"...Willow Weep For Me....Candidates, On The Other Hand..."

Couple of current rages I'm not too crazy about.

Reality shows.

Talking to the top of somebody's head while they continue texting during the conversation.

Full disclosure.

That last one, admittedly, is a bit of a sticky wicket.

The notion that we should not be entitled to all the facts, all the time seems like it should be endorsed wholeheartedly without hesitation.

Actually, not so much.

Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) - Newt Gingrich teared up at a campaign stop in Iowa Friday, openly weeping while talking about his mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder and depression.

The moment was sparked by a question from GOP political consultant Frank Luntz, who was moderating a forum targeted to mothers at a local coffee shop Java Joe's in downtown Des Moines.

Luntz, noting the room had a number of moms present, asked Gingrich, "What moment do you think of when you think of your mom?"

"First of all you will get me all teary-eyed. Callista will tell you I get teary eyed every time we send Christmas cards," Gingrich said, coughing back tears.

"My mother sang in the choir and loved singing in the choir. I don't know if I should admit this but when I was very young she made me sing in the choir. I identify my mother with being happy, loving life, having a sense of joy in her friends," Gingrich continued.

Gingrich said his mother, who died in 2003, played a part in his legislative interests in long-term health care and mental disease.

"Late in her life she ended up in a long-term care facility. She had bipolar disease, depression and she gradually acquired some physical ailments and that introduced me to the issue of quality, long-term care."

Gingrich continued, stalling at times to fight back tears, "My whole emphasis on brain science comes in directly from dealing – see how I'm getting emotional – from dealing with you know the real problems of real people in my family. So it is not a theory. It is in fact my mother."

Moms Matter 2012, a group that describes its mission as "moving moms from the political sidelines to the headlines," sponsored the Gingrich event. Approximately 100 people were present, including a few mothers with young children.

Gingrich's immediate family joined him on stage for the event: wife Callista, daughters Kathy Gingrich Lubbers and Jackie Gingrich Cushman, sons-in-law, and two grandchildren, Maggie and Robert.

Inevitably, two points of view, at least, result from an episode like this.

There is the "aw, he's a good guy who loved his mom and not just another scheming politician..."

And then there's the "please, he's just another scheming politician...".

I don't know the man.

And I don't trust the commentators and/or pundits on either side of the ideological fence to make up my mind for me.

So, as to whether Newt's tears are twenty four carat or crocodile, I'll take a pass on pondering.

The thing about the thing is this.

I don't really want to know.

More to the point, I don't think it does us any good to know.

That kind of emotional expression only clouds, not clears, the water as we try to figure out which lever to pull come November.

If he's not sincere, then he's a manipulative schemer who is not to be trusted.

And if he is sincere, he's not exactly the kind of guy we want sitting across the table from those zany lads from, say, Iran or, say, North Korea.

When and if.

And for all those Hallmark Card sending, Lifetime Movie Of The Week loving folks whose favorite day during the Christmas season involves nine hearts a bleeding, let me offer you this.

Given the texture and tone of the world's politics at any given time in this day and time, we don't really need a guy living at 1600 Pennsylvania who is in touch with his feelings.

We need a boy named Sue.

And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

I imagine that Harry Truman probably welled up a little, somewhere along the way, as he reflected on dropping atomic bombs that would kill thousands of Japanese men, women and children.

I suspect that John F. Kennedy probably got teary, at least once, at the notion that one wrong move in Cuba could send Soviet missiles flying and kill hundreds of thousands of American men, women and children.

The list, likely, goes on.

But neither of those, or any other, Presidents let us see that side of their humanity.

And with good reason.

When we climb on board an airliner and are taken to thirty thousand feet, we all want to believe, and obviously, assume that the person at the controls is a warm, loving, caring human being.

But, we really don't want, or need, to see them walk through the cabin with tears in his or her eyes.

Standard issue for Presidents of The United States needs to be big boy/girl panties.

Not crying towels.

"...For Those Who Demand Change Now And Don't Define Now As 'Someday'.."

There's only one thing we know for sure here.

More on that in a moment.

Washington (CNN) -- Are you feeling uninspired this election season? Are you sick of all the attention being slathered on a small group of die-hard partisans in Iowa and New Hampshire? Do you think the political system's broken and your voice is ignored?

If you're looking for a change from the usual left-right, liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican dynamic, you may get your wish. There's a new group in the 2012 election, and it's aiming to redefine presidential politics by going around the major party machines and putting an alternative choice on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Americans Elect, which has raised $22 million so far, is harnessing the power of the Internet to conduct an unprecedented national online primary next spring. If all goes according to plan, the result will be a credible, nonpartisan ticket that pushes alternative centrist solutions to the growing problems America's current political leadership seems unwilling or unable to tackle.

The theory: If you break the stranglehold that more ideologically extreme primary voters and established interests currently have over presidential nominations, you will push Washington to seriously address tough economic and other issues. Even if the group's ticket doesn't win, its impact will force Democrats and Republicans in the nation's capital to start bridging their cavernous ideological divide.

"We're not a third party. We're a second nominating process trying to create a ticket that is solutions-based, that will force the conversation to the center rather than keeping it at the extremes of either party," says Ileana Wachtel, a spokeswoman for the group.

If you think Americans Elect is nothing more than a bunch of naïve dreamers, think again. Its leadership includes former New Jersey GOP Gov. Christine Todd Whitman; former Clinton administration strategist Doug Schoen; former National Intelligence Director Adm. Dennis Blair; former FBI and CIA Director William Webster; and former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, among others.

The group's CEO is Kahlil Byrd, former communications director for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat. Dan Winslow, a Massachusetts Republican state representative and a former chief counsel to GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, is also on board.

Funding for the effort was kicked off with over $5 million from investment banker Peter Ackerman. Financially, the ultimate goal is to limit each contributor's donation to no more than $10,000.

Americans Elect strategists believe they'll need around $35 million in total, half of which will likely be necessary to meet cumbersome ballot access requirements.

"The people who provided the seed money to get us started come from across the political spectrum," the group claims on its website. "Giving to Americans Elect buys you no special influence whatsoever, and all donors acknowledge that fact when they contribute."

One point of contention is that the group does not disclose the names of its donors, citing its nonprofit status and fears that contributors could find themselves losing potential business or social contacts. Critics contend the secrecy undermines the organization's claims of openness and transparency, and they argue that any group with such a clear electoral goal should not be exempt from disclosure rules governing the Democratic and Republican national committees.

Any registered voter -- Democrat, Republican, or otherwise -- can become an Americans Elect online delegate. Over 300,000 people have signed up so far. While anyone can seek the group's nomination, possible candidates will have to answer multiple online questionnaires.

Six prospective nominees will eventually be chosen by the delegates in an online winnowing process culminating in the selection of a ticket in June. According to the rules, two members of the same party will not be allowed to run together.

"When candidates pick running mates from outside their parties, it's a clear sign that they're working to build the consensus necessary to get things done," the group argues. "They'll govern without regard to the partisan interests of either major party."

Could New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg team up with former Secretary of State Colin Powell? How about Joe Lieberman and Condoleezza Rice? What about tapping a media celebrity like Tom Brokaw or a deficit hawk like former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles?

The list of possibilities is virtually endless, but the list of criticisms is long. Among other things, critics question the ability to stop a fringe group from hijacking the process and using Americans Elect to advance their own narrow cause. Possible nominees will have to be cleared by an independent committee and undergo a background check, but the committee's decision can be overruled by a majority of the delegates.

Will the online voting be secure from hackers? "We take that issue very seriously," Wachtel told CNN, noting that each delegate will be able to produce a paper record of his or her vote.

Josh Levine, the former chief technology and operations of E*Trade Financial, is tasked with the website's security.

A number of political observers question whether an Americans Elect ticket could ever have a serious shot at winning. For all the talk of voter alienation and disgust with Washington, broad segments of the electorate maintain strong party loyalties, and the country's winner-take-all electoral system remains a huge hurdle for anyone trying to break the two-party stranglehold. Ross Perot won nearly 20% of the vote in 1992 and didn't have a single electoral vote to show for his efforts; 270 electoral votes are needed to win the White House.

The last non-major party candidate to make any headway in the Electoral College was George Wallace, who ran in 1968 on a specific issue -- opposition to civil rights -- and with a very clear regional base of support. At the moment, Americans Elect appears to have neither.

Having a charismatic nominee might help, but would hardly guarantee electoral viability. When one of the most beloved politicians in U.S. history -- Theodore Roosevelt -- bucked the two-party system in 1912, he only succeeded in splitting the Republican vote and ensuring a victory for Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat.

Veteran political analysts Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann have speculated that an Americans Elect ticket may end up splitting the electorate next year in such a way that an otherwise unacceptable major party nominee ends up capturing the presidency.

"The nightmare scenario for us would be angry or demoralized independents and discouraged centrist Republicans gravitating toward the third candidate, enabling a far-right Republican nominee to prevail with a narrow electoral majority or with a plurality followed by a win in a deeply divided House," they recently wrote in The Washington Post.

The U.S. Constitution requires the House of Representatives to pick the president if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes.

Ornstein and Mann also question the ability of an independent president to govern effectively, and fear the eventual winner's legitimacy could be undermined by a severe three-way split in the popular vote.

"In this tough environment, any diminishment of legitimacy for the winner is undesirable," they said.

Asked to respond, Wachtel told CNN the need for change is paramount.

"At this point, the system's already spoiled," she said. "We need to open the process up to more competition and more choices for the American people."


The instant criticism of this concept is both predictable and inevitable.

Nothing rattles people's cages like actually changing something that we all scream we want changed.

A little something from the "be careful what you ask for" folder.

And while there are reasonable questions to be answered when it comes to the Americans Elect paradigm, there are always reasonable questions to be asked about any new way of doing things.

Any things.

That shouldn't, of course, be an automatic disqualification.

If it was, we would all be reading by firelight before going to down the creek to bathe before heading off to work on our mule.

The mule, of course, with the eight track tape player in the dashboard.

Because, God knows, there are serious concerns to be addressed about this new fangled cassette thingy.

All of this aside, there exists, at the center of the Americans Elect concept, a little pin spot of light, a spark, perhaps, of the sort that has been known to start a little smolder, then a little smoke, then a little flame and then a fire that can light our way to new horizons and accomplishments.

Clearly, from the caliber of people involved in this, it is an idea whose time may very well have come.

We can't know at the outset.

In fact, there's really only one thing we know for sure.

What will happen if we don't find a way to change that we all scream we want changed.

"...They're Lousy Dealmakers, But We Keep Dealing Them In..."

Poker.

That's what it really boils down to, you know.

More on that in a minute.

Washington (CNN) -- The congressional impasse over extending the payroll tax cut became a showdown Tuesday between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.

After the Republican-controlled House passed a measure calling for more negotiations, Boehner made public a letter to Obama that urged him to order the Senate back from its holiday break to take part in further talks.

Leaders in the Democratic-controlled Senate reject that idea, and Obama agreed, telling reporters in a previously unscheduled appearance that the House must approve the two-month extension passed by a strong bipartisan majority in the Senate.

"The bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on January 1," Obama said. "It's the only one."

The House motion, passed with no Democratic support on a 229-193 vote, expressed House disagreement with the Senate plan and called for the dispute to be immediately taken up by a House-Senate conference committee -- something already ruled out by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada.

However, Boehner and the Republican leadership prevented a direct vote on the Senate plan, signaling they may lack enough GOP support to defeat it in the face of unrelenting pressure from the White House, Democrats and some Senate Republicans.

Reading these kinds of stories day after day, I'm mindful of a couple of acronyms.

D.C.

District of Columbia.

S.S.D.D.

Same shit, different day.

But, today, while reading the latest road report from the clown car that is our Congress, another word popped to mind.

Poker.

And how that's really what all this is about.

There's an old saying amongst card players.

"When you sit down to play, look around the table and try to decide who the sucker is...if you can't figure out who it is...

...it's you."

We rail and rant and bitch and moan about the complete wastes of space these elected officials are and how they fail to serve even the slightest of our needs, instead, bickering constantly amongst themselves and serving only their own interests.

Yet, every two, four or six years, we send them back to Washington.

The classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time.

Seems like two things are clear.

We're all a little crazy.

And we suck at poker.

"...Oliver Twist, 2012...Please, Sir....May I Run For President?...."

Somewhere along the fun little road trip I've been on for awhile known as morning radio, I've learned a few things about human nature.

One of those things is that people tend to, unfailingly, like two things.

Free stuff.

And puzzles.

Regardless of what a lot of broadcast consultants want us, and try to convince themselves, to believe, chances are that your tuning into "Blather and Blah In The Morning" is less about the latest time, temp and weather forecast that you can now easily get on your smartphone and more about "Tacky Tweaky Trivia At Ten After" for the chance to win a free lunch at "Sandy's Sushi City".

Lord knows it can't possibly be to hear Katy Perry or Gaga every eleven point seven minutes.

And, of the two, free stuff and puzzles, it's actually the latter that offers the most appeal.

No matter how fresh the sushi.

There is simply something inherent in human nature that insists we find the solution to any query, question, curiosity or outright puzzle that crosses our radar.

Which brings me to the Donald.

And why anyone in their right, or right wing, mind gives a G.O.P elephant's patoot about getting his blessing to run for President of the United States.

It's a riddle, inside a mystery, wrapped in an enigma.

In other words, it's quite the puzzler, pinky.

Because he's not an office holder, past or present; he's not any official of either or any political party, major or minor; he's not a media columnist or commentator with a faithful following of millions of potential voters.

He's a real estate mogul with more money than God, let alone Albert Pujols.

But multiple zeros on a bank balance do not a political patriarch make.

Basically, the guy is a ReMax agent who can afford really nice suits.

The fact that this status theoretically endows him with the power to make, or break, the candidacies of those running for high office says volumes more about the process itself than the players in the plot.

And, again broken down to its simplest essence, gives us mere mortals serious pause as we consider that the answer to the puzzle may be no more complicated than this.

Money talks.

Only a fool or a child naively believes that money doesn't, and hasn't, played a key role in the political process since day one of campaign one.

From the days of Mark Hanna doling out family dollars to get William McKinley elected to the big business meets ballot box blitzkrieg of the Rockefeller family, the dollars and cents of American politics has been millions and millions of dollars and cents.

John F. Kennedy even publicly joked, at times, about the amount of money his father threw around in the quest to relocate Camelot to the District Of Columbia.

But Trump's purse power has a more in your face, and more insidious, way about it.

And the line of Republican candidates who have felt obliged to request an audience at Trump Tower are looking like the right wing edition of the favor seekers at the wedding of Don Corleone's daughter.

Last time I checked, though, Trump Tower was still located in downtown New York City.

Not 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Or, for that matter, Vatican Square.

"...On Behalf Of Justice Montevideo And The Other Fifty One Supreme Court Justices..."

James Carville.

Sure.

Karl Rove.

If you insist.

The brightest, savviest, most prescient political mind, in my humble o, belongs to a playwright/screenwriter.

Stay tuned for that name.

Meanwhile, Rick Perry is bob, bob, bobblin along.




Okay, in the interest of trying to be fair and balanced (Fox News, patent pending), I suppose it must be said that we all have little moments where names, dates and the other assorted minutiae of the day to day escape us.

But we all aren't running for President of The United States.

And when one of the finalists for a nomination from a major political party to do just that has to be prompted so that he can remember the correct name of one of only nine judges (and, while we're at it, that correct number of those judges), I think it not unfair or unbalanced to suggest we should all, regardless of posture, position or party stripe, agree to say "thanks for stopping by, now, who's next?"

What struck me about this latest faux perrypas', though, wasn't the, once again, obvious concern that the Governor is in over his head, even when the subject matter keeps him in the shallow end of the pool, but, instead, how remarkably visionary Aaron Sorkin is.

Sorkin being the aforementioned screenwriter/playwright.

And not a guy who shows up with any regularity on either Fox or MSNBC or CNN with the term "political analyst" underneath his name on the Kyron.

I'm thinking he should be, though.

Check it out.



Hmm.

Governor of a major southern state. Major party candidate for President. Clearly out of his element in the major league spotlight.

Ring any graham bells, Alexander?

What's remarkable about this isn't the stylish, and statistically not all that dazzling, art imitating life thing going on here.

Or even that life, these days, seems to be maintaining a fine batting average when it comes to imitating art.

What's remarkable is that Aaron Sorkin wrote this script and the episode was filmed and broadcast...

...nine years ago.

Move over, Nostradamus.

There's a new kid in town.

"...Demagogue...Rhymes with Gingrich..."

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Apparently.

And obviously.

Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times, on the current front runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States....

Newt Gingrich's mind is in love with itself.

It has persuaded itself that it is brilliant when it is merely promiscuous. This is not a serious mind. Gingrich is not, to put it mildly, a systematic thinker.

His mind is a jumble, an amateurish mess lacking impulse control. He plays air guitar with ideas, producing air ideas. He ejaculates concepts, notions and theories that are as inconsistent as his behavior.

He didn’t get whiplash being a serial adulterer while impeaching another serial adulterer, a lobbyist for Freddie Mac while attacking Freddie Mac, a self-professed fiscal conservative with a whopping Tiffany’s credit line, and an anti-Communist Army brat who supported the Vietnam War but dodged it.

“Part of the question I had to ask myself,” he said in a 1985 Wall Street Journal piece about war wimps, “was what difference I would have made.”

Newt swims easily in a sea of duality and byzantine ideas that don’t add up. As The Washington Post reported on Friday, an America under President Gingrich would have two Social Security systems — “one old, one new, running side by side” — two tax systems and two versions of Medicare.

Consider his confusion of views on colonialism. In the 1971 Ph.D. dissertation he wrote at Tulane University, titled “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960,” he is anti-anticolonialism.

“If the Congolese are to confront the future with realism they will need a solid understanding of their own past and an awareness of the good as well as the bad aspects of colonialism,” he argued. “It would be just as misleading to speak in generalities of ‘white exploitation’ as it once was to talk about ‘native backwardness.’ ”

He warned against political pressures encouraging “Black xenophobia.” What’s xenophobic about Africans wanting their oppressors to go away? It’s like saying abused wives who want their husbands to leave are anti-men.

He sees colonialism as a complicated thing with good and bad effects rather than a terrible thing with collateral benefits.

Laura Seay, an assistant professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta and an expert on Africa, blogged that Gingrich’s thesis was “kind of a glorified white man’s burden take on colonial policy that was almost certainly out of vogue in the early 1970s. Gingrich wrote this as the Black Consciousness and Black Power movements were approaching their pinnacles. It was most decidedly not the time to be arguing that white European masters did a swell job ruling black Africans through a system that ensured that most Congolese would never get a real education.”

When it comes to America’s British overlords, Gingrich is not so sympathetic. The bludgeon of American exceptionalism that he uses on President Obama was forged at Valley Forge.

In the introduction to his novel about George Washington and the Revolutionary War, “To Try Men’s Souls,” written with William R. Forstchen, Gingrich writes: “The British elites believed this was a conflict about money and about minor irritations. They simply could not believe the colonists were serious about their rights as free men and women.”

Gingrich, a radical precursor to the modern Tea Party when he staged what conservatives considered the second American Revolution in the House in the ’90s, wrote with delight of London’s shock when Samuel Adams started the original Tea Party.

But while an anticolonial disposition is good if you’re Adams, Washington and Jefferson, it’s bad if you’re Barack Obama’s Kenyan father living under British rule two centuries later.

Gingrich made one of his classic outrageous overreaches last year when he praised a Dinesh D’Souza article in Forbes, saying you could only understand how “fundamentally out of touch” and “outside our comprehension” President Obama is “if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.”

D’Souza’s absurd ad hominem theory tying Obama to his father goes like this: “This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”

This was a typical Newt mental six-car pileup. The man who espouses Christian values being un-Christian in visiting the alleged sins of the father upon the son; the man who reveres the anticolonialism of the founding fathers ranting against the anticolonialism of the father of America’s first African-American president. How do you rail against the Evil Empire and urge overthrowing Saddam and not celebrate liberation in Africa?

Newt is like the Great White Hunter out on campaign safari, trying to bag a Mitt, an animal with ever-changing stripes. Certainly, the 68-year-old’s haughty suggestions on child labor last week in Iowa smacked of harsh paternalism and exploitation.

He expanded on Dickensian remarks he’d made recently at Harvard, where he said “it is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in child laws which are truly stupid,” adding that 9-year-olds could work as school janitors.

“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” he asserted in an ignorant barrage of stereotypes in Des Moines. “So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday.”

Has he not heard of the working poor? The problem isn’t that these kids aren’t working; it’s that they don’t have time with their parents, who often toil day and night, at more than one job, and earn next to nothing.

Newt’s the kind of person whom child labor laws were created to curb. He sounds like a benign despot with a colonial subtext: Until I bring you the benefits of civilization, we will regard you as savages.

He’s Belgium. The poor are Congo.


As opined at the outset, desperate times call for desperate measures.

The foundation of Newt Gingrich's candidacy rests on two pilings.

That a majority of voting Americans, at crunch time, once the curtain on the booth has closed behind them, will see our times as sufficiently desperate to choose someone, anyone who is not Barack Obama to live at 1600 Pennsylvania.

And that same majority of Americans will see Newt Gingrich as the clear choice to be that someone, anyone.

Firing one contractor whose work is substandard and replacing him with another contractor whose resume' is clean and intentions good is one thing.

Replacing him with an angry, petty and petulant demagogue possessed of a spotty past and a portfolio full of platform planks good for any and all occasions is most certainly another.

It might take a village.

But it only takes one guy to burn one down.

And that can't possibly be the best choice for anyone.

No matter how desperate the times.

"...I Swear, If Rick Perry Enters The Next Debate And Trips Over The Ottoman, I'm Gonna Lose It..."

Spending much time watching Comedy Central?

Getting your guffaws from major network sitcoms?

You're wasting your time, bunky.

The funniest stuff to be found on the ol' flat screen is as close as your favorite cable news channel.

And lately, it's a laugh a minute.

Check it out.

Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain told supporters Saturday that he is suspending his presidential campaign, which has become hobbled in recent weeks by allegations of sexual harassment and an Atlanta woman's claim that they carried on a 13-year affair.

While he will still be able to raise and spend campaign funds because he did not officially drop out, Cain's White House bid is effectively over.

Cain said he came to the decision after assessing the impact that the allegations were having on his wife, his family and his supporters.

Cain and his wife, Gloria, held hands as they walked up to the podium where Cain made his remarks in Atlanta. The crowd chanted, "Gloria! Gloria!" before the candidate spoke.

Even as he stepped aside under the weight of the allegations that have dogged him, Cain said that he was at "peace with my God" and "peace with my wife."

He repeatedly called the allegations "false and untrue," and added that "the (media) spin hurts."

"I am not going to be silenced and I will not go away," Cain said, announcing what he called his Plan B: A website, TheCainSolutions.com, through which he will continue to advocate for his platform.

His catchy "9-9-9" economic plan is not going anywhere, he said.

"Your support has been unwavering and undying," Cain told his supporters.

He will endorse another of the Republican presidential hopefuls soon, he said.

Other candidates were quick to react.

"Herman Cain provided an important voice to this process," Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said in a statement. "His ideas and energy generated tremendous enthusiasm for the conservative movement at a time it was so desperately needed to restore confidence in our country."

Fellow Georgian Newt Gingrich said the "9-9-9" plan "got our country talking about the critical issue of how to reform our tax code and he elevated the dialogue of the Republican presidential primary in the process."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he knew the Cains made a "difficult decision. He helped invigorate conservative voters and our nation with a discussion of major tax reform."

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said Cain brought "a unique and valuable voice to the debate over how to reform our country's uncompetitive tax code and turn around the economy. I understand his decision and wish him and his family the best."

Now, I've written a comedic line, or piece, in my time and, I gotta tell ya, I'm pretty confident that I know from funny.

And this, friends, is some funny shit.

Seriously.

Our wacky and zany hero has been waylaid by a motley crew of moralists, muckrakers, mademoiselles and media malarkey mavens, bringing to an end his quixotic quest to be the next black guy to ride up on the white horse to the front door of that white house.

Meanwhile, his crack up crew of cohorts are pratfalling all over themselves trying to be first in line on the high road of "so long, been good to know ya" while struggling satirically to keep their gleeful "good riddance" smiles as minimal as humanly possible.

And...patting him on the back, shoving him out the door and bending over to kiss his behind in hopes of being that "hopeful" to be soon endorsed.

All at the same time.

Cue laugh track, my ass.

This thing generates applause and ah-has as far as the ear can hear.

The future of the planet and the leadership the voters are trying to pluck from the muck is, rightly, serious business.

The process of choosing that leadership, in the meantime, is more chuckly and chortly than any ten episodes of Lucy and Ethel stuffing chocolates in their uniforms and light years out in front of anything Ashton Kutcher and company are offering up Monday nights, nine eastern, eight central.

And if you're having trouble finding the funny here, you're just not trying hard enough.

I mean, come on, comedy writers would sell their soul to the devil to be able to write a script that has four ostensibly major candidates for the Republican nomination for President of The United States offering obits grease painted with a transparent layer of tribute before the last note of taps has even been heard at the au revoir rally.

And how much funnier does it get than these four clowns praising a platform while delightedly seeing it dismantled?

Not your cup of tea, humor wise?

To each his or her own.

E pluribus unum.

Tell you one thing, though.

One someone is laughing louder and longer than anyone else on the aforementioned planet.

Barack Obama.

"...At The Very Least, A Victim Of Circumstance..."

Sarah Elizabeth Cupp suggests that Herman Cain is not a victim.

Which isn't to say that there isn't one.

Here's an excerpt from her article on CNN.com

Herman Cain's appeal was that he was real. He wasn't politically savvy or polished. And when a candidate, as Charles Krauthammer asserted, decides to "wing it," as he did, that means that two things will happen. One, the candidate will appear authentic, unscripted, genuine and approachable. And two, the candidate will make mistakes. Cain made a bunch.

In his announcement, Cain blamed the media for spinning his campaign. And his supporters, as well as some conservative commentators, will likely continue to blame the media, Democrats and the women who spoke out against him for his campaign's demise. They will bemoan the campaign trail as an ugly place that eats its unsuspecting victims alive. But as unprepared as Cain may have been for life in the political spotlight and the invasive cavity search that is performed on presidential hopefuls, the truth is he was far less prepared to actually be our president.

He can't blame the media for his fumbles on foreign policy, or his inability to explain his own position on abortion. Nor can he blame Democrats or his alleged victims for his failure to sell his 9-9-9 plan as the solution to all of our ills.

Herman Cain is not a victim. He's a man who decided he deserved the highest vote of confidence the country could give him. And though he may be a genuine, likable and thoughtful person with some good ideas, he did not deserve that vote.

Herman Cain knew what he didn't know. He should have realized that it was too much to be president.

Whether Cain's indiscretions are the stuff of sin or the stuff of slander only he, his accusers and his God know for sure.

And since his detractors and/or opponents had everything to gain from his political demise, it's easy to make a case that what has happened is, in fact, the flawless execution of a remarkably well planned character assassination.

If that's the case, then Cupp is, in fact, wrong.

Cain is a victim.

If not, then not.

Her contention, though, that Cain can't claim victim status and has failed in his quest because he simply didn't "deserve that vote" is flawed.

Because it wasn't his failure to connect with voters that has ended this campaign.

We will, now, never know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but as regards what, or who, Herman Cain did or didn't do.

As a result, we're going to be denied the chance to weigh in on the merits, or lack, of what he had to offer us in the way of leadership.

None of which, of course, necessarily makes Herman Cain a victim.

But there is one.

That would be us.