No, seriously.  He said that.  Out loud.

“Running for the presidency is not an IQ test. It is a test of an individual’s resolve, it is a test of an individual’s philosophy, it is a test of an individual’s life experiences,” he told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt in an interview that aired Thursday. “And I think Americans are ready for a leader that will give them a great hope about the future.”

And then as if to prove the whole bottoming IQ thing and providing hope to people, Perry explains that God wants you to be poor so shut the hell up about it.

Outgoing Texas Gov. Rick Perry shrugged off wealth inequality, saying the Bible showed poverty could never be eliminated.

“Biblically, the poor are always going to be with us in some form or fashion,” Perry told the Washington Post.

Okay, so Texas is the fifth-highest level of income inequality in the U.S but Perry says that’s okay because God said it was okay.  Besides, there’s this ….

He said a young man who dropped out of high school in South Texas could make more than $100,000 a year as a truck driver.

Perry acknowledged that the richest Texans have experienced the greatest amount of earnings growth, but dismissed the notion that income inequality is a problem in the state, saying, “We don’t grapple with that here.”

Where?  Where are truck drivers making $100,000 a year?  Maybe they are, if they are hauling drugs.

Okay, so maybe half that. But, Perry says you could hope your wage would double.  Expect no help from him, though, because he is admittedly dumber than a sack of hammers.

Now here’s the sad part, he said all this butt crazy stuff after he “has been working with speech coaches from a Republican firm run by a former actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company.”  Well see, that’s the problem right there.  They should have gotten a cast member from Dumb and Dumber.

Thanks to everybody and their Aunt Betty Lou for the heads up.

My email has been down since yesterday afternoon, so if you’re trying to contact me – even by Tell Juanita – it ain’t happening.  You might try smoke signals, texting (if you have my phone number), a Facebook message, or writing it on the back of a twenty dollar bill and leaving it on my doorstep.

If it’s not back up by this afternoon, I’m giving you the phone number to my service provider, where you can expend your pre-holidays grumpiness.

UPDATED: the threats worked.  Email is back.

Okay, y’all, I take it all back.

Rich Perry’s stock just went up.

Lookie who else is running.

Rick Santorum is running for President. Again.

In fact, so many people were assuming the former PA Senator and 2012 runner-up would give it another shot that Santorum didn’t even really declare, giving the impression that his campaign never really stopped.

Hey, wait!  That was Rick Perry’s plan!

You can’t do that.  Two crazy Rick’s running for president with the same damn campaign plans.  How the hell will Sarah Palin tell them apart?

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Rick Perry says it’s not important that he make a decision about whether or not he’s gonna run for President because … ready for it? … people already expect him to run.

Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday he won’t make up his mind about running for president until the middle of next year, but he doesn’t feel pressure to announce sooner because most people expect that he will.

That there is what passes for logic in Republican circles.  Rick wants you to know that building expectations and announcing are two completely different things.

Coy little prissy thing, ain’t he?

“There’s not going to be a lot of hope in this country,” Perry said, if people don’t have the ability to recover from their past mistakes.

Perry also departs the governor’s mansion facing charges of felony abuse of power and the prospect that a court case could drag on for months and land him in prison. Yet Perry said he’s confident voters are willing to give him a second chance.

Pull in on those reins, cowboys.  Chance one: totally screwed up Texas education.  Chance two: hurt women all over the state.  Chance three:  oops.  Chance four: showed up at a campaign event drunk and/or stoned.  Chance five: failed to raise money for his PAC. …. Chance eleven: those glasses. Chance twelve: made a giant production of getting baptized outdoors. … Chance forty seven:  he’s not gay.  Chance forty eight: he’s dumber than bean dip. … Chance seventy nine: holy crap. He’s under felony damn indictment for extorting an elected official.

Second chance?  Hogwash, honey.  You passed second chance back in about 1987.

By Primo Encarnación

Growing up attending Catholic school, we were exposed early on to school prayer, scripture, theology, ethics, morals… you know, all the stuff that makes being a sentient being a lot harder. So of course, along the way, we learned the Golden Rule as expressed by our Lord in Matthew 7:12: “Do unto others…” Yadda. Yadda.

Then we would go to Pete’s, the corner tavern, and learn about real life – how it works, why it works, when it works, in the City that Works – from a barroom Bhagwan who hardly ever works: Uncle Jimmy “Barstool” Grobnik. From the top of his mountain, the end stool nearest the jukebox, Uncle Jimmy would dispense pearls of wisdom to us, along with the occasional quarter for the shuffle bowling machine. (We were nuts for that thing!)

Barstool’s take on the Golden Rule? “Dem dat gots da gold, makes da rules.” It’s a life lesson that has rung true. It’s also a life lesson that the Tea Party is about to learn.

The hard way.

They’ve been the unwitting, unwashed cannon fodder for their corporate overlords ever since they were astro-turfed into existence, voting as instructed to elect a cadre of Congresscritters only sometimes, and then only slightly, less idiotic than themselves, to further the interests of their masters. Global warming? Tax policy? Health care? All these mean less than nothing to the TeaBirchers, so long as they get to keep their guns and maybe shoot somebody, just as guns mean nothing to the oligarchs, so long as no one uses them to take away the TRILLIONS in cash they’ve been stockpiling offshore.

The only Superfly in the ointment of the super rich has been this Democratic President. So they will stop at nothing to avoid a repeat of 2012, where every billionaire had his pet candidate. Instead, they are scheming to throw the full weight of their oligopoly behind a single 2016 “establishment” candidate, mental-dwarf-tossing the Ted Cruzes, the Rick Perrys and the Michele Bachmanns of the world under the short bus they got off of, using the anti-democracy tactics they’ve been perfecting for the last 10 years. Turn out the lights, the Tea Party will be over.

Except for “dem dat gots da gold.”

After long, long years and more than a little smugness from Dick Cheney and a damn library for Dubya ….

The CIA’s harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees during the Bush era didn’t work, were more brutal than previously revealed and delivered no “ticking time bomb” information that prevented an attack, according to an explosive Senate report released Tuesday.

And just to make you run down the street naked, pulling your hair out and screaming …

Former president George W. Bush told CNN’s Candy Crowley last week that the United States was “fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf. These are patriots.”

“These are good people. Really good people.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told the New York Times that claims that the CIA was out of bounds or that the interrogation program was a rogue operations were “a bunch of hooey.”

“The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program,” Cheney said.

And did we impeach him?  No, we did not.

I just needed to say that.