Oh say, did you see the BS from VP?

From DIETER KURTENBACH at The Mercury News:

INDIANAPOLIS — I wish I could have left too.

Reporters and columnists should be allowed to be sanctimonious about having to watch two bad NFL teams fail to execute for four quarters and an overtime.

…snip…

But Vice President Mike Pence has no problem with sanctimony. And it seems like his boss loved him leaving Sunday’s game early, too.

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The Cain Train Goes Off the Track

From The New York Times:

An unapologetic and defiant Herman Cain suspended his presidential campaign on Saturday, pledging that he “would not go away” even as he abandoned the Republican presidential race in the face of escalating accusations of sexual misconduct.

“As of today, with a lot of prayer and soul searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign,” Mr. Cain said at a rally in Atlanta, surrounded by supporters chanting his name. “Because of the continued distractions, the continued hurt caused on me and my family, not because we are not fighters. Not because I’m not a fighter.”

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Idiocy Quotient

From SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL:

The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country’s reputation.

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Herman is Squirmin’

From the Atlantic wire:

His fellow Republican presidential candidates were reluctant to comment on accusations that Herman Cain sexually harassed several women in the 1990s, but now that a woman is claiming they had a long-term consensual affair, they’re ready to speak out.

Jon Huntsman told the Boston Globe‘s Michael Levenson that Cain should think about dropping out […]

…snip…

The Des Moines Register‘s Jason Noble notes Michele Bachmann told Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson Tuesday morning that Cain said he will “reassess” his campaign because that’s “code language for the fact that they’re looking at the viability of their effort moving forward … I think that they recognize that the support has really dropped out of their campaign because of those questions.” She went further on the Scott Hennen radio show, CBS News reports, saying, “Everyone has said to me yesterday – when it came out yesterday, everyone said this is it, he’s done … People just don’t see that there is an ability for him to be able to come back after that.”

Newt Gingrich, who’s less desperate for better poll numbers than Huntsman or Bachmann, wasn’t willing to call Cain’s campaign dead yet.

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He didn’t lobby, it was just a hobby!

From Joan Walsh at Salon:

Another day, another story about Newt Gingrich profiteering. Well, three stories, actually.

The Washington Post reported this morning that a Gingrich “think tank,” the Center for Health Transformation, collected at least $37 million from health care industry groups, who were promised “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction” in exchange for their cash. Also in exchange for their cash, perhaps, Gingrich took some interesting positions on health care reform: He supported the “individual mandate” that Americans buy insurance (or post a bond to cover unanticipated illness) as well as measures to encourage “end of life” planning. He ditched both positions, of course, once he realized they were unpopular with the Republican base.

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Mac ‘n Sleaze

From John Cassidy at THE NEW YORKER:

Take the ludicrous suggestion that Freddie Mac, the smaller of the two government-sponsored mortgage giants, may have expected Newt to do some lobbying on its behalf when, in 2006, it paid him the very modest sum of $300,000. Any fair-minded person would agree that Newt quashed this idea during one of last week’s debates. He explained that Freddie’s executives hired him for his expertise as a historian, adding that he warned them to stop lending money to folks who couldn’t repay their loans. In Newt’s own words: “My advice as a historian, when they walked in and said to me, ‘We are now making loans to people who have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything, but that’s what the government wants us to do.’ As I said to them at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible.”

That explanation was more than good enough for me. But darn it if a couple of quibbling scribblers from Bloomberg News didn’t put out a report yesterday, quoting former executives of Freddie Mac saying that Newt was hired “to build bridges to Capitol Hill Republicans and develop an argument on behalf of the company’s public-private structure that would resonate with conservatives seeking to dismantle it.”

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Catch of the Day

From Alexandra Petri at ComPost at The Washington Post:

No wonder he’s currently riding at the top of the polls. Newt Gingrich has a lot going for him.

For example, he’s not Mitt Romney. And then also, he’s not Herman Cain. Nor is he Rick Perry. Nor, if you Google his last name, does an obscene sexual term come leaping into your mind and scar you forever.

…snip…

Also, when asked questions about places like Libya and Uzbeki-beki-beki-stan-stan-stan, he responds to them, with precision and color, in complete sentences, as though he actually has some knowledge of what he’s talking about.

When you start listing things like this, you get more and more impressed. He has no ranches with racial epithets for names. Sure, there’s the sexual indiscretion, but that was only because he loved his country so much. Can Herman Cain say the same?

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For His Next Musical Number: Amazing Disgrace

From THE FIX  at The Washington Post:

Conservatives are not rushing to defend businessman Herman Cain in the wake of a press conference in which Sharon Bialek — with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred at her side — claimed that the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO made an unwanted, physical sexual advance on her in 1997.

Many are pointing out that there are numerous verifiable details in Bialek’s story and are reserving judgment until more reporting comes out. Few seem willing to dismiss her story completely.

…snip…

A few did dismiss the accusations out of hand. “She’s lying,” said Adam Baldwin, an actor and frequent contributor to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism site. “Not a credible performance.”

Numerous conservatives commented on Bialek’s hair and makeup, and the fact that she had hired Allred, a Democratic donor. Rush Limbaugh mocked her as a “blonde bombshell” with a funny name.

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