Why Won't Santorum be President?

Shortest post ever: because he's a ridiculous boob.

OK, so maybe not the shortest post ever. That's an accusation that requires a bit of explanation. You see, back in 2006, Rick was in a tough reelection race against Bob Casey. Things weren't going very well -- Santorum would later lose that election in a landslide -- and he needed to pull a rabbit out of his hat. So Santorum teamed up with Rep. Pete Hoekstra to declare that WMD had been found in Iraq.

Fox News:

The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

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Fox News to GOP Candidates: 'No More Anti-Bailout Talk'

This video of Rick Perry being interviewed by Fox News' Neil Cavuto has been making the rounds, generally as evidence of how unprepared Perry is for anything in the neighborhood of a tough question. In the clip, Perry's regurgitating the typical GOP mumbo-jumbo about certainty and "investor confidence" being the most important thing for economic and job growth, while completely ignoring the indisputable fact that no one's going to invest in a business that has no customers. Supply and demand is set on its head, as always.

But of course the interesting part is when Perry starts ripping on the bailouts -- previously a fairly typical Republican line. And, until just a few weeks ago, a perfectly acceptable and politically correct one. But after the Occupy movement, it's apparently now verboten.



Yes, Perry's tiny little brain was incapable of processing what had just happened, so he just sat there silent, waiting for the interview to move on. I can't help but fill that silence with the sound of imaginary crickets chirping while rusty gears grind to a halt when I watch it.

But check that video again. Cavuto's crew had that clip loaded and ready to fire. It had previously been a matter of teabagger faith that the bailouts were bad, now it's practically the act of a Communist sympathizer to make that same argument. Cavuto's comment and the clip of Occupy Wall Street was a warning shot across Perry's bow. Perry's not likely to criticize the bailouts on Fox News again -- he obviously has no idea how to deal with the consequence.

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The $16 Muffin and Other Beloved Zombie Lies

I'm not a creature of habit, but I try to be. Every night, I try to do the same thing, to make it easier to get to sleep. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are part of that. I watch them both, which begins the "go to bed" launch sequence. Obviously, this throws me off when there are reruns, but for the most part it works.

So last night I was watching TDS. The guest was Bill O'Reilly, who was hawking some book about the Lincoln assassination that a ghostwriter whipped up for him. Stewart called him out on his ridiculous "Obama's making it too expensive to be rich" argument and O'Reilly went straight to government spending. What about the $16 dollar muffin?

Stewart admitted that he hadn't heard about this $16 muffin thing, which isn't extremely surprising; it was one of those rightwing blogosphere "scandals" with the shelf-life of an unrefrigerated popsicle. Stewart probably missed it because he blinked.

Basically, the story worked like this; an audit from the Inspector General for the Department of Justice found that the Capitol Hilton in Washington overcharged a 2099 Justice Department Legal Training Conference -- which O'Reilly described as "a bunch of conferences for pinheads" -- for refreshments. The hotel was apparently given a budget and it exceeded it by the slimmest of amounts.

The "$16 muffin" came from a poorly itemized invoice and some quick, back-of-the-envelope accounting -- i.e., a bunch of other stuff was listed in a column marked "muffins." "So did DOJ really pay $16 for muffins?" Kevin Drum wrote at the time. "Of course not. In fact, it's obvious that someone quite carefully calculated the amount they were allowed to spend and then gave the hotel a budget. The hotel agreed, but for some reason decided to divide up the charges into just a few categories instead of writing a detailed invoice for every single piece of food they provided."

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Real Populism Blooms, Right Wing Media Fumes

Last night, a loose, disorganized coalition of Marxist rebels, street gangs, and union thugs stormed the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin, seizing the Capitol itself and occupying it. The air was thick with smoke as the rebels destroyed everything they could find. Local residents cowered in their basements, hoping the rampaging maniacs wouldn't find them, as the grim specter of death stalked this once proud city under the cover of night. Prayers for salvation went unanswered and it seemed even God had abandoned the populace.

At least, that's the impression you'd get if you were watching Fox News at about 4:00 central yesterday.



Fox's coverage was so extreme and so over-the-top that people were tweeting Fox's account to get updates on the death toll.

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On Milbank's Palin Embargo

I'm not completely sold on Dana Milbanks's embargo on Sarah Palin news for the month of February. Personally, I'd like the unpopular Palin and the equally brainless demagogue Michele Bachmann to become the two vacant faces of the Republican Party. The only downside to this that I can see is that people will start equating a midwestern accent with idiocy.

In any case, it's not February yet, so deciding to join in or to violate the ban is a moot point. Which is good, because it turns out someone told Sarah to say something clever and she's extremely proud of herself.

Politico:

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday night that President Barack Obama's call for "winning the future" during his State of the Union address is best framed by the acronym it shares with a much different phrase -- "wtf."

"That was a tough speech to sit through and try to stomach," Palin said during an interview with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren.

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