't even offered an analysis of the last presidential debate. So many people have done a better job of that, that it seemed like it wasn't worth doing.

In short, President Obama followed Crazy Joe Biden's lead and dragged Mittens around the stage by the ears on a great many issues, especially on Benghazi. I'd like to see more of that in this debate. After all, it deals largely with foreign policy.

And because yours truly is dealing with a monumental work load outside of the blogosphere, I most likely won't be attempting anything resembling a live tweet of the debates. Instead, I simply leave you with this live broadcast of the final 2012 presidential debate (which will soon be replaced with an archived version after the live broadcast ends).

We can only hope that the verbal blunders keep rolling in on Mitt's side. I wouldn't mind seeing "binders full of women" being turned into an autotuned rap song at some point.

In the above video, Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) explains how America wound up with "the best and brightest immigrants" by comparing them to...bird dogs. See how easy it is to dehumanize outsiders and those who don't look like you?

You want a good bird dog, and you want one that's gonna be aggressive? Pick the one that's the friskiest, the one that's in games the most -- not the one that's over there sleeping in the corner. You want a pet to sit on the couch, pick the one that's sleeping in the corner. That's -- so, you get the pick of the litter, you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. We got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet because it's hard to get here, you had to be inspired to come. We got the vigor from the planet to come to America. Whichever generation it was, and then we taught our children that same thing.

This is the same guy who claims that not only is profiling important for combating illegal immigration, but he also claims to have a "sixth sense" when it comes to spotting illegal immigrants:


It's gotta be the shoes.

Then again, we all might just be taking all of this out of context, right?

This American vigor that we have that comes from legal immigrants who came to this country with a dream — we get the cream of the crop of every donor civilization on the planet — and people that can take a compliment and turn it into an insult are not going to be constructive working across the isle. But that’s what that was, was a compliment. And everyone who was there that heard that knows that.

Yeah, I'm sure he meant well.

Speaking of immigration, it's worth nothing that the legal immigrants who had the easiest time coming over have always been those who had the most money. It doesn't take just sheer moxie to come into this country the right way - it also helps if you have some coin to spread around.

Young Tagg Romney, son and heir apparent to The Most Noble Willard Milton Romney of the Massachusetts Commonwealth, aspirant to the position of Chief Administrator of the American Republic, expressed shock and dismay at his father's treatment at the hands of the the treacherous Marxist Usurper in chief, Baraq Hussein Superallah Obama al-Kenya, during an interview with peasant radio host Bill LuMaye of WPTF-AM, a station located somewhere in the uncivilized wilds of North Carolina.

While attempting to communicate to ignorant peasants the rigors of royal life, Young Tagg elucidated his disdain for the Kenyan by expressing a desire to punch the man square in his smug, socialist face. He further remarked that despite his overwhelming desire to physically put the uppity suspected immigrant in his place, he could not do so for fear of the Secret Service forgetting who he is and issuing a severe beating on the Marxist Usurper in chief's behalf.

After word reached Baraq Hussein Superallah Obama al-Kenya, he responded by saying he'll "have Romnesia get at him" at some point, referring to the long-lost 33-year-old daughter of Mitt Romney and an as-of-yet unidentified woman of Negro heritage, presumably conceived during an illicit affair carried out sometime between 1979 and 1982. How the socialist Kenyan came to know Romnesia remains a mystery, although many suspect it involves strip clubs and copious amounts of Church's Chicken.

#Romnesia is what Republicans are going to be experiencing en masse at the 2016 Republican Convention when Mitt isn't even invited.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) October 20, 2012

Mitt Romney's desperate pivot to the center was highlighted by the president earlier today during a Virginia rally. First, we had the "Etch-A-Sketch." Now, we have "Romnesia:"

“Now that we’re 18 days out from the election, ‘Mr. Severely Conservative’ wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year,’’ Obama said in a speech devoted almost entirely to attacking Romney, and during which he gave little indication of what he would do in a second term if reelected.

Building in intensity, Obama continued: “He’s forgetting what his own positions are, and he’s betting that you will, too. I mean, he’s changing up so much and backtracking and sidestepping. We’ve got to — we’ve got to — we’ve got to name this condition that he’s going through. I think — I think it’s called ‘Romnesia.’ ”

At first, the Romney campaign thought the president had discovered Mitt Romney's long-lost mixed-race daughter from an illicit fling back in 1982 or thereabouts. After the initial confusion wore off, the RMoney team wasn't all that pleased with the president's zinger.

“America doesn’t need a comedy routine; it needs a serious plan to fix the economy,’’ Romney senior adviser Danny Diaz wrote on Twitter.

You can't really call $5 trillion in tax cuts over ten years a "serious plan" to right the economy. Personally, I don't think Romney has a plan anymore. He certainly doesn't have a clue...

i predict that no matter how well Obama does tonight? liberals will still complain.
— Billy Bob (@sherifffruitfly) October 16, 2012

A certain group of liberals complained about Joe Biden's drubbing of Paul Ryan during the VP debates. Not because he won the debate, but because of the way he won it. By derisively mocking the living daylights out of the Republican congressman and VP candidate, he crossed a line that these folks can't bear to see crossed.

"The smile, the laugh, I think a lot of people maybe view that and think that he was a little too hot, too aggressive, maybe condescending," said NBC's David Gregory of Joe Biden's debate performance.

A little too hot. Too aggressive. Perhaps condescending. These are traits that are perfectly acceptable in GOP candidates but anathema to Democrats. If the situation was reversed, everyone would be wondering why Biden couldn't have been a bit more aggressive. As I said before, you just can't win.

President Obama couldn't afford to be anywhere above lukewarm, anywhere near aggressive or even the least bit condescending, lest he be deemed an "Angry Black Man" or worse, an "uppity negro/ni*CLANG*."  Crazy Joe had to harness that "Angry Black Man" on his behalf, essentially.

Hopefully, the president won't let his past performance dictate what happens during this debate. President Obama has to bring his A-game this time, otherwise the results could have disastrous consequences.

On Friday, a man was photographed by Getty Images at a rally for the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket in Lancaster, Ohio, wearing a T-shirt that read "Put The White Back In the White House." Conservatives now say the man may have been a liberal plant designed to make Romney look bad, and the GOP nominee has disavowed the racist T-shirt. On Saturday, a Romney spokesperson told Buzzfeed the shirt is "reprehensible and has no place in this election."

A "liberal plant" is probably one of the lamest excuses offered so far. Besides, Mitt Romney doesn't need some guy in a T-shirt to make him look bad, since he's spent his entire campaign making himself look like extruded crap.

What's more telling is how certain segments of this nation's population would rather choose a capricious, tone-deaf and arrogant man who cares nothing about the ordinary population save for their ability to generate greater wealth for him and his peers over a man who's made some serious strides towards helping Americans of all walks of life, for the sole reason of his ethnic makeup. You give these people a knife and tell them a black man was living inside of their stomachs and they'll stab away with sheer, uninhibited gusto.

You have to give the Republican National Committee credit for knocking out a new attack ad straight after the Vice Presidential debates. While Vice President Joe Biden's derisive chuckling made for lovely Twitter fodder, this was probably why so many people wanted ol' Crazy Joe to mask his contempt for veep hopeful Paul Ryan. Then again, there are a million things the RNC and others could use to create an attack ad.

Perhaps Joe Biden should have been as somber and as stone-faced as possible. I'm sure people will ding him for being too "aloof" or "unresponsive." One way or another, you just can't win.

Keep in mind the RNC haven't yet found anything substantive to bang Biden on, hence the above. Meanwhile, Think Progress was keeping tabs on the entire debate with a series of wonderful live posts. Great for calling out the loads of malarkey Ryan tried throwing at Biden and the audience.

Poor President Obama was not a trial lawyer; he was a law professor, and it showed last night. When Mitt was telling lie after lie in the thin air of Denver, (28 and counting) all he could do was stare at him like a deer caught in the middle of the night on a country road. And, to his credit, the more Mitt got away with it, is the more he lied. The shady narcotics cop had the law professor on the run.

In so many words, the Field Negro lays down how President Obama wound up looking outgunned during the Denver debate. Personally, I don't think the president was prepared for the never-ending stream of bullshit that came his way during the debate, nor was he quite ready for the jaw-dropping speed and tenacity of Romney polka dancing his way towards dead center.

As for winners and losers, there weren't any. Romney's forceful performance, much of which consisted of the well-heeled Massachusetts governor running roughshod over debate moderator Jim Lehrer, might have convinced the media, Teabaggers and low-information voters that he was the winner, but the metric fuckton of lies and half-truths dispensed during the debate will be his undoing down the road. At best, Romney's performance earned him a Pyrrhic victory.

Meanwhile, Obama's performance seemed factual, but feeble. As many others mentioned, President Obama isn't much of a tenacious debater and his performance trended more towards the Field Negro's quoted description. Perhaps he was trying as hard as he could to keep his inner Angry Black Man's black ass from booking an instantaneous flight from D.C. to Denver. Some people don't like it when that guy shows up.

This is just one debate out of many. Next up: Joe Biden takes on Paul Ryan. Without any Angry Black Men around to gum up the works, that debate might have more of the satisfying knock-down drag-out scrapping many people were expecting.

If you want more commentary on the Presidential Debate, look no further:

• ABLC - #Debates: President Obama’s Performance, the Backfire Effect, and Romney the Liar
• Abagond - The first Obama-Romney 2012 presidential debate
• "The Rant" by Tom Degan - Obama Blows It
• Clive Crook - Obama Outclassed by GOP Nonentity

Remember Sheldon Adelson? It seems like he has a lot to benefit from a Romney administration. If Mitt gets his way and enacts his planned tax cuts, Adelson stands to gain approximately $2.3 billion in tax cuts. As it turns out, $2.3 billion goes a long way in some places.

Not shown: the termination notice Mitt Romney gave him during the morning meeting.

Like most Americans and possibly others around the world, I grew up with Sesame Street. Big Bird, Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and that weird Snuffleupagus thing. As a young kid, Sesame Street was just one of the many programs I watched on a regular basis on PBS. My mother figured planting me in front of a TV tuned to PBS was a slightly better alternative to just planting me in front of a TV, period. Given her druthers, she would have rather had my nose buried in a book.

So seeing Mitt Romney, a man who's already expressed a willingness to dispose of employees as easily as one tosses a used tissue, proclaim a love for the big yellow tuft of feathers in one breath and crap in the bird's nest in the next irked me a bit. I like Big Big and I sure wouldn't say the following to a guy who hosts one of the premier news and debate shows on PBS:

I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you too. But I’m not going to -- I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it. That’s number one.

Mitt's little golden moment shouldn't surprise anyone. No, I haven't wrapped my head around how PBS became a line item that requires a Chinese title loan to keep afloat, either.

If Fred McFeely Rogers was still alive, he'd probably have some choice words for our friend Mitt. Then again, perhaps Mitt would try to bully Mr. Rogers around before the shame subroutine on his neuronet processor kicked in. Fortunately, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson around to send a few of those choice words his way:

Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 4, 2012

For the record, 60 percent of PBS funding comes from private donors and grants, which explains the yearly PBS donation drives. In 2010, federal funding accounted for a mere 12 percent of revenue. For 2015, Congress plans to set aside approximately $445 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that handles the funding for PBS and NPR. In the grand scheme of Congressional budgets that include ludicrous things like corn subsidies and multi-billion dollar military equipment, the money allotted for CPB is the literal equivalent of the grocery store coupon you clipped out of the newspaper. It's not even worth the penny you just vacuumed up by accident that time.

And yet, it wound up being an expenditure that has to be stopped.

I doubt Mitt would do something as stupid as "kill Big Bird." His words, like so many others, are red meat for an audience who gets off on the thrill of ideological gore. They already see PBS as an indoctrination tool wielded by liberals to teach kids subversive social skills like sharing, empathy and tolerance. The arts, public programming, most forms of education and programs that benefit the poor are looked at with an evil eye by conservatives. I'm sure corporate execs don't have much love for PBS or Big Bird, either. After all, it would be a major coup for corporations if they could somehow can the "no commercials during the show" format in favor of...what you already see on decidedly non-public television.

Make no mistake, this isn't about cutting waste. It's all about indulging in a unique type of "tough love" fantasy that involves conservative father figures whipping America's soft behind with a wire hanger. It's a fantasy continuously cultivated by Republicans who don't mind coasting on a wave of bootstraps-induced cheerleading from their die-hard constituents, many who believe they shouldn't be indulging in "any of that faggot hippie shit." These are the very people who will not only kneecap the futures of their own children just to run a "liberal pussy," "red diaper doper baby" or a "Muslim Socialist Kenyan Marxist nig*CLANG*" out of office, they also believe that the guy they vote into office genuinely gives a fuck about them, even as their state whittles down their Medicaid coverage to a bottle of aspirin, a semi-sterile lance and a few bandages.

To think that Mitt Romney genuinely cares about your situation is like a drug addict believing his dealer genuinely has his best interests at heart.

This is the approach we have to take to get America to a balanced budget. The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it. Trillion-dollar deficits for the last four years. The president’s put it in place as much public debt -- almost as much debt held by by the public as all prior presidents combined.

The above conveniently forgets the continuing debt created by engaging in two major military operations overseas, tax breaks largely benefiting a sub-section of Americans and foreign nationals whose wealth remains out of national circulation and a devastating economic downturn that's resulted in high unemployment rates and dim prospects for today's job-seeker, the very same people who are being told to pull up their bootstraps, suck down those cheap tins of cat food and get back to finding a job during a jobless recovery.

$15 trillon dollars seems like a big amount to someone who's looking at, say, $15,000 of credit card debt. The difference between the U.S. debt and your debt is that 1)the U.S. has the ability to print as much of its own scrip as it wants to pay down that debt and 2)you don't. And if you did, you'd be up for federal charges right about now. Unlike Greece, the U.S. has the ability to momentarily print its way out of debt if it wanted. For obvious reasons, it's not a very good idea, but the option is there. So is taxation and the elimination of loopholes, wasteful subsidies and pork spending, but we all know how popular those options are with most folks.

Balancing the budget on the backs of Big Bird and Elmo won't do shit except give die-hard FReeper-types a penile salute at half-mast and GOP candidates something to point out to their constituents as they make their reelection runs. Cutting and slashing puny programs like public broadcasting might satisfy those who just can't wait for the ideological coat hanger to thwack America's hind parts, but it won't do anything to solve the problems plaguing this country.

For anyone who missed the first presidential debate of the quickly-closing election year, here's the full debate courtesy of YouTube and the New York Times.

After working hard to pin a non-existent voter fraud scandal on the Democrats, which led to a wave of voter ID laws in several states, the GOP is now caught knee-deep with its pants down in a voter fraud scandal of epic proportions. Since then, the GOP has scuttled early voter registration in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia, all five being crucial swing states.

 And BTW, it looks like you won't be needing photo ID to vote in Pennsylvania this election:

In response to a recent state Supreme Court remand, unanimously voiding his previous August ruling, Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, a Republican, issued his new ruling [PDF] today on the state GOP's polling place Photo ID restriction law. o He enjoined just a part of the law, but it effectively strikes down the most onerous provision of it --- but only for this November's Presidential election. There were also a number of troubling caveats with what he left in place, rather than striking down the entire statute as the petitioners had sought.

As there has been some confused and confusing reporting on the ruling today, here is where --- barring any additional court challenges --- the law stands at this moment, just over one month from Election Day...

Voters will NOT have to show a state-issued Photo ID at the polling place in order to cast a normal ballot. Poll workers MAY ask voters for Photo ID, but they may NOT keep them from voting if they do not have one. Voters will NOT have to cast a provisional ballot if they do not have state-issued Photo ID. Hopefully that clarifies the key points of today's ruling, which is being misreported in some quarters. o Also of note, the court refused to enjoin the Commonwealth's tax-payer funded $5 million ad campaign, as written into the statute for the purposes of "educating" the public about the polling place Photo ID requirement (even though it no longer practicably applies for this election.)

Not what everyone wanted or expected, but it's a start.

Meanwhile, yours truly awaits tonight's presidential debate. You can check 2012 Election Central for the latest details, including live streaming. As much as it pains me to do so, I'll refrain from mocking him until he starts actually making gaffes on live television. :)

As the 2012 Presidential Election campaign enters the home stretch, the folks over at the Daily Caller dug up a 2007 video of President Obama addressing a mostly black audience at Hampton University. In the video, the president is shown empathizing with the audience while talking about how racism played a role in how Hurricane Katrina victims of a certain complexion were treated:

In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism.

The people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!” Obama shouts in the video, which was shot in June of 2007 at Hampton University in Virginia. By contrast, survivors of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Andrew received generous amounts of aid, Obama explains. The reason? Unlike residents of majority-black New Orleans, the federal government considers those victims “part of the American family.

Bad Obama, bad! You're not supposed to hint the truth about the U.S. government's shabby treatment of hurricane victims in New Orleans. You're not even supposed to get too chummy with your fellow black folks either. You're not "their president" - you're America's President™, damnit! What if they get all uppity angry and start rioting like they did back in L.A. that one time? And who the hell told you you could start praising that awful, divisive Negro Jeremiah Wright again? How dare you...you....you (Marxist/Socialist/Ni*CLANG*/Kenyan)...

Looks like the president kept it a bit too real for the comfort of certain Americans. Didn't this man know he had to remain as racially neutral as possible and essentially stay away from being that stereotypical "controversial, angry black man"? That means keeping well away from "radical" people with "inflammatory rhetoric." Come to think of it, any time prominent black Americans broach the subject of mistreatment by a majority-white American government, it's deemed too "radical," "inflammatory" or "divisive" for discourse and quickly hushed up under a torrent of gasps, guffaws and "How dare you"-type phrases.

The fact that this video "surfaced" this late in the presidential campaign suggests the GOP is practically out of gas. Rigging the vote didn't work, demonizing the president on social, foreign policy and economic grounds didn't work either, and now, it looks like Romney's done wonders strangling his own campaign to death. The only thing left, preferably before poor Mitt finishes the job by bombing in today's debate, is to whip out the race card and hope the low-information, low-IQ voters become color-aroused enough to make a Hail Mary play in Romney's favor.

It won't happen. With President Obama bagging up most of the swing states, maintaining a comfortable lead in Electoral College estimates, it appears to be lights out for Mitt. Instead of having a debate tonight, news outlets all over should broadcast a mock funeral for Romney's campaign, with a casket signifying his campaign hopes and dreams placed in a gilded wagon. Rafalca will have the honor of pulling the gilded wagon to the shores of Massachusetts, where the casket can be placed on a funeral pyre, set aflame and allowed to drift away with dignity.

A dose of tomfoolery from Allen West, incumbent hemorrhoid on the U.S. House of Representatives, against Democrat contender Patrick Murphy.



Someone should really remind our dear house negro he's not in any position to lambaste anyone's military record:

According to a 2004 account in The New York Times, West let the soldiers under his command beat the Iraqi man, whom West believed was involved in an attempt on his life. (No evidence was ever found implicating the man). Then, he staged a mock execution:

Soon, the soldiers began striking and shoving Mr. Hamoodi. They were not instructed to do so by Colonel West but they were not stopped, either, they said. ‘I didn’t know it was wrong to hit a detainee,” a 20-year-old soldier from Daytona Beach said at the hearing. Colonel West testified that he would have stopped the beating ”had it become too excessive.”

Eventually, the colonel and his soldiers moved Mr. Hamoodi outside, and threatened him with death. Colonel West said he fired a warning shot in the air and began counting down from five. He asked his soldiers to put Mr. Hamoodi’s head in a sand-filled barrel usually used for clearing weapons. At the end of his count, Colonel West fired a shot into the barrel, angling his gun away from the Iraqi’s head, he testified.

Far from being a scab on his political career, this episode actually helped propel West’s fortunes on the right. He initially became a minor cause célèbre among right-wing bloggers who felt West was being persecuted by those insisting on “political correctness” in a combat zone. West exploited this status as he was running for Congress, appearing on right-wing outlets to denounce the Army’s rules of engagement, which he believed were handcuffing American troops in their battle against the “Islamic enemy.”

The Teabaggers tend to go nuts over things like that. These days, running solely on terrorist-killing bravado ain't what it used to be, especially after Obama had a cap shoved in the ass of the numero uno Islamic terrorist target.

Meanwhile, as much as the GOP played up non-existent Democrat voter fraud, no one should be surprised to see the grand ol' party knee-deep in their own voter fraud:

What first appeared to be an isolated problem in one Florida county has spread statewide, with election officials in at least seven counties telling prosecutors or state election officials about questionable voter registration forms filled out on behalf of the Florida Republican Party.

State Republican officials fired Strategic Allied Consulting, the company they had hired to register voters, and on Thursday filed an election fraud complaint against it with state officials.

“We are doing what we can to find out how broad the scope is,” said Brian Burgess, a spokesman for the state party.

The company said that it was cooperating with elections officials and that the suspect forms had been turned in by one person, who was fired. “Strategic has a zero-tolerance policy for breaking the law,” Fred Petti, a company lawyer, said Thursday.

Questionable forms have shown up in South Florida, including Miami-Dade County, as well as in northeast Florida and the Florida Panhandle.

Election officials in Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties on Thursday handed over more than 100 forms to local prosecutors. Officials in Palm Beach County alerted prosecutors days earlier.

Mr. Lux, a Republican, said he warned party officials this month when he first learned that the company was paying people to register voters. “I told them ‘This is not going to end well,’ ” he said.

Understatement of the year, Lux.