The SoapBoxers

It’s just three more days until Christmas. Where has the time gone? It seems just yesterday was Thanksgiving and my family packed up and moved to our new job in Tennessee.

On the political side of things. not a lot has changed in the horserace the last month. Newt is still enjoying his time as the anti-Romney frontrunner status anti good old Mitt still goes from every side of every view and stays at the Same levels he has for months.

However we are just moments away from the actual results part of the race starting to come through with the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Are you ready? I know I am. If I could have one wish granted I wish we could just fast forward to the nomination to be over and the real debate over the stark differences between what whoever the Republican nominee will be and what they will wish to do as President and what the current would like to attempt to do if reelected. The same old “my conservative credentials are better than yours” pissing contest is just getting tiresome, even for a political junkie like me.

So who will win the first two contests? My money if I were to wager would be on a Ron Paul win in Iowa with Newt in second and Mitt in third. Then in new Hampshire I see Romney taking the win with Newt in second and Huntsman making a surprise finish in third before going back into the one prevent support zone when the race goes back to states that the Republican voting base is not as sane.

Until next time I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy new year. Next time we will have some actual results to dissect and discuss!

2012 Republican Presidential Candidates (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! This Thanksgiving I was most thankful for my family and our move to our new job that we are about to embark on. Why I am not thrilled with the packing and process of actually moving there part, I am really excited about moving to middle Tennessee from east central Kansas.

The interesting part of the process is that the Angry Squirrel will now be a Republican Presidential Primary voter. Yes you read that right, REPUBLICAN primary voter. Now don’t laugh to hard, or start to think I have had some sort of epiphany that led me to change my entire political thinking the past month. The move itself has allowed this to happen.

I will be registering to vote as soon as I can in Tennessee, and as a registered independent in the open primary state I will be able to cast my ballot in the Republican primary if I choose to do so, and as there really is not a Democratic primary to vote in this cycle, I say why not. I have been following the candidates closer than the average Republican primary voter has even. So I feel I am well-informed to cast my vote for I feel most expresses what I think the Republican Party stands for.

It should be interesting to see how things develop as February 5th rolls around, which is the date of the Tennessee Primary. We should have a pretty narrowing field of who actually are the frontrunners by that point. We will likely have Mitt stagnating at the same percentage he has had all along, give or take a few. After that will Newt and his new-found compassion for immigrants and his payoffs from lobbying for the devil keep him in frontrunner status? Will Michelle Bachmann’s strong performances in the past couple roundtable/debates show a rise once again in her numbers? Will Rick Perry stop being a douche and just exit the primary process? Will Herman Cain continue to stay at the front of things? ONly time will tell.

I will be surprised if by that point there is not some sort of movement going to cast votes a particular way in these open primary states. That is not my motive, as I am just mainly doing it for the novelty of the process since I am not used to open primaries and I figure since there is no need to do so on the Democratic side this time around why not cast my ballot for who I feel most expresses the sentiment of the current Republican party. Like I said though, I would be surprised if there was not some sort of shenanigans going on to vote one way or the other in these open primaries by the time they roll around.

So who am I going to vote for? That is a good question, and the simple answer is who knows. While in the General Election I wouldn’t vote for any of them if you forced me to. That is not the issue here. I do know it won’t be for Mitt, but other than that I really don’t know which viable contender at that point I would lend my “support” to with my vote. It’s likely going to be a toss-up between Bachmann or Cain, but you all can feel free to make your point for whom the Angry Squirrel should vote for.

First we had Plum Nuts with Michelle Bachman, then there was Just Nuts with Rick Perry and now we have Black Walnut with Herman Cain. Now that his 9-9-9 plan gets more scrutiny and less simple by the minute. The current Flavor of the Month of Republican Presidential Primary voters may be on the way out soon.

Who will be the next flavor in the search to unseat The Great Divide known as Mitt Romney in the race for the nomination? Will it be an outsider not in the race right now? Chubby Hubby couldn’t become the new fave when Chris Christie said no, but is there anyone else out there to make their ideas pleasing to the palates of the voters? Very Unlikely.

With November nearing, meaning the first contest being just about two months away, it is pretty much too late to make much of a challenge for things. So there goes that notion. So that leaves us with what we currently have to find the next craving for the right. So who is it going to be? As I was watching some discussions a day or so ago on Cain being ahead of Romney in the latest poll, I noticed something else in that same poll – Classic Vanilla himself Newt Gingrich was in third place and double digits for the first time in pretty much forever at ten percent.

Is this old flavor, the new flavor of the near future? While he may start to see a continued bump as Cain goes down and Romney keeps his same numbers he has had, Newt will never win the nomination. He is not really conservative enough. Sure he did his best to shut down Washington before, but he has sat down and agreed with that down right dirty leftist socialist tramp Nancy Pelosi in the past. Shoot in the last debate he tried to be the voice of reason for the festival of kookiness this race is becoming.

Also don’t forget Newt is only running because it is time to change in his old wife with a new staffer model. So while it may become the new thing again, the voter will soon remember what cause them not to want this same old plain taste in the first place? So who will get that next bump after that? Rick Santorum’s Holy Gelato? Now that’s a flavor I would certainly like to see rise to the top, or I’ll take some more Plum Nuts, two scoops please.

Now that the fall weather is here The Angry Squirrel has headed south to New Mexico. Or as I am also putting it, early preparation to quickly hop the border in the event of a Rick Perry Presidency.

All kidding aside, I am actually here for a job interview. So here is to hoping all goes well on that front. Although I am going to be missing the next all important debate today.

You know the one that Fox News is teaming up with Google to have people submit and vote on questions. Which in turn Fox News will completely ignore most of the top questions and just ask whatever it wants and make up shit as it goes. Kind of like their news coverage.

The more pressing issue for me though will be what will the Republican base show themselves to stand for this time around. Two debates ago it was cheering the execution of more people under any Governor in recorded history. Then last debate the death is something to cheer about continued with screams and yeahs along with thunderous applause when the question of society allowing a man without insurance to die. This was after Ron Paul had already referred to this situation as being what freedom is all about. Who knows maybe this time around they will cheer about grandma dying when her Medicare and Social Security are done away with by a President Perry.

Anyways, to conclude this months post I am gonna do something different. Let’s open the comments to ask and talk about questions we would like to see asked of the participants in tonights debate.
i
I’ll start off.

Newt, Why the hell are you pretending to be in this race still?

Or I could just do some joke with Santorum and Google since they are the co hosts after all.

Move over Michele Bachmann, there is now a nutcase in the race with the proper chromosomes to be qualified to be President. Now before you get all hot and bothered by the sexism of me saying such a thing, that is certainly not how I feel. However, it must be how the Republican primary voters feel.

How else do you explain that in less than two weeks since officially jumping into the race that he is already the frontrunner and put good Ole Mittens and the crazy lady well behind in second and fourth place.

The new Gallup poll out today has Perry with 29 percent, Romney with 17, Ron Paul with 13 and Bachmann with just ten percent now in the polls.

There has been constant talk throughout this early stage in the process of the field not being complete or the voters being happy with their choices. Once Bachmann entered the race that quieted down a little bit, but despite running away with a meaningless straw poll vote in Iowa she never took over the lead in polling with the voters.

On the surface Bachmann and Perry appeal to the same audience of voters. Both are firebrands that say the red meat the tea party people want to hear, only one is male and one is female. So that has to be the reason for Perry’s surge to the front. It sure is not about his record as Governor of Texas, as I would say Dubya was a better Governor than him.

Speaking of which, if Perry were to get elected, I would for the first time answer yes to all those ‘Miss Me Yet?’ bumper stickers.

Don’t fret though you Bachmann crazies. You are bound to gather up the preference of those running behind you in the polls now and Perry could always mess things up and vault you back to the top.

One reason that could happen is the biggest difference other than gender between Perry and her. That reason being that she actually means and believes all the stupid and crazy shit that comes out of her mouth. Perry on the other hand, as evidenced by his responses to his own statements and writings in just the past year is already trying to change what he said, or that he meant this instead. If he does this too much the tea party people will start to see him as not much better than Mitt on that account and go back to supporting Bachmann. As genuine, sincere and honest craziness means much more to them, even if it is from a woman.

There are five days left until the threat of default and the circus continues in Washington over the debt ceiling. Feeling the pressure? The Republicans seem to be as The Man With The Fake Tan seem to be getting more and more agitated by the day. First he is overheard saying he didn’t sign up to go head to head with the President and then you have him telling his party colleagues to get their asses in line behind his ideas.

Here is how I see the whole ordeal. First you have a Democrat as President sounding like a Republican – well one before they were taken off the cliff by these nut jobs anyways. Making every effort to come closer each day to anything the right had wanted at the expense of his own support from progressives in the long run, Then you have the Republicans that are insatiable in their desires and keep wanting more and wanting it now. It looks like the Tea Party is more the Veruca Salt Party and all bad nuts to me.

It really pisses me off to see every compromise being offered their way on every single damn thing and, not once any compromise by the other side. No matter what he does to alienate his base, the right will always view him in a bad light. Heck he could suddently decide to outlaw abortion effective immediately and I am sure the right would reconsider its position on that.

Right now it seems that there are two last ditch efforts to avoid default. The one that is proposed by the Democrats has more dollars in cuts than it raises the debt ceiling and gives the Treasury room to pay the interest on past debt through 2013. It is not a good proposal, as it does not have any revenue side reform. However it will do suffice to avoid the end result and, what the hell, we can continue this circus without putting our credit rating on the table. Then on the other side you have a proposal of more cuts, but only enough debt ceiling room made to last until Christmas. Heck you even have teabaggers proposing we should vote to lower the debt ceiling – what absolute morons they are indeed.

It seems that the Pubes want to redo this side show again at Christmas and then I am sure once again during the heat of summer campaigning, all with the country’s economic fate at stake each time. When August 2nd gets here and there is obviously nothing going to get done the President should just use the 14th Amendment to avoid the end result the teabaggers want to see and then let us all continue this circus without holding the country’s credit rating ransom.

Now let’s discuss the Bad Nuts of the Month.

Glenn Beck: He may not have his show on Fixed News anymore, but he still has other outlets to put forth his agenda of lies and hate. This week in the aftermath of the tragedy in Norway, he compared the camp that the kids were killed at to being like the Hitler Youth. Saying who has a camp that is all about politics. Who? Well Glenn Beck, that is who – with his 9/12 indoctrination camp for kids this summer in Tampa. Anyways, what was with the comparison anyways? Does he think the kids deserved to die or something because they were at a camp run by a political ideology he does not agree with? Unfortunately that is probably the case.

Bradlee Dean: Well it seems that the nutcase that runs You Can Run But You Can’t Hide International did not take well to his own words putting him in bad light and has made a frivolous $50 million lawsuit against NBC, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, The Minnesota Independent. It stems from it being reported that Dean referred to Muslims as being at least more moral than us in executing gay people. Now he did not come out and say so in many words, but when one preaches for morality and says that the moral thing to do is to execute gay people, then you pretty much are advocating for that stance. I guess Dean thinks he can hide from his own words and thinks that you should not be able to make him beheld accountable for them.

Allen West: As you may know as Crunchy talked about in her article last week, Allen West, a Congressman from Florida, took issue with fellow Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wassermann Schultz. He did not like her talking about his publicly known views on issues on the floor of Congress when he was not in the room. In an email her West basically said that DWS was the most vile piece of trash in the entire Congress an that he was not going to treat like a lady because she was not one and she needed to know her place. Now what does not treating her like a lady mean? If she does not stop talking about his views then he is going to beat the crap out of her or something? Anyways I am sure there is no evidence of West ever talking about someone else in a bad light when they were not present are there? Sure there are plenty of those. I guess DWS can just remember that West will likely soon be out of Congress after the next election and find peace in that like we all will.

Sorry PolitiFact, this may be news to you, but The Daily Show is not a real news show. Earlier in the week there was discussion over Jon Stewart’s comments in an interview on Fox News in which he stated that Fox News viewers constantly poll at the bottom in being the most misinformed. Then PolitiFact came out the next day giving Stewart’s comments a false rating on their truth scale. They found the polls Stewart was referencing and Fox News was not at the bottom, only near the bottom with almost all their programming. In fact PolitiFact stated that even Stewart’s own Daily Show ranked below the Fox programming.

The only thing is, PolitiFact, you forgot one thing, The Daily Show is a comedy show about media, not a news show. It’s kind of akin to Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, not Fox and Friends or Bill O’Reilly and his spin filled zone. It is kind of like someone trying to compare amateur wrestling to professional wrestling on their value as sports. One is an actual sport and the other is sports entertainment.

It is kind of the same thing Wallace fell into in the interview itself when he started taking out old tape of clips from Comedy Central Shows. Now it would have been funny if Wallace was trying to fight back on the argument that Fox is not News with a Comedy Central is not really Comedy a lot of the time, but that is not what he was trying to do. Wallace was trying to use other Comedy Central clips to discredit Stewart because his network plays this filth.

An astonishing thing happened last week. No it was not the Rapture, it was the fact I agreed with the theme of an article by The Crunchy Conservative. Yes I, The Angry Squirrel can not support a residential candidacy by one Newt Gingrich. I just can’t do it. Now I wouldn’t be able to support the candidacy of any person vying for the Republican nomination, but that is beside the point. Newt had a bad week and his candidacy was for all extensive purposes ended faster than he can spend 500,000 big ones at Tiffany’s, so Crunchy I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Nominating a candidate that has a shot at winning in the General Election, that’s a different story.

Now that Newt is out of the way, how does the Republican field play out? There is the constant talk of who’s in and who is out. The out side took another blow on Sunday Morning, when we found out that Gov. Mitch Daniels was the latest in the line of those seen as major players to decide now was not the right time to go after the Presidency. Also this past month, The Donald ended his desire for excessive personal attention from the media, officially announcing what we knew all along. That he was not running for President and would focus on hosting a crappy “reality” show.

Heck ever Paul Ryan has had to say he is not intending to run for the Presidency. Although he did not rule things out in the future, Maybe Vice President? He’ll need a job after 2012 after all, as I personally do not see him winning his district this time around, especially with the response to his Path to Poverty budget proposal.

It is a long ways before we even get to Iowa, so there is no need to rush to pick a candidate. No one seems to come to a consensus on who will get the nomination. After the entire field is pretty weak and all are flawed. Though I am pleased for them to have all the infighting they want on the way to a nomination. So let us line them up, look at them all and judge their worth for the nomination. Here are those in the race, officially or not.

So we have Mitt Romney. He has not officially announced yet that he running, but it is obvious he is going to be in the race. What else is he going to be doing with the over 10 million that he is raking in on a single day. Maybe he is repaying his personal coffers from his last failed Presidential bid? Despite having a monetary advantage and following the Republican principle that money can buy anything, Mitt is going to have a tough rough road to hoe in securing the nomination. He is downright boring and changes his stance on everything with however the electorate feels about something at the moment. There is also that thing about being the architect of Massachusetts’ Romneycare, which was the model for what resemblance of national health care “reform” that was actually passed by the Congress passed last time around.

Then you have Tim Pawlenty, or more amusingly known as T-Paw. The likely person to take the boring, “serious” Republican vote not named Willard. We will see how things go. While I do see T-Paw pushing Romney out of the race in the end, I am not sure he gets the nomination either as I honestly, as I don’t think there is much exciting to get behind there and I don’t foresee him being the firebrand to spew out what the majority of his party electorate will want to hear.

The more likely Minnesotan to make noise in the race if they were to get it in is Michelle Bachmann. However she is obviously waiting for Sarah to decide to throw her hat in and be the frontrunner to take the early states of Iowa and South Carolina with her downright nuttiness it will take to win over that electorate. Like I said though, she will wait for Palin to officially be in or out to decide anything as they are both the same type of candidate, an absolute moron. That is the type of stuff conservatives like to eat up though.

Speaking of Sister Sarah, she has that fire in her belly, whatever that means. That does not mean the temporary Governor of Alaska has entered into the race yet officially though. Nor has she said she is not going to run. Buying a big mansion in Arizona has not helped to squelch the will she or won’t she watch. Is that move for her Presidential ambitions, or for scoping out Jon Kyl’s Senate seat. I’d love to see that nomination race; neither would intend to say a factual statement the entire race. While in her warped little mind she thinks she can beat Obama in the general election, she is the only candidate in the race that will lose no matter what the conditions of the economy or the nation may be at time. In fact, she is the only Republican to poll losing to Dennis Kucinich. That being said I think that if she runs she has the likeliest chance at the nomination or having the most influence that with all the delegates she would have locked up regardless and have the nominee tied to her and her views for the general election.

Ron Paul? Sure he still has a following, but I do not see him as any factor I the race this time at all.

Don’t forget about the winner of the first and only debate so far, Herman Cain. Though he is “serious” candidate he stands as much chance of getting the nomination that his former employer does of being called gourmet food or not causing me to be in the bathroom for endless hours afterwards. Also he’ll never be a darling of the crowd he’ll need to woo to get the nod. He is charismatic I guess, but the Teabaggers are likely to question his birth certificate as well and would never see him as one of them. So I hope you enjoyed your one win in this process. He is correct I one thing he is not going to be running for second place, he is running for last.

That brings us to the final candidate talked about right now in the race, former Utah Governor and Obama Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman. He has decided to set up headquarters in Florida, though not officially in the race yet. He is the mot serious threat to the President I the election in my eyes, but he is also outside of Herman Cain the least likely to get the Republican nomination. Despite being a fiscal conservative, on other things he will not fit the conservative bill. Huntsman believes in things like the environment and civil unions. So unless you believe the environment is ours to use without consequence and that gay people are an evil that should be exterminated, quarantined or tortured until they say they won’t be gay no more; you are not going to get very far towards winning this nomination.

So there we have it the Republican race so far. There will be drop outs and add ins as we move forward, but one thing will remain crystal clear. I cannot support the candidacy of any of them. I just can’t do it.

A funny thing happened on my way to getting to my column here this month, President Obama released his full form birth certificate. I was all ready to go with discussing the response to the Ryan budget when House members went back to their districts, and then this happened. Mind you I will get to that as well this week, but I thought my thoughts on this “revelation” deserved the top billing this time around.

Now the release of the long form version won’t change the minds of those almost half of Republicans that don’t believe that Obama was born in this country or likely the attitudes of the other almost quarter that pander to their cause with the I don’t know or we’ll take him at his word game. Mainly because the birth certificate that was already available was a legal document and they didn’t believe that one either.

No, they are likely to continue to believe that there was some conspiracy back then between the newly entered state of Hawaii, the hospital and the newspapers with this baby born in the early 60’s, to a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya. You knew obviously he was going to be President one day.

Or on the other hand the panderers like Speaker John of Orange will likely take similar suits to the ones they are already doing now. That is that the whole this is and always was the fault of President Obama. It is the usual mantra for the Republicans afterall. Really Crying Man? It’s the President’s fault that half your party are insane idiots. Yeah let’s see you continue to roll with that one.

Then there is what I feel the most disgusting response that the birther crowd has had with moving on to their next delegitimizing of the President conspiracy theory. How could a black man possibly be smart enough to go to Columbia and Harvard? How can he have written those books without help? Show us the transcripts? Prove you didn’t have a ghost writer for your novels Mr. Obama it that really is who you are? At least with this new conspiracy theory the birthers true reason existence is clearly defined, they just can’t stand that a black man was elected President and are moronic racists with nothing more than agenda of trying to find a way to delegitimize his election in their minds. However I would love for more than nothing for the Republicans in office to start panderering to the crowd on this issue as well as it is going to hurt them so much more.

It is pretty funny though that the ring leader or carnival barker have you of the birther nation, The Donald would question these things about the President. Afterall he did not write the books he has “written” in the past himself, and has also paid money to allow or people to be admitted to Ivy League schools that did not deserve to be there.

Though I’d love to see them continue on this course for my own entertainment and their demise, I find it sad and hurtful for our society. I am not taking a stance here for or against affirmative action, but that is not the exact point of the birther’s new “argument” here. It is that a non-white person could not ever have the qualification or intelligence to attend these schools over a white person so something must be fishy here. So now the President must prove with his transcripts from high school on to prove otherwise. Have we really gone so far back as a society that we need some sort of preface to prove the literacy and intelligence of a black man to a white audience to believe his worth? Then again they won’t believe anything you say Mr. President, so I wouldn’t grace this issue with any dignity and let the dig their own grave.

Bad Nuts of the Month:

HOUSE REPUBLICANS AND THE RYAN BUDGET

It has been quite amusing to see the House Republicans at their town halls after passing the Ryan, Path to Poverty budget try to defend it and their vote to their constituents. There has been some heated arguing, screaming and sometimes swearing, but I have not heard of threats of bodily harm or asking who is going to kill the President because of this at these town hall reactions. Nor is the outrage been entirely from the left or being bussed into the meetings with prewritten scripts to follow. Although I think the Republicans as whole will likely take Florida Rep. Allen West’s lead and only answer prescreened questions asked by a staffer and not a constituent and any dissent to his thoughts will be met with arrest. He obviously takes New York Rep. Mike Grimm’s view of representative democracy that your constituents you serve are only those who voted for you, well that and those like the Koch Brothers who line your pockets and campaign coffers. I am happy though that Harry Reid has decided to bring a vote on this budget to the Senate to allow for the Senate Republicans to join their House party members in defending this budget or pave their way to be teabagged in the primaries next time around.

EXXON MOBIL

Prior to announcing their 69% profit increase on Thursday, Exxon tied to play themselves as the victim in all of this. It’s not their fault they made a huge earnings increase for the fifth quarter in a row; it is the local station owners fault. Now I have worked plenty in gas stations while I was in college and it is not ever going to be their fault. As there are laws restraining just that and I know that gas stations make mere pennies of profit on each gallon and their profit comes from mark up on items in the store.

MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE

For some reason the overwhelmingly Democratic House in Massachusetts has decided that Scott Walker is a role model and passed their own bill stripping collective bargaining rights on healthcare for state workers. Granted they have Romneycare there and the Senate isn’t likely to take action on it there and the Governor has already said he will never sign such a bill if it did. So moot point aside it still deserves note for the stupidity of Massachusetts state Democrats to think it was a worthwhile issue.

So Speaker Boehner, where are the jobs at? Before the elections in November this seemed to be Rep. John Boehner’s mantra, so it is only fitting to turn it back on him ow that they have been on the job a while now a show no signs of actually wanting to create any jobs. Instead the Republicans have led a crusade to end abortion, repeal the healthcare reform of last year, end social security and medicare, generally anything under the sun that is not tied to their corporate masters.

It seems really that Boehner and Republicans are most concerned about doing anything to make it seem that Obama and Democrats are failing, that actually doing anything to heal the economy and the country. Yesterday it seems that Boehner expressed this mindset perfectly. “If we stick together and keep the pressure on the Democrats, we’re going to win this fight,” he said to a group of assembled Republicans. “We’re gonna kick their ass.”

Really Speaker Fake Baker? Ass kicking? How does that actually do anything to improve the country? It doesn’t. I fact the most recent standstill to the countdown to shutdown has exposed that the overall effect of Republican sought cuts to spending will eliminate 700,000 jobs. To use their tired at old line when they refer to tax cuts, is this the time we really need to cut 700,000 when we need to be creating them?

Then again as I said jobs are not the focus as clearly stated earlier this week by Illinois Congresswoman Judy Biggert who she said in front to Congress that Democrats just needed to stop talking about jobs. Well Rep. Biggert that was the main task that people supposedly had in sending Republicans to control Congress this time around, and like every time before you have failed.

BAD NUT OF THE MONTH

I haven’t done these in a long time so I thought I’d bring it back. The Bad Nut of the Month award goes to Wisconsin State Senator Randy Hooper. Hooper one of the Republicans eligible for and soon to be facing a recall vote showed how much of a moral authority on things Republicans truly are. In a time of budget cuts in the state Hooper helped get a cushy job with a raise for his mistress. Despite not having any better qualifications than the previous person to have the job and not formally applying for the position, Valerie Cass was given the job with $11,000 more than the person who had the job before. Just bad on different fronts. For one this happenedd during the time that the state was supposedly broke and they needed to cut the budget, cut jobs and bust unions. And on the other for a person and a party i general that touts themselves as the absolute moral authority on everything, it seems pretty immoral to me to cheat on and leave your wife for a woman almost half your age. However I guess if you are the Senator’s mistress jobs are created for you and not cut, however to go to a Republican talking point. This is a real threat to marriage.