Admiral James Stockdale, wherever you are, you're finally off the hook.

[kpete]

Charlie Pierce on last night's debate. Just read it.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/p...

Wildly funny. The best part is he describes the nonsense and lunacy so well and barely gets to mention Bachmann or Santorum. They had nothing to do with the worst parts of it. The serious candidates or make that "serious" candidates provide the crazy.




Rick Perry's Holy Hand Grenade Hits the Michigan Cargo Cult
November 10, 2011 at 12:11AM


Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/rick-perry-oops-6553719#ixzz1dJUgqfPo
snippet:

Former Admiral James Stockdale, wherever you are, you're finally off the hook.

You may recall that, back in 1992, while he was Ross Perot's running mate, Stockdale got up at a vice-presidential debate and asked the crowd, "Who am I? Why am I here?" Stockdale was old, and he had been beaten half to death as a POW in Vietnam. Rick Perry cannot avail himself of either excuse for what was a singular moment of utter vacancy in the middle of last night's Free Market hootenanny in which he said he was going to abolish three federal agencies and could only come up with two. (Ron Paul's going to be able to come up with nine, six weeks after he's dead.) Someone, please, someone who loves this man more than I do, get him out of this race before the rest of his marbles just go rolling down the aisle.

Up until that point, when Perry's campaign sank into the swamp wherein lie the bones of a thousand misbegotten candidacies before his, this particular exercise was remarkable only for two things. The first was the fact that, for the very first time, the assembled candidates determined that the debate would be fought out largely on the basic issue that everybody who doesn't agree with them, or who has somehow inconvenienced them in the past or present, or who may inconvenience them in the future, or who fails to see what they see in the apotheosis of the blessed market should be treated with the kind of contempt you reserve for the hotel housekeeper when she under-mints you at turndown time. This debate was going to be conducted in the basic language of Republican dickheadedness. Straight, no chaser.

So we had two hours of what was basically a prolonged sneer. Herman Cain risked rhetorical suicide right from jump when, in his first answer, he accused the Obama administration of failing to put fuel in the engine of the train that is the American economy. (Which is about when Metaphor passed out and was put in a cab by its friends and sent on home.) Instead, Cain remarked, the Obama administration, "keeps putting stuff in the caboose."

.................

REALLY GOOD STUFF:
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/rick-perry-oops-6553719#ixzz1dJUPRMlE

[rfranklin]

1. Herman Cain: I'd like to put something in Michele Obama's caboose...

or words to that effect.

[NV Whino]

2. Excellent!

Be sure and read the entire piece.

[Myrina]

3. The entire GOP field is a clown train barely clinging to the tracks ...

... never mind about ANYONE'S caboose .... :rofl:

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Rick Perry just floundered so bad, they'll be replaying it

on the Fishing Channel.

[Doctor_J]

5. Here you go

There is an energy in the streets that any Democratic president who hadn't listened to Bob Rubin or hired Tim Geithner would have been able to tap with ease. Instead, the incumbent offers platitudes about "understanding their frustration" and moves along. He has only one thing going for him.

Sad, but true

[StatGirl]

6. Poor Stockdale got a bum rap on that

I saw that debate. It was a joke, an icebreaker to introducing himself.