Ringling Brothers - Republican Presidential Race 2016

Rumour has it Comedians took up a collection to entice Donald Trump--Republican clown emeritus and walking punchline--into the 2016 Presidential fray for fodder their acts.

Plus, Romney might run again, giving us an opportunity to recycle all our Mitt jokes and thus maintain a small comedy/carbon foot print.

Charles Pierce on Republican'ts

[Sorry, kids, but this is not the way the system is supposed to work. This whole puppet show was the result of a jerry-rigged burlesque of the legislative process that was devised a year ago because the House had been rendered dysfunctional by a claque of feral children. This whole puppet show likely will be replayed — with even more spectacular special effects! — in March when we deal with Fiscal Cliff 2: Sequester Boogaloo because of jerry-rigged burlesques that are part of this new deal of which everyone is so very proud. My man Chuck Todd is calling the sequel, "March Madness." If the pundits are already being cutesy about it, the March thing could be a nightmare.

This is a continuation, not of the proper constitutional order of things, but of Government By Improv. There is no serious coalition in evidence here, no matter how many Democrats offered themselves up to defibrillate John Boehner's career. This was a deal cobbled together by the vice-president and the minority leader of the Senate and passed by a Republican House with more Democratic votes than Republican votes. This leaves the government still in a weird, suspended place, creating tiny mechanisms within itself on the fly just to keep running, and then newer tiny mechanisms on the fly to keep the previous tiny mechanisms running. Sooner or later, you can't improvise your way out of your basic problems, which is that one of your two political parties continues to have a kind of prion disease eating away at its brain. This deal last night did not extinguish the nihilistic streak in the Republican party, nor its delight in legislative vandalism.]
Read more: Fiscal Cliff Averted - And The Debt Deal Winner Is...Somebody - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/fiscal-cliff-averted-010213#ixzz2Gq5gu4d9

"Rational Idiocy"

Update: Great, Republican'ts ARE crazy, just not "batshit crazy."

Update #2: Republican't economic terrorist Lindsey Graham on TeeVee promises to use debt ceiling threats to extort concessions from Democrats.

How can anyone run a railroad like this?  Sheesh, such insanity on such a large scale actually boggles the mind of rational observers, even those somewhat inured to Republican't intransigence.

These sincere ideologues, safe in their gerrymandered sinecures, actually, actively aim to drive the American economy into the proverbial ditch due to born again fervor against federal budget deficits--deficits they recently embraced by voting for unfunded wars and Cheney administration tax cuts for the wealthy.

How could they for an instant think of wrecking the US and probably world economy?

Because they can, and doing so inoculates them against electoral challenge from even more right wing and irrational challengers.  Even President in Waiting Rubio voted against the Senate compromise.

[This makes the Republican Party look terrible: irresponsible, incompetent, obstinate. You can expect the stock market to open sharply lower tomorrow and Republicans to take all the blame for the voluntary economic damage caused by the fiscal cliff.

But this course still makes sense from the perspective of individual Republicans in the House. Voting for Plan B, or for the Senate fiscal cliff deal, or even for an amended version of the Senate deal, can open a Republican incumbent to attacks from conservative primary challengers and anti-spending groups like FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth.

Opposing everything and offering no plan to avert the fiscal cliff won’t encourage such challenges from the right. And if you represent a reasonably safe seat -- as the vast majority of Republican members do -- boosting the party’s national vote share, or governing in the national interest, is apparently no competition for the instinct of political self-preservation.]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-01/house-republicans-rational-idiocy.html

Don't Stop Believing in 1/2 a Million Dollars: Journey Sells Out

Have always hated Journey; if gotta listen to Journey to make whoopie, it ain't happening,  Gimme some Luther Vandross any day--and night.

[Mitt Romney's campaign has paid rock band Journey $500,000 to play at a private campaign event, TMZ reports.

A source tells the entertainment website that the campaign hired the group to play a 90-minute set at a Tampa, Fla. fundraising event on Thursday night. The Republican National Convention comes to a close that evening.]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/26/mitt-romney-journey_n_1831698.html?ir=Entertainment

Geez, Mitt, can't find any rock acts with, you know, testosterone like Nugent or Megadeth  And Kid Suck don't count, not after ripping off "Werewolves of London" riff.

Republican'ts Agenda in Bullet Points

From Democracy for America, the people powered Political Action Committee:
• Destroy Medicare as we know it and replace it with a voucher program for seniors
• Give women no choice, with no exemptions, in making personal healthcare decisions
• Make the Bush tax cuts permanent -- and give huge new tax breaks to the rich on top of them
• Raise taxes on the poor and middle class
• Pretend climate change doesn't exist and massively expand oil drilling