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ONE: Eight Votes and Counting
Know why Rick Santorum turned in such a strong performance in Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses? The Duggars.
Yes, America’s favorite breeding pair recently took time out from their near-constant rutting to endorse the former Pennsylvania senator. This isn’t the first high-profile endorsement Santorum has picked up this year, of course. Nefarious supervillain Rupert Murdoch tweeted his endorsement Monday evening, while failed reality show star Sarah Palin more or less endorsed him immediately after saying she wasn’t going to be endorsing anyone.
With a mere seven children, Santorum is a comparative piker when it comes to “sowing the lower forty” yet Jim Bob Duggar still found much to admire:
“He’s somebody that doesn’t take a poll to know where he stands,” the Duggar patriarch told a crowd at a pizza restaurant north of Des Moines. “I’m asking families, Christians all over America, to get behind Rick Santorum for the next president of the United States.”
He later added, “[Santorum] is somebody that goes and really just votes from his heart and votes on his convictions, votes on things based on the Constitution of the United States and the Bible. And that’s the kind of man we want to support.”
With Jim Bob and his penis out stumping on the campaign trail, Michelle Duggar caught a rare break, and by way of thanks recorded some robocalls for Santorum, probably with tears in her eyes.
So why, after an endorsement as big as this, did Santorum ultimately fall eight votes short of Mitt Romney? Quite simply because the Duggars aren’t Iowa residents, that’s why. If they were, Jim Bob, Michelle and their voting-age children – Joshua James, Jana Marie, John-David, Jill Michelle, Jessa Lauren and Jinger Nicole – could have tied this up. Throw in another Santorum vote from Joshua James’ wife Anna and it would have been an embarrassing second place finish for Mitt.
TWO: Mysterious Ways
Pat Robertson believes God has shown him the identity of the next president, but he said he’s “not supposed to talk about that” as he talked about it on Tuesday. Despite refusing to come clean on who it will be, Robertson went on to share some notes he jotted down during his recent confab with the Almighty. It sounded pretty much like any bull session between two very, very old geezers around a cracker barrel, right down to the predictable “world is goin’ to hell” and “that Kenyan commie’s gonna be the ruination of the nation” sentiments, but at least the Maker didn’t mince His words:
Your country will be torn apart by internal stress. A house divided cannot stand. Your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country which is at odds with the majority. Expect chaos and paralysis.
Holy moly! I always suspected that the Lord watched Fox; I just didn’t realize he took it so seriously. Robertson gamely tried to guess the nature of the coming calamity. EMP blast? Nope. Cosmic or solar or radiation blast? No siree. Mayan galaxy alignment? Hell, no. Iranian or North Korean nuclear threat? Get serious. Earthquake or volcano? Nuh-uh. Massive power failure? Oh, pshaw. Finally, the Creator spat on the floor, squinted to the left and to the right, then leaned in low over the checkerboard and whispered hoarsely:
It’s an economic collapse. This is not my judgment. They are bringing it upon themselves.
All right. I made up the spitting and squinting and stuff, but just to give the story a little more oomph than Robertson’s clinical recitation. Robertson didn’t say whether God intends to head this disaster off, or whether He means to settle back in His rocker with wry satisfaction and maybe smoke His corncob pipe while the economy tanks. Nor did God tell his confidant when this is all going to happen, but since President Obama will be in office for another five years and has a successful track record battling economic collapse, I like our chances.
THREE: “Huge Political Consequences”
Speaking of omnipotent entities, the American Petroleum Institute threatened President Obama yesterday with “huge political consequences” if he fails to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring tar sands crude from Canada to Gulf of Mexico refineries (minus whatever amount gets spilled in transit across the US heartland).
American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard urged Obama to quickly approve the pipeline…
“I think it would be a huge mistake on the part of the president of the United States to deny the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline,” Gerard said during the powerful oil industry trade association’s annual “State of American Energy” event Wednesday.
“Clearly, the Keystone XL pipeline is in the national interest. A determination to decide anything less than that I believe will have huge political consequences.”
Gerard’s threats might have been better directed toward Republicans in Congress, though, since they’re the ones who insisted on including a provision in December’s payroll tax cut extension:
… requiring the president to make a final decision on the pipeline within 60 days.
What Gerard and his Congressional marionettes have yet to realize is that this newest example of GOP overreach provides all the cover necessary for President Obama to kill the pipeline with complete political immunity, despite the inevitable howling it will prompt from the “drill, baby, drill” crowd:
Obama administration and White House officials have said that the 60-day timeline could force them to reject the project because the State Department will not have enough time to conduct the necessary reviews…
Environmental groups – who vehemently oppose the project, citing concerns about oil spills and greenhouse gas emissions – have said Obama has no choice but to reject the pipeline under the GOP-backed Keystone measure.
Should things unfold in this happy fashion, and I believe they will, it will be a splendid example of “huge political consequences.”
FOUR: Butt is it art?
Carmen Lucette Tisch may not know much about art, but she sure knows what she likes to bang on with her fists and rub against her rear end.
She was charged yesterday with felony criminal mischief in the wake of a December 29 incident at Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum in which Tisch singled out a painting entitled “1957-J-No. 2″ for abuse that included punching it multiple times and, after yanking her pants down, sliding her buttocks along it. The damage to the 30- to $40-million work is estimated by the museum to be $10,000.
Tisch urinated on herself for an encore, an act which fortunately did not affect “1957-J-No. 2″:
“It doesn’t appear she urinated on the painting or that the urine damaged it, so she’s not being charged with that,” said Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney’s Office, said Wednesday.
According to the Denver Post report, Tisch’s record includes a drunk driving conviction and an armed robbery charge (later dropped), but this seems to be her first foray into felony art criticism. There was no explanation of why she chose this particular work from the 2,400 in the museum’s collection. I guess there was just something about its kinetic play of bold black and rust-colored forms counterpointed with flourishes of orange and yellow against a pale background that her buttocks instinctively responded to.
FIVE: Don’t-give-a-quit Attitude
I was certain that placing fifth in Iowa would be the death of Rick Perry’s presidential pipe dreams, but I failed to take into account one thing: Rick Perry is just not very smart.
Initially, Perry sounded poised to do the sensible thing:
“With the voters’ decision tonight in Iowa, I’ve decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight’s caucus and determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race,” he said. “And with a little prayer and reflection, I’m going to decide the best path forward.
By Wednesday, having apparently done all the praying and reflecting he needed to while still in Iowa, Perry told a press gaggle in Des Moines:
“This wasn’t a hard decision… [Iowa] is a quirky place, a quirky process to say the least and we’re going to go into places where they have actual primaries and there are going to be real Republicans voting.
I’m excited about getting out with real Republicans and laying out — and not that there aren’t Real republicans here in Iowa, but the fact it is was a pretty loosey goosey process and you had a [lot] of people who were there that admitted they were Democrats voting in the caucuses last night.”
So with an exultant heart I say: Thank you, Rick Perry! Now that Michele Bachmann has accepted that she’s too wacky even for Republican voters, this race needs your special brand of barbecued battiness more than ever.
Oh, and Governor, about that “real primaries” thing? You might want to get in touch with the Secretary of State. She probably has some good advice for your campaign team.