Maybe he can get some land mines and alligators for it. The crowd he was speaking to sure weren’t laughing, they were like “fuck yeah! 10000 volts!”.
2.
dmsilev
Mr. Cain’s attempt to pass off incendiary comments as nothing but a joke may take more effort, however. In making the initial remarks about an electrified fence killing illegal immigrants, Mr. Cain was detailed and repetitive. He did not introduce his thoughts as anything but serious commentary, beginning with the words, “We have a crisis of illegal immigration.”
__
And the crowds responded with cheers, not laughs.
Not to mention, Ladies and Gentlemen, your GOP base.
Also, did he propose a moat with alligators in it? That, if memory serves, was what Obama (jokingly, really) said was what the GOP would ask for. Soon, reality will yet again lap humor.
3.
YellowJournalism
Dickhead.
4.
Cacti
Mr. Cain also dismissed a Wall Street Journal editorial critique that “a 9% rate when combined with state and local levies would mean a tax on goods of 17% or more in many places.”
“Don’t combine it with state taxes,” he said. “This doesn’t address state taxes. If you combine it together, yes, you would get that number. This is a replacement structure. These are replacement taxes, they’re not on top of anything.”
You shouldn’t count Herman’s proposed 9% consumption tax on top of your state sales tax, because…shut up! That’s why.
5.
Irving
No, sir, you are running for the highest office in the land. You don’t have the freedom to make policy statements and use the eleven-year-old bully boy defense. “Geez, I was just joking. Can’t you take a joke?” Grow up.
6.
arguingwithsignposts
“This doesn’t address state taxes. If you combine it together, yes, you would get that number. This is a replacement structure. These are replacement taxes, they’re not on top of anything.”
Even McArdle isn’t that bone stupid about math. I do think her calculator does subtraction.
Careful. I think she regards statements like that as a challenge.
11.
JPL
Cain is not a stupid man but I don’t think he takes time analyzing the bullshit coming from his mouth. The kill em phrase is popular with his supporters though and might win him a gig on fox tv.
At least he doesn’t have to spout palling around with terrorists though, because he is a terrorist.
Why not just use a noose Mr. Cain?
Willie Brown writes in the SF Chronicle today that he sees a Romney/Cain ticket and marvels at the idea that a black man may be tasked with delivering the south to the Repulicans via his conservative bona fides.
I do love the idea of Cain as the nominee at the head of the ticket, though, if only for the exploding heads and the Alan Keyes/Michael Steele-ness of it all.
13.
Michael Finn
John Winger: My philosophy: a hundred-dollar shine on a three-dollar pair of shoes.
Meanwhile, I hope he stays in front for as long as possible. I doubt he’ll get the nom. but it would be sweet if he did.
Just wondering how many GOP candidates we have said this about?
15.
jonas
He realized it was unfeasible when someone pointed out that the system couldn’t run on electricity generated by the tears of children whose illegal parents were being deported.
16.
Mark S.
If I were a Republican, I would be volunteering for Romney right now, even if I couldn’t stand him.
And Jesus, this guy’s like Sarah Palin. He claims not to know what neoconservative foreign policy is, and laid this egg as well:
With the current structure, you have state taxes, right? So with this new structure, you’re still going to have state taxes. That is muddying the water.
It is not fair to a winger candidate like Cain to have all those non-winger people out there asking questions, following up…and voting, of course. What a damned inconvenience that he can’t just run for president of the Infantile Medieval States of America.
18.
Ash Can
I’m assuming his backpedalling was just a matter of him playing to the audience — reasonable-sounding stuff for the nationally-televised talking heads, red meat for the base. Or, maybe someone gave him a tap on the shoulder (although I’m not sure who’d do that; there’s no apparent reason for the GOP muckety-mucks to start caring about this sort of thing now). Either way, the guy’s a tool.
You shouldn’t count Herman’s proposed 9% consumption tax on top of your state sales tax, because…shut up! That’s why.
No, no. It’s because the new federal tax is going to replace the state taxes. The states will just have to tighten their belts and live within their reduced means.
“Area man realizes it’s impossible to satirize GOP, quits comedy news outlet”
+1
21.
Cain
That fool. Illegal labor is all that’s stands between us and high food prices. Once you succeed in doing that, either corps will find a way to just gun it through the normal check points or something else.
Once you have high food prices, that 9/9/9 plan is going to sink people to levels of poverty unheard of. I can imagine the children starving while their parents try to do the work that illegal immigrants have been doing all this time. Of course those guys are going to form a union, (which is why illegal immigrants are so attractive I suspect)
It’ll be quite a show but the end result is going to be crushing taxes and high food prices. I see revolution.
22.
Hujter Gathers
Also, did he propose a moat with alligators in it? That, if memory serves, was what Obama (jokingly, really) said was what the GOP would ask for. Soon, reality will yet again lap humor.
I’m fairly certain that Obama stole that from Stephen Colbert.
23.
vtr
I believe Cain is joking. I also believe Cain is a joke.
No, no. It’s because the new federal tax is going to replace the state taxes. The states will just have to tighten their belts and live within their reduced means.
Probably won’t fly with “states right” South. Plus there will be a black man again on the throne.
Frankly, if Cain is on the ballet, choosing between two black men will blow their collective minds. They’ll probably just stay home.
25.
Mr Stagger Lee
Imagine a white politician, calling for an electrified fence around the inner cities, and calling for US Troops to use real bullets on inner city residents. As a matter of fact White GOP politicians and party leaders have been burned for much less. And for Cain to say this racially charged stuff in the South, where at least 75 years earlier they were lynching African Americans for all kinds of reasons, this man is a piece of work.
26.
Warren Terra
And is his plan to tax working people at a flat rate of 27% also just a joke? Note that this would mean the lower middle tax would pay twice as much as they currently pay in federal income tax. And the working poor would see their income tax bill soar from 0% to 27%; if they’re currently eligible for the EITC, their total federal tax bill may well triple, or even more.
That link up there is to Krugman, explaining how Cain is pulling a fast one, with a plan that’s even more regressive than it at first appears. Because under Cain’s plan wages would no longer be a deductible corporate business expense (explained further here, it would cost 9% more to employ each worker. That 9% will almost certainly be paid by the worker – who is also paying 9% on every penny of their income and paying 9% on every penny they spend, which for those not very fortunate is more or less every penny.
27.
Villago Delenda Est
The crowd in Tennessee CHEERED this suggestion.
Cain felt in necessary to walk the BS back for the vile hack Dancin’ Dave.
That’s how totally out there such a suggestion is…if you have to walk it back for one of the court lickspittles.
In a disturbing way, this made me gallows laugh a little inside.
Herman Cain said that part of his immigration policy would be to build an electrified fence on the country’s border with Mexico that could kill people trying to enter the country illegally.
But by Sunday morning, in a dramatic change of tone, Mr. Cain, a former restaurant executive, said he was only kidding.
Something about a black GOP frontrunner former restaurant executive opining on building killer border fences, sort of sums up the unloyal and thoroughly surreal opposition. Not to mention bloodthirsty.
30.
Amir Khalid
Just where did Herman Cain leave his brains when he decided to run for president? Or is he feeling the need to begin the Alvin Greene-style tanking of his too-successful pretend campaign?
It’ll be quite a show but the end result is going to be crushing taxes and high food prices. I see revolution.
Good. The other Cain’s head will look much better in a wicker basket.
(That’s a joke. Please don’t cheer fanatically like the Rethug mob in Tennessee.)
32.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Cacti: David Brooks on Friday admitted that Cain’s plan meant taxes 32 percent higher for “middle income” earners. And that he, Brooks, was in favor of this, though he thought the middle income people might not be once they actually knew this.
Frankly, if Cain is on the ballet, choosing between two black men will blow their collective minds. They’ll probably just stay home.
I’ve watched this assessment of the conservative white male voter on this thread and I have to disagree with you and the many others who share that view.
Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when these same 55-65 year old CWMs were in HS and college it was a fairly wide spread comment in the sports arenas of life, which is where the CWMs live, that: ” Our n*gger is better than their n*gger.”
They accept the inevitable that blacks are going to be in the game so you might as well have one, or two, who shoot a 3 pointer, hit .350, or can run like the wind. If they assess that cain fits any of that, they’ll vote in droves. Remember, it’s the TEAM that counts. Team Republican, that is.
36.
JPL
Here’s my psycho babble.. Cain went to school, studied hard and chose to ignore what was happening at the time around him. That was a decision that aided him and he should be proud of it rather than lying that he was just a child when others marched. Now that he made it to the big time he needs to spout how the poor need to just go to work every day and they also, too will be able to achieve the american dream. He had help whether through affirmative action or loans but just like Paul Ryan who lived on Soc.Sec subsidies they feel better saying I did it on my own. It makes them feel better..like they are bigger men with bigger parts or something.
Ok..no psych degree and I didn’t stay in a holiday inn…but that’s my babble.
37.
Kathleen
@Cat: And people freaked out when the Onion ran the “article” about Congress holding school children hostage. I didn’t see it as a stretch at all myself.
38.
lamh34
@xian: I like Willie Brown, but Herman Cain may carry the “white” South, but make no mistake, he ain’t carrying Black folk in the South against Barack Hussein Obama. But I guess GOP may be banking on the fact that GOP will be glad to vote for “their kind of Black guy”, not that “half-breed” currently in the White House, ya know, one of those non-uppity black folk who knows their place.
Ughh, I really hate the cover that Cain is allowing the GOP to have by using his visage to say some of the most bigotted and racist things that if a white GOP pol had said, we’d be accusing him of being in the KKK.
Personally, I done laughing at Cain, and I’ve decided to take him seriously, cause even though I am NOT a conservative/gop African American, Cain is gonna become the image that other Black GOP/Conserv are compared to. Other than he “business acumen”, I sure wouldn’t want him to be represtative of me…but whatever.
I completely agree. Even the racists, given the choice between Cain or Obama will turn out for Cain in droves. He’s one of theirs and he’s shown that he’s a reliable black man not one of the scary liberal types. He doesn’t cross St. Rush and that’s critical.
BTW, I get that it’s funner to laugh & ridicule Mr Cain (believe me I think he deserves it), but this is who I would like my cousins, nephews, and any other future lil babies I have to at least try to attain to, if ya haven’t seen POTUS MLK speech, you should.
I haven’t read all the messages yet, but a Romney/Cain (or vice versa) ticket would be amusing for various reasons, including the fact that until 20 years ago approximately, people of African descent were considered worthy of only the terrestrial level of heaven, the bottom of the three levels of heaven. “Gentiles” (non-Mormons) of other ethnicities could make it as far as the celestial level of heaven, the second level (I believe that’s still true). Only Mormons could make the top level, the telestial level. But no Africans need apply, even if they were the most faithful of Mormons. Needless to say, the LDS didn’t have a lot of members of African descent.
The Google of the Day is highly appropriate in the context. I had to google the name of Caligula’s horse, but his horse would probably make a better statesman than most of the current crop of Republicans.
44.
burnspbesq
The ultimate demolition of 9-9-9, courtesy of the exceedingly smart Ed Kleinbard.
Something about a black GOP frontrunner former restaurant executive opining on building killer border fences, sort of sums up the unloyal and thoroughly surreal opposition. Not to mention bloodthirsty.
He was only repeating what has been making the Wingtard Chain Email Loop® for the past two years, at least. My sister is one and lives in SoNM. She sent me a few back then. It gets better. Former military should be given the job,(he’s close there} with orders to shoot to kill.
I emailed back to her that I wondered if there was a bounty being offered and if so, shouldn’t pregnant females bring in top dollar? She didn’t reply.
46.
Marty
You gotta admit. His doubletalk on the tax plan in that clip was masterful. Like trying to catch a greased pig.
47.
SiubhanDuinne
Y’all GOTS to have a look at http://www.moonshinepatriot.blogspot.com and see what they did with the Cain MTP interview on Bobblespeak Translations. I’d give you a taste, but it’s all just so hard to extract the best bits.
1. Herman Cain’s candidacy is a some elaborate form of performance art.
2. He’s paid by Koch brothers to play dumb to make bigots feel good about their own bigotry. He’s a mathematician who was a business executive but he can’t count and everything that comes out of his mouth as dumber than the crap that Sarah Palin used to say.
CAIN: I’m not sure what you mean by neoconservative. I am a conservative, yes. Neoconservative — labels sometimes will put you in a box. I’m very conservative. GREGORY: But you’re familiar with the neoconservative movement? CAIN: I’m not familiar with the neoconservative movement. I’m familiar with the conservative movement.
Yes, reading the first response one could think maybe he’s just refusing to be labeled. However the second response couldn’t be more clear. He doesn’t know what neoconservative means.
Steve Kornacki at that link tries to make the case that he’s just resisting being labeled, demonstrated by how Cain “doesn’t miss a beat” in answering (he provides a video).
What utter nonsense. I have to say I’m less than impressed with Kornacki since he started there, to say the least. He just seems to make the most ridiculous assertions, often in service of utterly unsupportable “centrist” positions.
Cain seems barely more informed than Sarah Palin, if you ask me. Less creepy and with fewer blatant problems with grammar and logic, but that’s not saying much.
I had to google the name of Caligula’s horse, but his horse would probably make a better statesman than most of the current crop of Republicans.
Yeah, the thing about Senator Incitatus: It’s not that Caligula was so nutty he made his horse a “legislator”, it’s that Caligula wanted to demonstrate — to his consuls and the rest of the population — that he could force them to accept his horse as their equal. So, in that sense, people like Cain (or the exemplar, Palin) are Incitatus Candidates, showy markers of the contempt in which the Money Party holds its paid legislators and the rubes who waste their votes repeatedly electing those who hurt them.
And I’ve been saying since May that, if Romney is the more-or-less foreordained GOP candidate, I will take genuine pleasure in watching him forced to embrace a man who represents everything Willard is not. Apart from his skin color — and I’m sure Mitt will tell you he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body — Cain actually worked his way up from poverty to riches (only a measly five or six million as opposed to Romney’s quarter-billion dollars, of course). And, worst of all, normal people actually like Cain, respond to his “jokes” with laughter & applause, while Willard’s little quips about “I’m unemployed, too, you know” just make normal people stare & edge away.
56.
Jenny
I’m surprised he’s backing off, an electrical fence is really popular the teatards who will decided the nomination.
57.
Bill E Pilgrim
@SiubhanDuinne: You may know this but the “they” in question is Culture of Truth who posts here often.
Thanks for reminding me of the Bobblespeak thing, I hadn’t read that in a long time.
58.
ChrisB
Did you see how easily Dancin’ Dave let Cain get away with calling his electrified fence line a joke? Gregory sanctioned that explanation saying that Cain got a good laugh after that remark. Well that’s not what happened. Cain didn’t get laughs; he got rousing cheers. But Gregory didn’t point that out or follow up with a question about the audience response. He ran away from his own question faster than Cain did. Not that I’m at all surprised.
What a douche.
59.
FlipYrWhig
A few months back Cain said his administration would only sign 3-page bills, then said he was only joking about that. Now this. Seems like pretty much everything he says… turns out to be a joke.
60.
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
Normal people like Cain? Really? He might be a likable guy in person. But Herman Cain the presidential candidate is a bigot and a blowhard, he’s willfully and pridefully ignorant, he panders to low-information voters, and he talks cock every single time. Even when you’ve just confronted him with the cock he talked last time, and he’s now trying to walk it back.
61.
FlipYrWhig
@ChrisB: Gregory is horrifyingly bad at his supposed job. A John King-David Gregory show would be like the Flypaper Theory of half-assed punditry. Put all the worst baddies in one place, then smash it to smithereens.
62.
JPL
@ChrisB: The comments on the NYTimes were not kind.. link
They were accurate though. Cain is appealing to those who think most of color are inferior to them. He must be so proud of himself.
63.
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
He’s running a joke candidacy, that’s obvious. We’re all just trying to figure out the punchline here.
@Cain:
Unfortunately, your nym is the same as Herman’s last name. Are you tempted to change it, at least temporarily? I would certainly sympathize with you, if so.
64.
maya
There’s only one puzzle that remains about Gregory and his typical genuflectinging-man performance in the presence of any republican: Does he swallow?
He’s running a joke candidacy, that’s obvious. We’re all just trying to figure out the punchline here.
The Aristocrats!
66.
SiubhanDuinne
On the NPR top-of-the-hour newscast, Peter Overby identified him as “Georgia Congressman Herman Cain.” I know everyone makes innocent mistakes (which I’m sure this was) and I know in the great scheme of things it’s pretty meaningless, but the first thing that came to mind was, well, if we can’t trust a respected NPR reporter to get such a simple fact right, what else can’t we trust them on?
I hope they find an opportunity to air a correction, but I’m not holding my breath.
67.
JPL
Under the strongest microscope yet, MTP pressed Cain on his 999 plan. This is according to Sunday night news…hahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
Imagining some grand harmonic convergence of dumbfuckery that actually got Cain elected, what I see is Cain’s 999 plan going precisely nowhere, and congress refusing to even take it up. Congress has its monumental morons (Goehmert and Foxx come to mind) but collectively they aren’t close to Cain’s scale of dumb.
71.
JPL
@The Other Chuck: Yeah..but how about that Commander in Chief title..that’s a tad scary.
@lamh34 39: You got that right. I will go ahead and confidently predict that large numbers of black Americans will see in Cain (as we do) the epitome of a man, accomplished though he may be, all too willing to play the simpering, shuffling, enabling buffoon in order to please those he serves. The very mention of his name disgusts me, and I am NOT alone.
@maya: Even if the GOP achieves its dream and only CWMs can vote, that “Our n!gger” thing only goes so far.
I don’t care how crazy about a particular black guy a racist might be. He wouldn’t want the guy marrying his daughter and it’s a safe bet he wouldn’t want the guy running the country.
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: That is why he’s make the perfect VP candidate on the ticket. He gives both the conservative base, and the racists within it, cover. A VP can always resign, or be persuaded to, under the right or wrong circumstances. He is the repo perfect number two guy. And he isn’t going to be marrying anyone’s daughter.
As for those black citizens who would never vote for him in the first palce, I think the repos have that one covered with pending and installed voter suppression tactics. No?
He and his handlers aren’t even trying to attract the black or latino vote, just the CWMs, their duty bound wives, + enough Koch cash to mitigate and confuse the rest. Cain is dangerous, I do believe, especially when the media, like Gregory did, give him a pass.
Did Gregory ever ask Cain what then was his actual immigration plan is if the electric fence was a joke? Don’t think so. This guy knows how to bob and weave and with a little help from the corporate media dying to get their hands on tons of 2012 ad $$$, he’ll get farther than you think.
81.
Nellie in NZ
Can you put a warning that it is a NYTimes link in there? Some of us are hoarding our few clicks per month. Thanks.
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Some of them may find their hatred of Obama is stronger than their general hatred of black people. Others will feel their brains melting and write in Ron Paul.
I’ve watched this assessment of the conservative white male voter on this thread and I have to disagree with you and the many others who share that view.
I think you have a valid point there. Sure, if htey believe it’s they pet black guy that they can control then I suppose they might get out there and vote.
I will switch tactics and say he doesn’t have the ability to do a general election campaign I think. Romney can pull it off better than he can.
The problem with drawing attention to the cruel and crazy remarks of Republican candidates is that a very large number of Americans, many not Republicans, are cruel and crazy themselves.
No need to do that. Each time you see the story with the “please subscribe to NYT” stuff obscuring it, just go to the navigation bar where the URL for the page is. Somewhere in the URL is a question mark. Delete that and everything after it in the URL, then reload the page. The obscuring stuff disappears, and you can then read the story. If you go to subsequent pages in the story, the stuff will not reappear.
Unfortunately, your nym is the same as Herman’s last name. Are you tempted to change it, at least temporarily? I would certainly sympathize with you, if so.
I survived all of 2008 election campaign with McCain as the front runner and of course he continues to make mention here. It does make searching for anything I say hard. So one could say that I have good cover for any remarks I make due to how hard it is to search for anything I’ve said!
Of course it does seems that sometimes people are abusing me. hehe.
Imagining some grand harmonic convergence of dumbfuckery that actually got Cain elected, what I see is Cain’s 999 plan going precisely nowhere, and congress refusing to even take it up. Congress has its monumental morons (Goehmert and Foxx come to mind) but collectively they aren’t close to Cain’s scale of dumb.
Don’t worry we have plenty of Democratic enablers that will help bridge the gap.
If congress is dead locked long enough I suspect we will still have revolution. Eventually will come to realize that party doesn’t matter either it is all or nothing. The only people winning here are the media who get their horse race stuff and get more clicks for ads.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the whole deck of cards will fall as soon as you bankrupt the media. Make 24 hour news fail and you’ve got it. Let the 25% fund all three major 24 hour channels and we’ll see how much those media men lose their salaries then we can get some truth out there.
89.
maya
@Cain: That’s why Cain will make the perfect VP in their team. Romney campaigns and Cain gets to be the lovable Uncle Herm selling down-homey witticisms, anecdotal stories, and motivational snake oil, with more than an occasional flub. In other words, he’ll be their Joe Biden.
90.
Culture of Truth
SiubhanDuinne,
Yes, that’s me! Thanks for the link. Truly this was an amazing interview.
At the end he says liberals are purposefully trying to destroy America. Also, why are people so quick to reject the other side?
I have found that the Times “pay wall” is ridiculously easy to pierce. If you click on an article and get the “We hope you’ve enjoyed your 20 free articles” pop-up, just go to your browser’s address field, go to the end and erase everything after “.html”. Typically it is a character string of the form “?gwh=[some long number]”, with or without some other shmutz attached. Then press the Enter key to reload the (now unblocked) page.
I just went to their site and deliberately loaded 23 stories to check this again. It works!
I see you got in ahead of me with the solution. Kudos, sir.
97.
4jkb4ia
Not only did John pick up on that, he didn’t think it was funny at all, or shake his head at Cain’s clear and present running for talk show host. I predicted this. I scare myself.
(Although “Bachmann Takes It To Perry Day” in the NYT version of that story probably really was funny.)
98.
4jkb4ia
Funny as in completely absurd, not that immigrants being killed by an electric fence is funny.
Cain’s never heard of the neoconservative movement!?
(The idea was basically: “You‘re laughing. John is certainly not laughing. There was a time when it was unthinkable for him to be anything other than a Republican–he was proud to be one–and these loons took that away.”)
99.
4jkb4ia
Funny as in absurd, not that immigrants being killed by an electric fence is funny.
Cain’s never heard of the neoconservative movement!?
Please FYWP, don’t eat this. Thank you.
100.
DanielX
@James E. Powell: All too true, unfortunately – harking back to that magic figure of 27%. The meaner and crazier the candidate is, the better they like it. Cain knows his audience and knows what they want, which is not just red meat but blood by the five gallon bucket full. If he proposed public executions by hanging, drawing and quartering they’d be throwing money at the lectern.
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S. cerevisiae
Maybe he can get some land mines and alligators for it. The crowd he was speaking to sure weren’t laughing, they were like “fuck yeah! 10000 volts!”.
dmsilev
Not to mention, Ladies and Gentlemen, your GOP base.
Also, did he propose a moat with alligators in it? That, if memory serves, was what Obama (jokingly, really) said was what the GOP would ask for. Soon, reality will yet again lap humor.
YellowJournalism
Dickhead.
Cacti
Mr. Cain also dismissed a Wall Street Journal editorial critique that “a 9% rate when combined with state and local levies would mean a tax on goods of 17% or more in many places.”
You shouldn’t count Herman’s proposed 9% consumption tax on top of your state sales tax, because…shut up! That’s why.
Irving
No, sir, you are running for the highest office in the land. You don’t have the freedom to make policy statements and use the eleven-year-old bully boy defense. “Geez, I was just joking. Can’t you take a joke?” Grow up.
arguingwithsignposts
Even McArdle isn’t that bone stupid about math. I do think her calculator does subtraction.
Cat Lady
The Onion writers wept.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Whatever. Cain’s ultimate fate is to become a single footnote in an uninteresting Poli. Sci. thesis.
Meanwhile, I hope he stays in front for as long as possible. I doubt he’ll get the nom. but it would be sweet if he did.
arguingwithsignposts
@Cat Lady: “Area man realizes it’s impossible to satirize GOP, quits comedy news outlet”
dmsilev
@arguingwithsignposts:
Careful. I think she regards statements like that as a challenge.
JPL
Cain is not a stupid man but I don’t think he takes time analyzing the bullshit coming from his mouth. The kill em phrase is popular with his supporters though and might win him a gig on fox tv.
At least he doesn’t have to spout palling around with terrorists though, because he is a terrorist.
Why not just use a noose Mr. Cain?
xian
Willie Brown writes in the SF Chronicle today that he sees a Romney/Cain ticket and marvels at the idea that a black man may be tasked with delivering the south to the Repulicans via his conservative bona fides.
I do love the idea of Cain as the nominee at the head of the ticket, though, if only for the exploding heads and the Alan Keyes/Michael Steele-ness of it all.
Michael Finn
John Winger: My philosophy: a hundred-dollar shine on a three-dollar pair of shoes.
kansi
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Just wondering how many GOP candidates we have said this about?
jonas
He realized it was unfeasible when someone pointed out that the system couldn’t run on electricity generated by the tears of children whose illegal parents were being deported.
Mark S.
If I were a Republican, I would be volunteering for Romney right now, even if I couldn’t stand him.
And Jesus, this guy’s like Sarah Palin. He claims not to know what neoconservative foreign policy is, and laid this egg as well:
Huh?
beans_buckingham
It is not fair to a winger candidate like Cain to have all those non-winger people out there asking questions, following up…and voting, of course. What a damned inconvenience that he can’t just run for president of the Infantile Medieval States of America.
Ash Can
I’m assuming his backpedalling was just a matter of him playing to the audience — reasonable-sounding stuff for the nationally-televised talking heads, red meat for the base. Or, maybe someone gave him a tap on the shoulder (although I’m not sure who’d do that; there’s no apparent reason for the GOP muckety-mucks to start caring about this sort of thing now). Either way, the guy’s a tool.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
No, no. It’s because the new federal tax is going to replace the state taxes. The states will just have to tighten their belts and live within their reduced means.
Cat
@arguingwithsignposts:
+1
Cain
That fool. Illegal labor is all that’s stands between us and high food prices. Once you succeed in doing that, either corps will find a way to just gun it through the normal check points or something else.
Once you have high food prices, that 9/9/9 plan is going to sink people to levels of poverty unheard of. I can imagine the children starving while their parents try to do the work that illegal immigrants have been doing all this time. Of course those guys are going to form a union, (which is why illegal immigrants are so attractive I suspect)
It’ll be quite a show but the end result is going to be crushing taxes and high food prices. I see revolution.
Hujter Gathers
I’m fairly certain that Obama stole that from Stephen Colbert.
vtr
I believe Cain is joking. I also believe Cain is a joke.
Cain
@Roger Moore:
Probably won’t fly with “states right” South. Plus there will be a black man again on the throne.
Frankly, if Cain is on the ballet, choosing between two black men will blow their collective minds. They’ll probably just stay home.
Mr Stagger Lee
Imagine a white politician, calling for an electrified fence around the inner cities, and calling for US Troops to use real bullets on inner city residents. As a matter of fact White GOP politicians and party leaders have been burned for much less. And for Cain to say this racially charged stuff in the South, where at least 75 years earlier they were lynching African Americans for all kinds of reasons, this man is a piece of work.
Warren Terra
And is his plan to tax working people at a flat rate of 27% also just a joke? Note that this would mean the lower middle tax would pay twice as much as they currently pay in federal income tax. And the working poor would see their income tax bill soar from 0% to 27%; if they’re currently eligible for the EITC, their total federal tax bill may well triple, or even more.
That link up there is to Krugman, explaining how Cain is pulling a fast one, with a plan that’s even more regressive than it at first appears. Because under Cain’s plan wages would no longer be a deductible corporate business expense (explained further here, it would cost 9% more to employ each worker. That 9% will almost certainly be paid by the worker – who is also paying 9% on every penny of their income and paying 9% on every penny they spend, which for those not very fortunate is more or less every penny.
Villago Delenda Est
The crowd in Tennessee CHEERED this suggestion.
Cain felt in necessary to walk the BS back for the vile hack Dancin’ Dave.
That’s how totally out there such a suggestion is…if you have to walk it back for one of the court lickspittles.
Ooparts
@Mark S.:
Ha-ha!
Gregory: Would you describe yourself as a neo-conservative?
Cain: In what respect, Davey?
General Stuck
In a disturbing way, this made me gallows laugh a little inside.
Something about a black GOP frontrunner former restaurant executive opining on building killer border fences, sort of sums up the unloyal and thoroughly surreal opposition. Not to mention bloodthirsty.
Amir Khalid
Just where did Herman Cain leave his brains when he decided to run for president? Or is he feeling the need to begin the Alvin Greene-style tanking of his too-successful pretend campaign?
Villago Delenda Est
@Cain:
Good. The other Cain’s head will look much better in a wicker basket.
(That’s a joke. Please don’t cheer fanatically like the Rethug mob in Tennessee.)
Bill E Pilgrim
@Cacti: David Brooks on Friday admitted that Cain’s plan meant taxes 32 percent higher for “middle income” earners. And that he, Brooks, was in favor of this, though he thought the middle income people might not be once they actually knew this.
By the way don’t look now but the eagle soared.
Villago Delenda Est
@S. cerevisiae:
Sharks.
With frickin’ laser beams on their heads.
That’s the ticket!
Cain
I’ve decided that I’m going to hurt myself some more and listen to “eagles soar” by Ashcroft while drinking scotch and posting to BJ.
maya
@Cain:
I’ve watched this assessment of the conservative white male voter on this thread and I have to disagree with you and the many others who share that view.
Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when these same 55-65 year old CWMs were in HS and college it was a fairly wide spread comment in the sports arenas of life, which is where the CWMs live, that: ” Our n*gger is better than their n*gger.”
They accept the inevitable that blacks are going to be in the game so you might as well have one, or two, who shoot a 3 pointer, hit .350, or can run like the wind. If they assess that cain fits any of that, they’ll vote in droves. Remember, it’s the TEAM that counts. Team Republican, that is.
JPL
Here’s my psycho babble.. Cain went to school, studied hard and chose to ignore what was happening at the time around him. That was a decision that aided him and he should be proud of it rather than lying that he was just a child when others marched. Now that he made it to the big time he needs to spout how the poor need to just go to work every day and they also, too will be able to achieve the american dream. He had help whether through affirmative action or loans but just like Paul Ryan who lived on Soc.Sec subsidies they feel better saying I did it on my own. It makes them feel better..like they are bigger men with bigger parts or something.
Ok..no psych degree and I didn’t stay in a holiday inn…but that’s my babble.
Kathleen
@Cat: And people freaked out when the Onion ran the “article” about Congress holding school children hostage. I didn’t see it as a stretch at all myself.
lamh34
@xian: I like Willie Brown, but Herman Cain may carry the “white” South, but make no mistake, he ain’t carrying Black folk in the South against Barack Hussein Obama. But I guess GOP may be banking on the fact that GOP will be glad to vote for “their kind of Black guy”, not that “half-breed” currently in the White House, ya know, one of those non-uppity black folk who knows their place.
Ughh, I really hate the cover that Cain is allowing the GOP to have by using his visage to say some of the most bigotted and racist things that if a white GOP pol had said, we’d be accusing him of being in the KKK.
Personally, I done laughing at Cain, and I’ve decided to take him seriously, cause even though I am NOT a conservative/gop African American, Cain is gonna become the image that other Black GOP/Conserv are compared to. Other than he “business acumen”, I sure wouldn’t want him to be represtative of me…but whatever.
Svensker
@maya:
I completely agree. Even the racists, given the choice between Cain or Obama will turn out for Cain in droves. He’s one of theirs and he’s shown that he’s a reliable black man not one of the scary liberal types. He doesn’t cross St. Rush and that’s critical.
cathyx
So did the Steelers win or what?
Kathleen
@Villago Delenda Est: Vile Hack Dancin’ Dave! Love that!!!
lamh34
BTW, I get that it’s funner to laugh & ridicule Mr Cain (believe me I think he deserves it), but this is who I would like my cousins, nephews, and any other future lil babies I have to at least try to attain to, if ya haven’t seen POTUS MLK speech, you should.
President Barack Obama – MLK Memorial Dedication Speech
Wolfdaughter
@xian:
I haven’t read all the messages yet, but a Romney/Cain (or vice versa) ticket would be amusing for various reasons, including the fact that until 20 years ago approximately, people of African descent were considered worthy of only the terrestrial level of heaven, the bottom of the three levels of heaven. “Gentiles” (non-Mormons) of other ethnicities could make it as far as the celestial level of heaven, the second level (I believe that’s still true). Only Mormons could make the top level, the telestial level. But no Africans need apply, even if they were the most faithful of Mormons. Needless to say, the LDS didn’t have a lot of members of African descent.
The Google of the Day is highly appropriate in the context. I had to google the name of Caligula’s horse, but his horse would probably make a better statesman than most of the current crop of Republicans.
burnspbesq
The ultimate demolition of 9-9-9, courtesy of the exceedingly smart Ed Kleinbard.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1941800
maya
@General Stuck:
He was only repeating what has been making the Wingtard Chain Email Loop® for the past two years, at least. My sister is one and lives in SoNM. She sent me a few back then. It gets better. Former military should be given the job,(he’s close there} with orders to shoot to kill.
I emailed back to her that I wondered if there was a bounty being offered and if so, shouldn’t pregnant females bring in top dollar? She didn’t reply.
Marty
You gotta admit. His doubletalk on the tax plan in that clip was masterful. Like trying to catch a greased pig.
SiubhanDuinne
Y’all GOTS to have a look at http://www.moonshinepatriot.blogspot.com and see what they did with the Cain MTP interview on Bobblespeak Translations. I’d give you a taste, but it’s all just so hard to extract the best bits.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh34:
I agree. I think it’s one of the best speeches he’s given, and he already had set a pretty high bar.
cathyx
@cathyx: Sorry, wrong thread.
pablo
SHOCKING!
Keith
His “Americans need to get a sense of humor” response is very reminiscent of John McCain’s go-to reponse to fuckups: “people need to get a life”.
lamh34
@SiubhanDuinne: agreed.
too bad the speech probably won’t be seen/heard by many people other than snippets.
Anya
@Amir Khalid: Two options:
1. Herman Cain’s candidacy is a some elaborate form of performance art.
2. He’s paid by Koch brothers to play dumb to make bigots feel good about their own bigotry. He’s a mathematician who was a business executive but he can’t count and everything that comes out of his mouth as dumber than the crap that Sarah Palin used to say.
Bill E Pilgrim
This is instructive. From Meet the Press today:
Yes, reading the first response one could think maybe he’s just refusing to be labeled. However the second response couldn’t be more clear. He doesn’t know what neoconservative means.
Steve Kornacki at that link tries to make the case that he’s just resisting being labeled, demonstrated by how Cain “doesn’t miss a beat” in answering (he provides a video).
What utter nonsense. I have to say I’m less than impressed with Kornacki since he started there, to say the least. He just seems to make the most ridiculous assertions, often in service of utterly unsupportable “centrist” positions.
Cain seems barely more informed than Sarah Palin, if you ask me. Less creepy and with fewer blatant problems with grammar and logic, but that’s not saying much.
Anne Laurie
@Wolfdaughter:
Yeah, the thing about Senator Incitatus: It’s not that Caligula was so nutty he made his horse a “legislator”, it’s that Caligula wanted to demonstrate — to his consuls and the rest of the population — that he could force them to accept his horse as their equal. So, in that sense, people like Cain (or the exemplar, Palin) are Incitatus Candidates, showy markers of the contempt in which the Money Party holds its paid legislators and the rubes who waste their votes repeatedly electing those who hurt them.
And I’ve been saying since May that, if Romney is the more-or-less foreordained GOP candidate, I will take genuine pleasure in watching him forced to embrace a man who represents everything Willard is not. Apart from his skin color — and I’m sure Mitt will tell you he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body — Cain actually worked his way up from poverty to riches (only a measly five or six million as opposed to Romney’s quarter-billion dollars, of course). And, worst of all, normal people actually like Cain, respond to his “jokes” with laughter & applause, while Willard’s little quips about “I’m unemployed, too, you know” just make normal people stare & edge away.
Jenny
I’m surprised he’s backing off, an electrical fence is really popular the teatards who will decided the nomination.
Bill E Pilgrim
@SiubhanDuinne: You may know this but the “they” in question is Culture of Truth who posts here often.
Thanks for reminding me of the Bobblespeak thing, I hadn’t read that in a long time.
ChrisB
Did you see how easily Dancin’ Dave let Cain get away with calling his electrified fence line a joke? Gregory sanctioned that explanation saying that Cain got a good laugh after that remark. Well that’s not what happened. Cain didn’t get laughs; he got rousing cheers. But Gregory didn’t point that out or follow up with a question about the audience response. He ran away from his own question faster than Cain did. Not that I’m at all surprised.
What a douche.
FlipYrWhig
A few months back Cain said his administration would only sign 3-page bills, then said he was only joking about that. Now this. Seems like pretty much everything he says… turns out to be a joke.
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
Normal people like Cain? Really? He might be a likable guy in person. But Herman Cain the presidential candidate is a bigot and a blowhard, he’s willfully and pridefully ignorant, he panders to low-information voters, and he talks cock every single time. Even when you’ve just confronted him with the cock he talked last time, and he’s now trying to walk it back.
FlipYrWhig
@ChrisB: Gregory is horrifyingly bad at his supposed job. A John King-David Gregory show would be like the Flypaper Theory of half-assed punditry. Put all the worst baddies in one place, then smash it to smithereens.
JPL
@ChrisB: The comments on the NYTimes were not kind.. link
They were accurate though. Cain is appealing to those who think most of color are inferior to them. He must be so proud of himself.
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
He’s running a joke candidacy, that’s obvious. We’re all just trying to figure out the punchline here.
@Cain:
Unfortunately, your nym is the same as Herman’s last name. Are you tempted to change it, at least temporarily? I would certainly sympathize with you, if so.
maya
There’s only one puzzle that remains about Gregory and his typical genuflectinging-man performance in the presence of any republican: Does he swallow?
Bill E Pilgrim
@Amir Khalid:
The Aristocrats!
SiubhanDuinne
On the NPR top-of-the-hour newscast, Peter Overby identified him as “Georgia Congressman Herman Cain.” I know everyone makes innocent mistakes (which I’m sure this was) and I know in the great scheme of things it’s pretty meaningless, but the first thing that came to mind was, well, if we can’t trust a respected NPR reporter to get such a simple fact right, what else can’t we trust them on?
I hope they find an opportunity to air a correction, but I’m not holding my breath.
JPL
Under the strongest microscope yet, MTP pressed Cain on his 999 plan. This is according to Sunday night news…hahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
SiubhanDuinne
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Thanks, Bill. Cool. I didn’t know that and somehow I feel a nice warm special sense of connection now.
I love Bobblespeak translations. Loved it when I watched the Sunday morning shows, love it even more now that I’ve sworn off.
Svensker
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t think that word means what you think it means in American English…:)
The Other Chuck
@Cain:
Imagining some grand harmonic convergence of dumbfuckery that actually got Cain elected, what I see is Cain’s 999 plan going precisely nowhere, and congress refusing to even take it up. Congress has its monumental morons (Goehmert and Foxx come to mind) but collectively they aren’t close to Cain’s scale of dumb.
JPL
@The Other Chuck: Yeah..but how about that Commander in Chief title..that’s a tad scary.
Mark S.
@JPL:
Given his almost total disinterest in foreign affairs, I could see President Cain delegating most of that to Secretary of State Bachmann.
JPL
@Mark S.: He likes and respects John Bolton and Henry Kissenger. Bachmann would be a better choice imo.
Amir Khalid
@Svensker:
I know it doesn’t. :) But “talk cock” is a good (if not exactly polite) Malaysian English idiom which means “talk nonsense”.
Ben Cisco (mobile)
@lamh34 39: You got that right. I will go ahead and confidently predict that large numbers of black Americans will see in Cain (as we do) the epitome of a man, accomplished though he may be, all too willing to play the simpering, shuffling, enabling buffoon in order to please those he serves. The very mention of his name disgusts me, and I am NOT alone.
Mark S.
@JPL:
I forgot all about the Walrus. I’d take Michele over him.
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
Related, I suppose, to the good old Britishism “a cock-and-bull story.”
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@maya: Even if the GOP achieves its dream and only CWMs can vote, that “Our n!gger” thing only goes so far.
I don’t care how crazy about a particular black guy a racist might be. He wouldn’t want the guy marrying his daughter and it’s a safe bet he wouldn’t want the guy running the country.
JPL
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Yeah..but this black guy wants to kill the brown guys so it’s a win.
maya
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: That is why he’s make the perfect VP candidate on the ticket. He gives both the conservative base, and the racists within it, cover. A VP can always resign, or be persuaded to, under the right or wrong circumstances. He is the repo perfect number two guy. And he isn’t going to be marrying anyone’s daughter.
As for those black citizens who would never vote for him in the first palce, I think the repos have that one covered with pending and installed voter suppression tactics. No?
He and his handlers aren’t even trying to attract the black or latino vote, just the CWMs, their duty bound wives, + enough Koch cash to mitigate and confuse the rest. Cain is dangerous, I do believe, especially when the media, like Gregory did, give him a pass.
Did Gregory ever ask Cain what then was his actual immigration plan is if the electric fence was a joke? Don’t think so. This guy knows how to bob and weave and with a little help from the corporate media dying to get their hands on tons of 2012 ad $$$, he’ll get farther than you think.
Nellie in NZ
Can you put a warning that it is a NYTimes link in there? Some of us are hoarding our few clicks per month. Thanks.
Lysana
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Some of them may find their hatred of Obama is stronger than their general hatred of black people. Others will feel their brains melting and write in Ron Paul.
MikeJ
@Nellie in NZ: I thought the clicks didn’t count if there was a referer.
Cain
@maya:
I think you have a valid point there. Sure, if htey believe it’s they pet black guy that they can control then I suppose they might get out there and vote.
I will switch tactics and say he doesn’t have the ability to do a general election campaign I think. Romney can pull it off better than he can.
James E. Powell
The problem with drawing attention to the cruel and crazy remarks of Republican candidates is that a very large number of Americans, many not Republicans, are cruel and crazy themselves.
Amir Khalid
@Nellie in NZ:
No need to do that. Each time you see the story with the “please subscribe to NYT” stuff obscuring it, just go to the navigation bar where the URL for the page is. Somewhere in the URL is a question mark. Delete that and everything after it in the URL, then reload the page. The obscuring stuff disappears, and you can then read the story. If you go to subsequent pages in the story, the stuff will not reappear.
Cain
@Amir Khalid:
I survived all of 2008 election campaign with McCain as the front runner and of course he continues to make mention here. It does make searching for anything I say hard. So one could say that I have good cover for any remarks I make due to how hard it is to search for anything I’ve said!
Of course it does seems that sometimes people are abusing me. hehe.
Cain
@The Other Chuck:
Don’t worry we have plenty of Democratic enablers that will help bridge the gap.
If congress is dead locked long enough I suspect we will still have revolution. Eventually will come to realize that party doesn’t matter either it is all or nothing. The only people winning here are the media who get their horse race stuff and get more clicks for ads.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the whole deck of cards will fall as soon as you bankrupt the media. Make 24 hour news fail and you’ve got it. Let the 25% fund all three major 24 hour channels and we’ll see how much those media men lose their salaries then we can get some truth out there.
maya
@Cain: That’s why Cain will make the perfect VP in their team. Romney campaigns and Cain gets to be the lovable Uncle Herm selling down-homey witticisms, anecdotal stories, and motivational snake oil, with more than an occasional flub. In other words, he’ll be their Joe Biden.
Culture of Truth
SiubhanDuinne,
Yes, that’s me! Thanks for the link. Truly this was an amazing interview.
At the end he says liberals are purposefully trying to destroy America. Also, why are people so quick to reject the other side?
The mind reels.
FlipYrWhig
@JPL:
I think David Gregory’s microscope is like this one.
smintheus
@maya: No, Cain would be cast in the Bob Dole tradition, a VP attack dog saying stuff like “the objective of the liberals is to destroy this country“, as on MTP today.
PurpleGirl
@Svensker: My father often used the phrase “cock and bull” for something that was nonsense.
Svensker
@PurpleGirl:
Mine, too, but I think that refers to animals. Amir’s isn’t an animal reference…
Steeplejack
@Nellie in NZ:
I have found that the Times “pay wall” is ridiculously easy to pierce. If you click on an article and get the “We hope you’ve enjoyed your 20 free articles” pop-up, just go to your browser’s address field, go to the end and erase everything after “.html”. Typically it is a character string of the form “?gwh=[some long number]”, with or without some other shmutz attached. Then press the Enter key to reload the (now unblocked) page.
I just went to their site and deliberately loaded 23 stories to check this again. It works!
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
I see you got in ahead of me with the solution. Kudos, sir.
4jkb4ia
Not only did John pick up on that, he didn’t think it was funny at all, or shake his head at Cain’s clear and present running for talk show host. I predicted this. I scare myself.
(Although “Bachmann Takes It To Perry Day” in the NYT version of that story probably really was funny.)
4jkb4ia
Funny as in completely absurd, not that immigrants being killed by an electric fence is funny.
Cain’s never heard of the neoconservative movement!?
(The idea was basically: “You‘re laughing. John is certainly not laughing. There was a time when it was unthinkable for him to be anything other than a Republican–he was proud to be one–and these loons took that away.”)
4jkb4ia
Funny as in absurd, not that immigrants being killed by an electric fence is funny.
Cain’s never heard of the neoconservative movement!?
Please FYWP, don’t eat this. Thank you.
DanielX
@James E. Powell: All too true, unfortunately – harking back to that magic figure of 27%. The meaner and crazier the candidate is, the better they like it. Cain knows his audience and knows what they want, which is not just red meat but blood by the five gallon bucket full. If he proposed public executions by hanging, drawing and quartering they’d be throwing money at the lectern.