Iowa Republican Caucuses

LOL Vanity Fair does the reverse tabloid on Rebekah Woods.

Untangling Rebekah Brooks

Rebekah Brooks was running the News of the World at 31, and Rupert Murdoch’s entire British newspaper empire at 41. A virtual member of the Murdoch family, close to Prime Ministers Blair, Brown, and Cameron, she relished her power—until the phone-hacking scandal took her down. Talking to Brooks’s former colleagues and friends, Suzanna Andrews uncovers the woman wrapped in the enigma, the keys to her meteoric rise, and the latest object of her incandescent ambition….

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/02/rebekah-brooks-201202?mbid=social_retweet

Head, meet desk……
I’ll have another brandy and try for third time lucky……
I believe the subject’s name is Rebekah BROOKS!

Head, meet desk……
I’ll have another brandy and try for third time lucky……
I believe the subject’s name is Rebekah BROOKS!

Brandy assisted typing. I must try that some time. It seems to add an extra challenge.

99 Gaffhook What an arrogant prick!

At least he helps the case against Murdoch.

Murdoch ‘angry’ over Elton John settlement.
**********************************

News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch took a “hands on approach” to his UK newspapers, The Sun tabloid’s former editor told an inquiry into press ethics yesterday, recounting Mr Murdoch’s reaction to a story involving Elton John.

Mr Murdoch was angry about The Sun paying a £1 million ($1.54 million) settlement to the pop singer over a false news story in 1987, Kelvin MacKenzie, who edited the paper from 1981 to 1994, told the inquiry. The story wrongfully claimed Elton John paid for sex with underage “rent boys”.

“Murdoch thought I’d gone too far,” Mr MacKenzie said. “I then received something like 40 minutes of non-stop abuse” during a phone call from Mr Murdoch. “It wasn’t so much the money of course – it was the shadow it cast over the paper.”

Murdoch must be really throwing a tantrum now. 😆

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/murdoch-angry-over-elton-john-settlement-20120110-1ps5g.html#ixzz1j0nYtTur

Elizabeth Warren shows how elections are won
http://www.americablog.com/2012/01/elizabeth-warren-shows-how-elections.html

(Smelly) Gold from Kudelka today. 😆
http://www.kudelka.com.au/2012/01/multiculturalism-will-never-work-while-foreigners-smell-funny/

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
****************************************************

George Santayana’s famous aphorism is as true now as when he said it. In particular, in 2008, after Mike Huckabee won a surprising victory in the Iowa caucuses, he scooted off to New Hampshire to try to convince the flinty New Englanders they should vote for a folksy, guitar-playing Southern Baptist. It didn’t work. He came in a distant third with 11% to John McCain’s 37% and Mitt Romney’s 32%. If he had skipped New Hampshire and headed straight to South Carolina and campaigned hard there, he might have won instead of barely losing to McCain, 33% to 30%. It was McCain’s victory there that convinced people he could win in the South and sealed his nomination.

More here.
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2012/Pres/Maps/Jan08.html#item-2

Move over Biden: job tailor-made for Hillary.
**********************************

The beginning of a new year is a time for resolutions, and Hillary Clinton’s admirers are already busily, lovingly resolving on her behalf. On one sideline, her friends tell me that after a few years of hyperactive globetrotting what she really needs is to put her feet up and dictate another volume of her memoirs while nagging Chelsea to deliver grandchildren.

At the other extreme, a couple of Democratic consultants, Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen, propose to draft her right now as the 2012 Democratic presidential candidate, whether she likes it or not. (”Not only is Mrs Clinton better positioned to win in 2012 than Mr Obama, but she is better positioned to govern if she does,” they wrote in The Wall Street Journal.)

Other helpful devotees have noticed Brown University is looking for a new president, or have imagined that maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg will decide to put her feet up, leaving a seat on the Supreme Court. But the right choice is none of the above.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Hillary Clinton is 64 years old, with a Calvinist work ethic, the stamina of an Olympian, an EQ to match her IQ, and the political instincts of a Clinton. She was a perfectly plausible president four years ago, and that was before she demonstrated her gifts as a diplomatic snake-charmer. (Never mind Pakistan and Libya, I’m talking about the Obama White House.)

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/move-over-biden-job-tailormade-for-hillary-20120109-1prpo.html#ixzz1j1uqYm6I

Curse you Firstdog .
another keyboard
😡

😆

A very good DNC you’re fired commercial.
http://youtu.be/t9TqcSRCoCY

paddy@128
Firstdog appears to be having a moment 🙁
– as do we all.
hopefully his life will improve on the morrow.

Sent off all my documents , nominations, probity checks (did not even have to lie at all), etc etc to be official nominee for lead senate candidate for Greens in Victoria.
Let the battle begin .. and will resile from any further comment on the matter until decision is made by Feb 25
😆

Slut Shaming: 13-Year-Old Explains Why It’s Wrong In YouTube Video.

This girl is awesome! Mature way beyond her years. Must see video.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/slut-shaming-13-year-old_n_1199013.html

This is an excellent article on the importance of upcoming court appointments in the US and the balance of liberals vs conservatives – perhaps the most unfettered power the US President has.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2012/features/the_courts034474.php

Well thank goodness Firstdog is back to his normal jolly form.

http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Summer.jpg

129 Jen You’ve got my vote.

Obama better win.

Fascinating article here, on the changing nature of the media and how they are struggling to control the agenda for debate. (Both political and everything else.) By Jay Rosen.

Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press
In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized– connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. And now that authority is eroding…..

http://archive.pressthink.org/2009/01/12/atomization.html

Paddy and Chris – yeah I find the thought of Obama losing very scary. No matter what one thinks about his performance, a Supreme Court stacked with Conservatives for years is a nightmare.

Let’s hope Europe doesn’t implode this year.

#144 This is a winning strategy.

“Why won’t progressives fight for federal judges?”
****************************************

In the wake of this discussion of progressives and their non-existent (or dysfunctional) relationship with the federal court system, I’m pointed via email to this article discussing the same issue.

In it, University of Georgia law professor Sonja West asks: “Why won’t progressives fight for federal judges?” and launches into an interesting examination.

First, the problem (my emphasis):

The lack of concern about or willingness to fight for judicial nominees by one party is a serious weakness in our current political system. If one side cares intensely about the courts and the other side doesn’t, what you get is a long-term bias in one direction. This growing imbalance shouldn’t just worry progressives. It should alarm anyone who believes a range of voices on the courts is essential.

Yet Democrats have a nagging blind spot for fully comprehending that when it comes to advancing the issues they care about, judges aren’t just important but indispensible. If disillusioned Democrats are wondering whether it matters whether President Obama gets a second term, they should look no further than the aging faces of the nine justices at the Supreme Court. And the thousands of demonstrators at Occupy Wall Street need to understand that many of the very things they’re protesting against are the direct consequences of decades spent by progressives deprioritzing judicial appointments.

That last statement is both powerful and true. To paraphrase:

OWS protesters need to understand that much of what they’re protesting against are caused by several decades [at least 30 years] of progressives not caring enough about judicial appointments.

More here…
http://www.americablog.com/2012/01/why-wont-progressives-fight-for-federal.html

SeweRoo will just have to sit back and cop it on the chin.

Just over 800,000 News of the World buyers – 30% of the paper’s June 2011 circulation – apparently gave up purchasing a national Sunday paper when the News of the World closed in July. Five rival tabloids – the Daily Star Sunday, Sunday Express, People, Sunday Mirror and the Mail on Sunday – added 1,865,242 copies to their combined sales, according to a comparison of the Audit Bureau of Circulation figures for June and July 2011.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/13/news-of-the-world-abcs?newsfeed=true

Why Romney is weak against Obama.
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/01/13/why-romney-is-weak-vs-obama

153 Katielou I read another article somewhere that agrees with a couple of those senitments.

Mitt Romney is definately part of the 1%ers. That won’t be very hard to sell.

spell check was off. Loosing = losing.

I hope the Indians can give those Monsanto bastards some come-uppance.

In an unprecedented decision, India’s National Biodiversity Authority(NBA), a government agency, declared legal action against Monsanto (and their collaborators) for accessing and using local eggplant varieties (known as brinjal) to develop their Bt genetically engineered version1 without prior approval of the competent authorities, which is considered an act of “biopiracy.”2

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Breaking-News-Monsanto-To-by-Sayer-Ji-120113-525.html

Why Mitt Romney Will Prove To Be a Feeble Presidential Nominee
by Michael Tomasky.
****************************************************

Mitt’s getting hammered in the “King of Bain” attack ad, but that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Michael Tomasky on why Romney will be stunningly weak in November.
This weekend, social conservative leaders from around the country are gathering in Texas (where else?) to see if they can coalesce around a Mitt Romney alternative. That will wrap up Saturday. The next day, the Tea Party groups of South Carolina will convene in Myrtle Beach to, uh, see if they can coalesce around a Mitt Romney alternative. A week ago, all these people seemed like cranky sore losers. They’re still probably cranky sore losers, but one thing has changed: now that Romney is known as the King of Bain, their reservations about his electability don’t seem quite as crazy. In fact, they’re not crazy at all, because Romney is a stunningly weak candidate.

I started on this theme of Romney’s weaknesses last week when I wrote about his reactionary tax plan and his refusal to release his own taxes, and what an unfortunate (for him) cocktail those two ingredients will make for him. I then noted, after New Hampshire, how his victory speech was all wrong, and how easily rebuttable his arguments against Obama are. Now, the Bain attacks put into sharp relief another reason for his weakness. He has just one argument, and the Bain “creative destruction” narrative comes close to killing it.

Romney’s argument, of course, is that he has the know-how to fix the economy and put people to work. But as more and more people learn about what Bain did in private equity—the story will fade a bit now, but return with a roar this summer and fall—more and more people will come to realize the truth of the matter, which is that Bain wasn’t about creating jobs, it was about making investors who were usually already rich even richer. Jobs were sometimes created as a side effect, and they were sometimes destroyed as a side effect. But jobs were an ancillary consideration. Profit—for shareholders, yes, but mostly for Bain—was the idea.

More here…
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/15/why-mitt-romney-will-prove-to-be-a-feeble-presidential-nominee.html.html

From the Votemaster.
*****************

The best-case scenario for Santorum is that he wins South Carolina and Florida and then gets into a long march against Romney, who will not drop out until the delegates have actually selected someone else at the Republican National Convention. A potential consequence of the decision of the social conservatives to close ranks around Santorum is the creation of a lot of PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) voters down the road. If Santorum somehow manages to stay in contention for weeks or months, healing the fractures within the Republican Party will be a lot harder than if Romney wins South Carolina and the conservatives mope for 2-3 months, but get back in line by May or June.

More here..

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2012/Pres/Maps/Jan15.html#item-1

Stephen Colbert’s PAC Parody Explains Campaign Finance To America (Part 1).
************************************************

This is the first part of a five-part series by The Huffington Post exploring Stephen Colbert’s explanation of the nation’s campaign finance laws to the public. Stay tuned through the week of Jan. 16, 2012, for the rest of the series.

WASHINGTON — Two years after the Supreme Court voided many of the country’s bedrock campaign finance laws, much of the American public is still confused by the change — and stupefied by the often-impenetrable jargon that frequently encumbers any discussion of the topic.

But one public figure has managed to pierce the veil of dullness to actually demonstrate — in an electrifying way — just how dangerous and corrupt the current system of political campaign financing has become.

In an indication of the desperate state of campaign finance laws — and the mainstream media — that person is a comedian: Stephen Colbert, who plays a right-wing blowhard on the Comedy Central show “The Colbert Report.”

Colbert has spent much of the past year on a crusade to accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals in order to make political statements and lavish himself with luxuries. In so doing, he may have helped bring the troubling issues surrounding campaign finance to the public’s attention more than either the reform community or traditional media.

Continued here…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/stephen-colbert-pac-parody_n_1206439.html

Rundle fires off another “Letter From America” and whacks it out of the park.

Rundle12: the Redneck Riviera where there’s 2, 3, many Americas
from Guy Rundle in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Jesus, there are probably less appropriate places to spend Martin Luther King day than Myrtle Beach, a resort town at the northern end of the South Carolina coast, but you have to scratch to come up with a couple. Johannesburg, 1975 might be one. A Klan meeting, maybe. The place sprawls along the coast, and then for miles inland. The place has been a resort for almost a century, but any trace of the past is nearly gone now. Tract housing and trailer parks sprawl for miles inland, punctuated by theme parks and malls.

The town centre, such as it is, has a sort of rambunctious energy, although it’s possible to feel that you’ve wandered into a museum of regional fast-food franchises. As it thins out towards the ends, it becomes somewhat grimmer, a peerless beach with concrete blocks, rather as if Tweed Heads had been redesigned by prison architects. “Welcome to the Redneck Riviera!” a bellboy on a golf cart yelled, unbidden, as I came out of reception, trying to find the right multi-storey car park, with hotel attached. “So this isn’t a faded old lady of the south, a town seen better times?” “Hell no, sir. They’re trying to sell it as a family resort these days, but this is where they come to paaaaarty. If it weren’t for the biker rallies we’d be in deep shit.”

He seemed insouciantly off-message. Was he on drugs? Or just high on life?

He wasn’t alone — in being high on life, that is. Drifting around the grounds, dressed in red, white and blue, chattering like lorikeets were the attendees for the South Carolina Tea Party convention. They were arriving en masse, parking their big white SUVs, moving their big white selves towards the featureless conference centre. They were old and gnarled and sun-spotted and, like most southerners, unfailingly gracious, as long as you stay off certain topics.

“God bless the USA,” the karaokesque tones drifted down from the main auditorium (And I’m proud to be an American/where at least I know I’m free/And I won’t forget the ones who died/who gave that right to me …) as long-lost Tea Partiers greeted each other, from across the state. “It is ye-ahhhs since I been down here”(South Carolina is the size of Tasmania). “This is our first state conference,” someone told me unbidden. “How’s it going so far?” “Very well!” she said her eyes twinkling.

Well, maybe. For a group that sought to restore America by restoring the Republican Party, the South Carolina Tea Party is leaving its run pretty damn late. Its state is the last chance for conservatives to derail the Romney express, and the Tea Party here is relatively united, in the Tea Party Patriots network (there are three major Tea Party networks, and a couple of smaller ones). By contrast, a victory for Romney here, all but seals the deal. This is the year that the SC primary, which was inaugurated only in 1980, has fully become what it always aspired to be — the true king-maker, displacing New Hampshire.

Politics, arguably, is about three or four key moments across decades — taking the Winter Palace today, not tomorrow, sacking the governor-general before he sacks you — and to flub them is to make a joke of your whole project. The Tea Party has a role to play in Congressional and Senate races, but all that is chin music compared to its one task, selecting a Presidential candidate who won’t sell them out from the White House. There is no agreement within the Tea Party on the best conservative candidate, but any genuine movement would have, no matter what the bloodletting, found a way to endorse, and to reduce the split vote. What were they talking about instead?

Well, all those things you shouldn’t talk about with southern conservatives, in sessions including “the Sharia law threat”, “fair tax” and of course “securing our borders”. One looked in vain for discussion of the economy that wasnt a flat-tax-now session, for a foreign policy session that wasn’t an investigation of Obamesque treason. In the middle of the first day, a very young man (“I largely fund myself doing this, so there’s a donation box outside”) spoke about the five stages of Sharia takeover, announcing that “we’re at level four”.

Would the audience steer this guy to calmer shores? In an overflow question and answer session they struck out for deeper water. “I gotta friend who lives near to this Muslim compound up in the woods, and they’re always firing guns. Can’t we check the land registry against the terror watch list?” “Can you tell me, sir, what is the link between radical Islam and the spread of the global free trade agenda?” “They’re even using our rights to protect themselves”, one woman muttered to another behind me. They were both wearing the Americana that has become tribal war paint for the Tea Party crowd — stars and stripes scarves, “don’t tread on me” brooches, etc. They were good ol’ boys and gals, the old southern ruling class, the occasional backwoods evangelical easily spotted under a bad haircut.

Yet their party was about to select a candidate who had run to the left of Teddy Kennedy in 2004, and helped design the healthcare system that they took as evidence of Obama’s fasco-communism. Were they not disappointed by this? “Well there’s no agreement on a conservative candidate,” said a bespectacled Santorum supporter, as his surrendered wife nodded enthusiastically at his side. “Yes but that’s the point,” I said, “that’s the problem. Should there have been an internal struggle” — yes, I’m pretty sure I used the term internal struggle — to send the Tea Party in one direction?”. They looked at me again. “Yes but there’s no agreement on which party we support,” he said again.This happened three or four times in various forms, and even when I ramped it up — “Haven’t you actually failed as a movement” — there was no general recognition. Nothing could disturb the serenity. It occurred to me then that the Tea Party, however it started, whatever process it had been co-opted by, had now become a third thing — an identity group, a club for like-minded people, in which a world view was affirmed, even as, by the very same motion, the very thing they didn’t not want to happen — an establishment candidate taking the lead — came to pass. Or perhaps they were more knowing than this.

The Tea Party’s leaders — once the nascent, Ron Paul-influenced series of Tea Party and “Porculus” protests had been thoroughly co-opted in early-mid 2009 — has always been tied to the establishment Right in the party, but in Myrtle Beach I had that bad sci-fi movie feeling, where you’re in a scene where everyone has been replaced by a robot — a bottle-blonde robot in a “live free or die” stars and stripes ruffled shirt, to be sure, but robot nevertheless.

Who knows whether the Tea Party really exists any more or not, or is just chapters of people getting occasionally to read the Constitution. Should Romney wrap up the nomination early, as everyone thinks, then we will never know. But that has become so much the conventional wisdom, and other scenarios dismissed by the punditry, that it demands examination, which will have to wait. That alternative scenario — a brokered convention — would lead the Tea Party right back into the centre, of they are there at all.

Today, the Obamas prayed in Zion church, to remember a man and a movement that moved millions against dogs, whips and guns, with nothing but their scorned skin to oppose it. In a resort that would not have admitted them without that struggle, the self-appointed next American revolution piled collard greens and fatbacks onto their plate in the all-you-can-eat diner, and talked of how the imams were taking over Michigan. Out behind the resort, a trailer park. “Oh that, that’s where the staff live,” someone said. Two, three, many Americas, hard to know which was the real one.

The more I think of it that Mr 1% Mitt Romney is just the right person to lead the Republicans to their doom.

Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC Puts Comedy Central Host In Big Leagues (Part 2).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/17/colbert-super-pac_n_1209667.html

it’s all Obama’s fault 🙄
http://www.theage.com.au/business/world-business/world-banks-crisis-warning-20120118-1q5n7.html

cos it would be 15% under Abbott

wisconsin Governor Scott Walker could quite possibly have the skids put under him very soon.

Opponents of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker have about 1 million signatures on a petition to force a recall election, according to a state Democratic Party news release.
If the state’s Government Accountability Board rules that at least 540,208 signatures are valid and any legal challenges fail, Wisconsin will hold the third gubernatorial ouster vote in U.S. history.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Wisconsin-Democrats-to-sub-by-Chris-Bowers-120117-271.html

Keystone XL Pipeline: Obama Administration Announcing It Will Not Go Forward With Controversial Plan.
*******************************************************

The State Department on Wednesday recommended that President Barack Obama deny a permit for the Keystone XL, arguing the pipeline does not serve the national interest.

“The President concurred with the Department’s recommendation, which was predicated on the fact that the Department does not have sufficient time to obtain the information necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is in the national interest,” the State Department wrote in a statement released to the media on Wednesday afternoon.

Moments later, Obama issued a statement, confirming his support for the State Department’s recommendation.

This will go down very well with the Liberals in an election year.

More here….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/keystone-pipeline-obama-administration_n_1213136.html

Why it’s going to be nigh impossible for a Repug president to repeal Obamacare (without leaving a trail of destruction, that is).
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/the-hidden-perils-of-repealing-obamacare.php?ref=fpb

In honour of anti-SOPA day. 🙂
Here be the entire version of Guy Rundle’s magnificent account of Rick Perry’s extended death scene on the primary trail. 👿

Rundle12: up close and personal with Rick Perry
by Guy Rundle

Several hours after, back in the motel further up the endless highway — a faux castle called the Knights Inn (geddit, geddit) — I turned on C-SPAN and watched the Rick Perry event I had been at that morning. Or thought I had been at. Maybe I hadn’t. I didn’t know any more. C-SPAN has been following the Republican candidates throughout the primaries, broadcasting events in real time, directly from camera, and then replaying them later.

They get in close, get the whole stump speech, and then the meet and greet, the glad-handing, the book-autographing, the fans gushing, and the mad questions.

You see the candidate, and his sinister staff behind in black suits and earpieces. You see the grateful petitioners, stumbling up on stick and frame, in Walmart windcheaters, to urge the candidate to end the Fed, push for extended fishing licenses, ban fluoride, or defeat that communist Obama. You see the other cameras, pointed at that camera. You see yourself, follow the back of your own bald head, threading through the crowd.

Lunching on peanut butter crackers and diet root beer, got at the Piggly Wiggly discount store, between the faux-colonial drive-in bank and a sushi restaurant done in half-timbered Tudor, a picnic on the faded blue chenille bedspread, looking out the window at the kidney-shaped pool, the water slowly going green; it all seemed to make a lot more sense.

The whole scenario would have had David Lynch saying “too much, no, way too much”, but it worked as a sort of Rick Perry scope. Amid this nowhere on the way to nowhere, where all the buildings are advertisements of themselves, designed to look good in a rearview mirror, Perry filled the screen, looking expansive and at-ease, filling the room. His rolling anecdotes and folksy manner was the perfect warmth for television, the medium cool. He had the quiet authority to be president.

Who was this hickory-smoked political televangelist, and where had he been that morning, as a Texas governor in a dying campaign stumbled through the latest whistlestop on the road to nowhere?

VFW #15001 had been the venue, the Veterans of Foreign Wars clubhouse, a warm and homely shack with a weird pressed metal mansard roof and bottle-bottom glass in the windows. Everything around appeared to have been made in Seoul and shipped out in one unit. The VFW hall by contrast seemed to have been built by having everyone add an extra piece of panelling each time they arrived. Precisely at 9.25, team Perry’s fleet of black SUVs barrelled up and screeched to a halt in front, all but knocking it flat or so it seemed. (“He’s the only one we’ve had here who was on time,” the barmaid said later. “He ain’t got nowhere else to be,” came the reply.)

Inside, there was an old horseshoe bar in one room, an assembly room of sorts next to it, themed ads for beer (‘Budweiser supports the army!”), noticeboards (“sick parade: comrades/staff”), a giant Uncle Sam surrounded by red, white and blue flowers, and in the assembly room a large “POW:MIA” silhouette poster, part of the campaign that suggests Vietnam is still holding onto US prisoners from the war. A dozen good old boys around the bar, the beer-pitchers already out, and about 60 people in the assembly room. There were no country-club Republicans, or even Tea Party ageing southern belles here. This was a hinterland crowd, vets and their wives, with the club officials in blazers, and all the rest dressed for another day behind the fishing line.

They are that distinctive American class, poor folk raised up one level by military service, and grateful for it. They do a full tour, and then either go on to security work or the like, or simply retire, on the pension and the excellent socialised medical system that American vets enjoy. Their conception of America, of its essence, is almost wholly martial. They are fine about defending the constitution, but what they are really about is defending the flag, the bunting that bears a whole people with it, but without content, signifying nothing, except we ourselves, here. Loyalty is the ultimate virtue. Loyalty to what? To loyalty. Semper fi.

This was Perry’s solid 10%. They would go for Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, and perhaps, if they have to, they will vote for Mitt Romney, but the bobble-headed serial adulterer former speaker, and the creepy tanktop man from the north, don’t command their devotion. That is left wholly for the Texas governor, the former Air Force pilot, the handsome and rugged new defender at the Alamo, all that stands between the republic and a hundred-million Mexicans.

He’s smaller in real life than on screen, more compact, near European in the neatness of his lines, with the perfectly placed nut-brown hair. Sitting in the front row of folding chairs, waiting to be introduced, he looks more personable; there’s no swagger or sprawl in his demeanour. As he bounds up to applause — “the next Preyesident foth Yewnited Stays, Governor Rick Perry” — something else becomes obvious: he’s shit at this.

Seriously how can a Texas Republican governor lose an audience of vets? But he was doing it, after 10 minutes, the unmistakeable sound of people in nylon shifting in plastic chairs accompanied by the odd cough. Starting from the usual palaver — “I grew up in a little place called [Something] Creek, there was a Baptist church one side of the road, Methodist another, that was it …” — and into something about learning about being a conservative from learning to conserve water, and living the “purpose-driven life” and “this country is about giving back”, and by that point I wasn’t the only one wondering where all this was going.

Introducing a military historian, apparently: “Tom Hatfield, everyone. Say hi, Tom.” Tom snaps off a salute. And then we were off again, about the Keystone pipeline, the Canada-Houston pipe that would go straight through Nebraska’s lake system and which that state’s Republican governor has begged the federal government not to build, in its current form — “I don’t have a problem with green energy, I just don’t want the govmint tell me I have to do it” — and then we had the idea of a “wounded warrior tax credit”: anyone wounded in action pays no income tax for five years, after recovery.

Then Mike Thornton was introduced — “the only winner of the Congressional Medal of Honour to save the life of another winner of the Congressional Medal of Honour” — and Perry, out of, it seemed, a desperate desire not to talk, got him up to the podium.

And that was a mistake, because Mike Thornton blew the room away. He was genuinely big, six five, beefy, white haired, with the medal around his neck like a blue ribbon choker. He was gently jingoistic — “I been to 76 countries in my life, there’s nothing like the USA” — he was humorous — “I was an ex-Navy SEAL; you either go into security or become a hit man for the Mafia” — and he took all the power in the room and sent it back out to everyone there — “this medal, this medal I won, this medal belongs to each and every one of you” — and by that time, hell, I would have voted for him. But we only had Perry, who was back, saying what should be done by “the next president of the United States … who I hope is me”.

Who I hope is me? Jesus. When Gingrich talks about 2012, he speaks like he’s already picked out his White House parking space. Perry talks like he might win the lottery. His speech has no focus, his policy recitative has no structure, and his proposal for a five-year wounded warrior tax credit appears to me to offer troops a $75,000 incentive to shoot their own toes off.Perry had impressed in the previous night’s debate — more than he had in previous debates, which had killed his chances. But even there he’d screwed up, taking a leading question about Turkey’s Islamic government way too far, calling the Erdogan government, a NATO member and ally in the Libya operation, “Islamist terrorists”. Why? Because the question had mentioned the (rubbery) statistic that since Erdogan came to power, murder of women had gone up by 1400% (it is far more likely the reporting of crime has improved dramatically in Turkey, creating this statistic). “Well,” said Perry, “if they’re killing their own people …” In other words, he simply misunderstood the question.

He is that rara avis, a candidate who is not merely slow, not merely populist, but genuinely stupid. Wandering lost through the sagebrush of his absurd stump speech, Perry is another candidate who has lost the juice. He at least had it — Jon Huntsman, his moderate mirror twin, never did — but that made the loss all the greater, when the 2011 debates revealed to millions that he was simply not personally qualified for the job.

But the millions don’t matter. The revelation is most killing to the one man there, on the spot, before a podium in a shack by the freeway, applying for a job he has already been refused. Gingrich and Santorum are both in the hunt because these early primaries are proportional — they can gather some delegates, stay in position, and who knows what the hell might happen. With Mitt Romney, now fighting off the scandal that he pays only 15% tax, and describes his $350,000 speaking fees as “not that much”, they are right to do so.

But Perry’s delegate accumulation will be derisory, his chance of a VP slot non-existent. Why is he still here? Sitting in a folding chair, watching the empty space where he would soon be speaking, he appeared to be wondering the same thing himself. Watching him watching himself from the comfort of the Knights Inn, one wondered the same thing. Why was this mythology failing, even as its champions became ever more insistent?

Jon Stewart at his best

http://gawker.com/5877415/jon-stewart-has-some-harsh-words-for-sopa-and-its-sponsors

What If Voters Just Don’t Like Mitt Romney?
**********************************

Mitt Romney may be on the verge of securing the nomination, but his campaign is still struggling with a pretty basic problem as it looks towards the general election: people just don’t like him very much.

More here…
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/does-romney-have-a-likability-problem.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

Orphaned Baby Wombats Play In Australia Sanctuary (VIDEO).
************************************************

Belle and Phoenix just might be the cutest wombats ever.

After being rescued, Belle was taken to Healesville Sanctuary in Australia, where she currently lives with her best friend, Phoenix, another orphaned wombat.

As featured on Vice’s “The Cute Show,” Felicity Fahey, a keeper at Healesville, explains that Belle came to the refuge after her mother was hit and killed by a car. When Fahey’s not chasing her “beautiful monsters,” she can be found feeding, playing or even singing to them.

More here..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/orphaned-baby-wombats_n_1214161.html

Stephen Colbert running ads against himself, urging people to vote for Herman Cain.
http://www.americablog.com/2012/01/stephen-colbert-running-ads-against.html

The super SeweRoo in all his glory about to eat a few more shit sangas. The funny thing is you won’t read about in the worlds best news reporting papers in Australia. Don’t know why.

Criminal practices inside the News of the World went far further than phone hacking, it emerged yesterday, as News International finally admitted in the High Court that it also illegally accessed computer emails.

In an hour-long series of humbling and expensive apologies that potentially passed £10m in damages and legal costs, the admission of computer hacking opens up a new chapter in the scandal, threatening the already shredded reputation of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/we-hacked-emails-too–news-international-6292245.html

Great to see a pollie only demand compensation that does not include hush money to shut him up. So he accepts 30k pounds and can pour buckets on SeweRoo and his trash media organisation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2012/jan/19/chris-bryant-news-international-settlement-video

I agree DG. If Gingrich gets the nomination, I imagine a hoard of Clinton supporters will be reinvigorated for the fight to keep Obama for 4 more years.