You Heard Me / 10-29-11

Not that you were paying attention to a World Series that lacked the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, and all teams from Chicago or L.A. (plus nobody invited the Mariners! Again!), but yeah, there was a fair amount of drama in the Fall Classic this past week.

The Cardinals, twice a mere strike from defeat, won it all Friday night. They came back from a two-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth AND tenth innings to wrest Game 6 from the Texas Rangers, then cruised to a 6-2 Game 7 victory to claim the trophy.

This series had it all. Individual heroics, eye-popping errors (confession: "eye-pooping" was the first thing my fingers typed, and that's not so far off), outstanding pitching performances, epic at-bats, game-saving hits and catches, meltdowns, questionable decisions; oh, there was more than enough drama.

And God. There was some God, too. Well, according to Texas slugger Josh Hamilton, who says God dropped by for a nice little mid-game chat.

In the heat of the moment Thursday night, Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa couldn't place a call to the bullpen to get the right pitcher in the game. But in the opposing dugout, minutes later, Hamilton had a direct line to the Deity Formerly Known As Bruce.

"I was walking to the plate. And it happened as I was brushing dirt in the batter's box. Very cool. Y'all ought to try it sometime," said Hamilton, a self-avowed born-again Christian who turned to Jesus after years of substance abuse and all the lovely things that come with a destructive lifestyle.

I won't leave you hanging, like a lousy curveball, any longer. Here's the Transcript:

"He said, 'You haven't hit one in a while and this is the time you're going to,' '' Hamilton said. "But there was a period at the end of that. He didn't say, 'You're going to hit it and you're going to win.' "

Hamilton hit a home run that trip to the plate.

(Now to his credit, Hamilton didn't ask God to give away the game's final outcome. That would have sucked. Not for God. Strictly for Josh. Who lost the game, and the series.)

You've probably noticed that I don't take this kind of chatter very seriously, so then here are some assorted conclusions one might draw from the Hamilton-Yahweh pep talk:

1. God dislikes the Rangers. (Chalk one up for divine good taste. What whaat!)

2. Or... God was just popping in to deliver some free information about the near future. You know, between checking in on the earthquake in Turkey earlier that day that killed at least 500 people, the developing floods in Bangkok, and scattered famines and wars.

(Everyone needs some R&R, right? Letting the world's countless tragedies take their collective toll is demanding work. Not that I'd know. God doesn't talk to me. Too busy, you know, whispering some athletics-based fortunetelling in a dude's ear.)

3. Athletes really are more special than the rest of us. (We should totally pay the best ones five figures, daily. Eh, what's this now? Oh.)

4. It was actually Satan, messin' with Texas. (Ol' Luce is probably the only one who can get away with it!)

5. It was actually God. (empty parentheses, for sure)

6. Some combination of Hamilton being wrong/deceitful/confused. (Rats. The answers are losing their snark! Quick! Be all clever-like!)

7. God did speak to Hamilton, but told him he was going to ground out to shortstop. Josh is just covering for a giant Oops. (There you go, me.)

7. Something else happened. Not God speaking to Hamilton, but also not God not speaking to Hamilton. (It's very mystical. "Well, that's not very snarky." "Shut up, inner dialogue!" "Don't talk to me like that, please." "Excuse me. Who are you to say how I may and may not--")

144 Or Less, Vol. XI / 10-29-11

Recently in this space I detailed Ron Paul's fantastical path to the 2012 Republican nomination (ed. note: "fantastical" does not share a meaning with "fantastic"), plus a list of things I genuinely like about the Herminator.

Well, each time I burrow into deeper examination of a flawed GOP field, I'm left to conclude that Mitt Romney eventually wins the nomination.

Which is how I happened upon this, from Steve Benen, in Washington Monthly:

"As hard as it is to believe, it’s very likely the Republican presidential nomination will go to a French-​​speaking Mormon vulture capitalist named Willard, who used to support abortion rights, gay rights, gun control, 'amnesty' for undocumented immigrants, and combating climate change, and who distanced himself from Reagan, attended Planned Parenthood fundraisers, and helped create the blueprint for the Affordable Care Act."

This can't happen, right? Right?

(Word count: 144)

Nine-Nine-Nine Things I Like About Herman Cain / 10-21-11

You're going to assume that I made the following list in jest.

You're going to wait, and wait, and wait for the sarcastic kicker.

Well, it ain't comin. Read ahead. See?

Ha. Joke's on you. These are nine things I legitimately like about Herman Cain and his presidential campaign. What that's now? Yes, I know he's a Republican, shut up already.

1. He offers a solution to our taxation quagmire. His 9-9-9 plan isn't just an inspiration for this babblefest I call "blogging." It's an actual alternative to the mess in which we find ourselves today, wherein:

One party won't raise taxes or cut benefits;

The other wants to cut taxes but not the benefits;

Meanwhile, the deficit continues to mount, health care costs continue to rise and the safety net gets more and more expensive.

Say what you want about 9-9-9. It's gimmicky. It's too simple. It's regressive. Fine, whatever. But at least Cain is contributing to the discussion in a positive way, detailing a plan of attack, rather than delivering the same empty promises I like to call "lies."

2. He is not easily ruffled by white people calling him "brother." He's not even ruffled by white people with questionable race-related incidents in their past calling him "brother," over and over, on a national stage. In fact, if one of his rivals for the GOP nomination had once leased a hunting ranch called "N*ggerhead" for a decade, using it with his family, and that same rival had called Cain "brother," over and over, in a kinda douchey condescending sort of way, and this had all happened on October 19, 2011 during a debate in Las Vegas, Cain would have remained unruffled throughout.

That was a purely hypothetical exercise, of course, right.

3. He is pro-choice. Not personally, no -- he's on record as being strongly opposed to abortion, but he also adamantly made the case this week, in an interview on CNN, that abortion is a choice best left up to the woman, not the government.

His actual words: "It's not the government's role or anybody else's role to make that decision."

After clarifying that he considers himself pro-life, he followed up: "I can have an opinion on an issue without it being a directive on the nation. The government shouldn't be trying to tell people everything to do, especially when it comes to social decisions that they need to make."

Asked if a woman should be forced to carry a fetus to term after being raped, he answered, "That's her choice. That is not government's choice. I support life from conception."

(He backtracked the next day on his website. That's kind of what politicians do, though.)

4. Although I just called him a politician, he's really an outsider, which is good. Politics needs these guys. Like a '92 Perot or a Ralph Nader of any vintage, non-career politicians serve an extremely important function: they tether the lifelong insiders to the real world. Sometimes they use graphs. I like it when they use graphs.

5. Cain is black. (I know, you're colorblind, you hadn't even noticed.) Your political correctness notwithstanding, the man's race is somewhat of a coup for the Republicans, whose base, according to the latest official numbers, is:

--->103.7 percent white

--->.00002 percent Latino (that's counting W's Spanish-speaking skills and Marco Rubio, who's Cuban anyway)

--->That rich Asian-American guy

--->Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and a 99-year-old former actor in a nursing home somewhere who's still wearing blackface.

If the Republican Party is going to survive at all, and outgrow its current rift with minorities, it needs, well, nonwhite faces. And it would be good for the country, somehow, if the right-wing party was still in existence a generation from now. So, yeah.

6. He's a successful businessman. Wildly successful. He's a multi-millionaire! He was president and CEO of Godfather's, a chain he saved from extinction in the 1980's and 90's. When Cain talks money, you have to at least listen. And money troubles are kinda exactly what the nation's going through right now.

7. He legitimately thinks he has something to offer the nation, so he's following through with that notion. He didn't have to run for President. He's not on his third campaign for the Oval Office. I get the feeling he's not necessarily chasing power for power's sake, although to run for this office in the first place, it does take a certain amount of self-esteem.

8. His family story is compelling. He was raised in a lower-middle-class home, in which hard work, education and faith were paramount. Check his wiki page. And then, imagine this: his childhood values seem to have stuck. He's been married to the same woman for 43 years, he owns a master's degree in computer science from Purdue and is an associate minister at his church.

(Lots more money in the Cain household this time around, though. Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

9. He beat cancer. Stage Four cancer, in his colon and liver, five years ago. He was given a 30 percent chance of survival; now he says he's in remission. You have to respect someone who takes on death, and wins. (My advisers just whispered that beating cancer constitutes merely a temporary victory. Screw that. Any effort that forestalls death is a win in my book.)

Done. Nine items, no sarcastic kickers. Granted, there is no chance I would ever cast a vote for Herman Cain, and I could just as easily make a list twice this long about things that turn me off about him. Maybe some other time.

(P.S.: I found this after finishing the post, so call it 9a. In 2009, Cain founded something called "Hermanator's Intelligent Thinkers Movement," an activist program that fights for conservative causes. Forget the agenda. The acronym spells Hit 'em, and you get to use the term "Hermanator"? Legen. Dary.)

The Ron Paul Scenario / 10-20-11

Ron Paul is, by all mainstream media accounts, the longest of long shots to win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

And yet.

And yet.

There exists a scenario by which Paul could nab the nomination. I'd like to explore it today. Won't you ride with me? Please ride with me. And remember to keep your eyeballs inside the car at all times.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Part of the reason the MSM is so quick to discount Paul is that he doesn't fit into a neat little box like Rick Perry (gunslingin' conservative), Mitt Romney (establishment moderate), Herman Cain (outsider businessman) or even Sarah Palin (populist freakshow).

Some highlights and lowlights of Paul's career:

He voted against the Iraq war. The money quote: he found himself "annoyed by the evangelicals being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything That I was taught as a Christian." He voted against the so-called Patriot Act and calls gay marriage a states' issue, not to be trifled with by the federal government.

At the same time, Paul says hospitals should not have to treat illegal aliens in emergency rooms. He would eliminate FEMA, the IRS and the Department of Education. (Say what you will, the country is better for having all three of those entities.) He voted against legislation aimed at catching online child predators.

The eccentricities: He's opposed to all foreign aid, he favors decriminalizing marijuana, he opposes the trade embargo on Cuba, and he habitually votes against legislation not expressly authorized by the Constitution. He'd scrap the Federal Reserve and return to the gold standard abandoned under Nixon. Also, he's 76. I'm told that's considered ancient.

(All information gleaned from his extremely informative wiki page.)

Summarizing, if Ron Paul were an ice cream, he'd be the anti-vanilla. He'd be Rocky Road, except with chili peppers instead of marshmallows.

And yet.

And yet.

Paul won the Value Voters straw poll last month. He polls at around 10 percent, give or take. He lost by less than a percentage point to Michele Bachmann in Iowa over the summer. He's tantalizing in his potential to win, or get crushed like a bug.

So how on God's greenish earth does this guy snake his way to the nomination?

Well, Rick Perry and Herman Cain have some pretty serious flaws. Perry reminds everyone of Bush, and not of W's theoretically good parts. The guy leased a ranch called "N*ggerhead," and not by accident, nope, for a whole decade. He invested in porn; he volunteered for Al Gore. His oft-touted "Texas Miracle" boils down to finding a few minimum-wage jobs without health insurance for his poorest citizens, of which there are many, all while watching the state's unemployment rate rise faster than the nation as a whole. Look it up. He calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. "Vote for me! I'll dismantle the safety net!" Interesting strategy.

Cain? Turns out he's pro-choice. Or maybe not. His evolving stances and awkward dances on the abortion issue make Romney look like a poster child of consistency. (In case you're not following the race too closely yet, that's a jab at both men. In case you don't know anything about American politics, conservative primary voters care a great deal about abortion.)

And the pizza magnate's gimmicky 9-9-9 tax plan got destroyed by his competitors in a debate last week. It wasn't pretty, from a Hermanesque standpoint.

So what about Mitt? Good ol' Mittens, the guy who stays put with a 28 percent share of primary voters, no matter what. Doesn't go up, doesn't go down. Does his ceiling even stretch to 50 percent, ever? Or is he this year's version of what Hillary was in 2008, when she fell victim to a vehement ABC -- Anybody But Clinton -- swath of the Democratic electorate?

Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum (Google him, it's worth it), Jon Huntsman and Bachmann are either dead in the water or losing traction quickly. Chris Christie isn't running, neither is Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee's obviously lying facedown in a ditch somewhere, and in case you forgot, Tim Pawlenty dropped out over the summer.

The nominee will be Cain, Perry, Romney or Paul. Except it won't be Cain, not after this week's multiple meltdowns. He is not ready for prime time, all the time.

Really, it'll be Perry, Romney or Paul. Except it won't be Perry. He debates poorly, he looks unpresidential, he turns too many folks off, he won't play well in the general election, and every intangible in the book seems to be working against him. In another election cycle, maybe.

So it'll be Romney or Paul.

But say something happens to Romney. Already, he's treated us to "Corporations are people, my friend" and "I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, I can't have illegals!" That's just in the last eight weeks, with 54 more of those to go before Election Day. Oh, and there's the little matter of how he set up Obamacare in Massachusetts. Say he compounds gaffe with gaffe, loses his cool a couple times, flips or flops on this or that issue, again, and who knows?

Better yet, say the Republican primary voters who actually show up are:

* Conservative Christians who believe Mormonism is a cult

* Social conservatives who dislike his record

* Wary of insiders this election cycle

* Folks concerned about his flipfloppiness

* Still upset about health care legislation

and those voters go ahead and choose an alternative. What happens then? Does Romney crest past 30 percent anywhere besides New Hampshire?

If Romney, Cain and Perry are somehow out of the picture, your nominee stands to be one of the also-rans from six paragraphs ago, or Paul. The latter has an organization that puts his remaining opponents to shame. He has name recognition. By all accounts, he's a smart man, if quirky, and he projects an image of responsibility and honesty. He has a devoted following. (You could call them disciples! Or discipauls!)

Let's go to the calendar, then, and play this thing out chronologically.

It's January 15, and Ron's just finished winning Iowa and Nevada, nicely sandwiching his second-place finish to Romney -- by five percentage points! -- in New Hampshire. Paul is blowing expectations out of the water. He starts to raise funds like Obama 2008. Or, to be more precise, like Ron Paul 2007.

He loses to Perry in South Carolina on the 21st, but the four social conservatives split the far-right vote in Florida ten days later. Romney wins there, by default, with 26 percent. Nobody is impressed, especially because he just finished fifth in SC. Fifth!

Following a string of unimpressive results in the caucuses of CO, MN and ME on February 7, Perry's funds dry up at last and he drops out. Bachmann leaves the race a week later, but only after hanging on to barely take the Minnesota caucuses, where Paul finishes second.

Eight states have voted. Romney leads Paul by one delegate.

The two split Michigan and Arizona. Massachusetts selects Romney on March 6, but that's the same day Texas goes big for native son Paul. In fact, the other 11 states voting that day swing 7-2 to Paul, with him winning all five caucuses plus Vermont and Ohio. Cain nets the two leftovers, Oklahoma and Georgia, but having won just those two contests, and polling at 10 percent nationally, he calls it a campaign.

So do Santorum and Huntsman, who've won nothing; neither man has even placed second thus far.

With the pool of candidates thinning, Romney experiences a small uptick in poll numbers, but faced with essentially a choice between a libertarian and a moderate, many primary voters stay home. The ones who don't are, you guessed it, the Discipauls, who are emboldened by their man's now sizeable lead in delegates.

Gingrich stays in, gets a bump in the polls, and annoys the hell out of Mitt.

Desperate, Romney goes negative. He makes a disturbing campaign ad that is generally reviled, he loses his temper, he says something stupid, again.

To the great chagrin of the Republican establishment, Paul wraps up the nomination in April and coasts into the convention with a backroom deal-proof lead in delegates.

Granted, the scenario described above is... farfetched. But so very much NOT out of the realm of possibility. Here's the primary calendar. It's front-loaded with Western states, Southern states and caucuses.

It could happen. It won't. But it could.

What's Wrong With This Picture? / 10-13-11

A lot, is what's wrong.

Because I'm out of practice, I'm not going to organize my thoughts at first; just going to respond, in sequence, to each of the statements on the sheet.

"About to graduate debt-free." That's actually admirable. College ain't cheap.

"working 30+ hours a week making barely above minimum wage." That's why you're going to college, after all, so you don't have to work a crap job, so you can get one that allows you to make a living. That's almost full time... huh. I am honestly impressed with your dedication. No snark.

"in-state public university." Yeah, that's one way to make it affordable. Not everyone can -- nor should they -- go to Stanford. (My kids should.)

"started saving at age 17." Smart.

"I received two scholarships which cover 90 percent of my tuition." Again, that's pretty cool. Basically, you only owe 10 percent of your class costs, plus books, and living expenses. The crap job should be able to cover most of that. Makes sense.

"I have a 3.8 GPA." More on that in a few moments.

The "I live frugally" paragraphs. Kudos. More people should do that, to avoid accumulating debt before entering the real world, where debt can eat you up.

"If I did have debt, I would not blame, etc..." Not sure what this paragraph is doing here, unless the person is more interested in making a self-righteous point or a political statement. Both of which are cool. I do that all the time! You're reading that kind of thing right now.

"and will continue to work my @$$ of for everything I have." Just say ass. Otherwise, you look and sound 13 years old.

"I am NOT the 99%." Well, by definition, you are, since the other 1 percent refers to the richest 1 percent of Americans. I don't think you are part of the 1 percent. Maybe that 3.8 GPA is being dragged down by a poor math score? (That was mean, yes, but I won't take it back.)

So let me get this straight.

That sheet describes the kind of effort it takes to graduate debt-free

-- from an in-state university

-- with 90 percent of the tuition eliminated

-- forgoing all luxuries

-- working nearly full time.

Damn. I'm not encouraged. I'm depressed. Our higher education system is financially broken, and we need immediate reform. This is not a picture worth celebrating. It's one we ought to never have to see in the first place.