He performed that way

I happened to catch a goodly portion of "A Very Ga Ga Thanksgiving" last week. (Don't ask. I was at a party where other people controlled the remote.) This was my first opportunity to actually consider Ms. Ga Ga for more than a moment. My observation was that she is either a real-life version of a character in a Christopher Guest movie or her entire act is an Andy Kaufmanesque gag played at the expense of the entertainment industry. If it's the latter, I'll admit to a grudging respect for her as a satirist but either way it's a pretty damning statement on the surreal stupidity of popular culture altogether.

Anyway what was my point here? Oh yeah. Herman Cain. Pretty much the same situation.

Josh Marshall needs to brush up on his geography

Obviously the Taliban is infiltrating Libya via Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan.

The library part might take a while

Herman Cain: “We need a leader, not a reader.”

It's a motto that makes at least part of this grand plan more difficult to conceptualize.

Cain is apparently already making his post-presidency plans.

“I call it a journey, not just a campaign, because it doesn’t stop,” he said. “We’re in the primary. Then you run for president. You win the presidency, serve four years. (Then you) might have to serve eight at the insistence of the people. Then after that, launch a Cain library,” then a post-presidential speaking tour, he mused.

And along the way, the interns... oooh the interns. It's a sweet ride to be sure.

In fairness, though, theoretical President Cain would be far from the first non-reader to lead us. Ronald Reagan, for example, famously received several intelligence briefings in the form of rather unchallenging videos like this one on the Chernobyl disaster.



And then there's President Obama who reads books by Fareed Zakaria, which really only barely qualifies as reading. In much the same way, Obama's first term in office has only barely qualified as leading.

Anyway, thanks to Cain for pointing out that the fact that those two words rhyme must imply some sort of symmetry between the concepts they represent. We'll keep an eye out to see if we can determine the nature of this relationship.

LOLCainz

Herman Cain has blown up to full Sheen mode now. What does it mean, though? Well, not a whole lot. Mitt was your nominee from the beginning of this stupid process which is bound to get even stupider between now and next November. Only 12 shopping months left...

Art Laffer loves 9-9-9

I don't really have a joke here. Just know that you'll need a really big cocktail napkin to draw this graph.

Boring

Zogby has Cain at 45% and Perry (who, incidentally I don't mind telling you, I was correct to think would fizzle faster than Rudy! 2008 once people saw him in action) all the way down at 7% now.

What's boring, though, is that despite all of what we're supposed to believe is wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on the part of "real conservatives" and just as much despite all the "LOOK OUT FOR THE CRAZY EVIL BACHMANN-PERRY-SANTORUM MONSTER UNDER YOUR BED" scaremongering coming from the Obama apologists, the GOP nominee is going to be Mitt Romney and was always going to be Mitt Romney. And if you don't or didn't get that at any point, you've never known how to pay attention.

Also 5318008 upside down spells "BOOBIES"

Michele Bachman during this week's GOP debate:

"The 999 plan isn't a jobs plan, it is a tax plan. ...when you take the 9-9-9 plan and turn it upside down, I think the devil's in the details."

You know what? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And I guess if it's stuck on 9 and you turn it upside down at 6:00 you can make it right four times but that's not important right now.

The point is 999 is a pretty diabolical idea any way you happen to look at it.

Cain’s tax plan consists of three different 9 percent taxes — one on wage income (investment income is exempt), one on sales of goods and services (including food, housing, and medicine), and one on business income (investments and purchases from other businesses are deductible; wages, however, are not). But most Americans will end up paying all three of those taxes, for a combined tax rate of 27 percent of their income.

That’s because middle and low-income Americans get all, or nearly all, of their income from ordinary wages — all of which would be subject to Cain’s 9 percent wage tax — and then they spend all of their income, which means it would be taxed again by the 9 percent sales tax. Finally, the burden of the 9 percent business income tax would be passed on to them as well, either in the form of lower wages — since wages are not deductible — or in the form of higher prices for goods and services.

The bottom line is that most Americans will pay all three of Cain’s taxes, making their real federal tax rate 27 percent. Compare that to the current tax code, under which someone in the bottom quintile pays two percent of their income in federal taxes and someone in the middle quintile pays 15 percent. The fact is that pretty much everyone making up to around $100,000 a year would pay more under Cain’s plan than they do now.

The good news here for you if you happen to be among the "working poor" which we must assume lies somewhere within Cain's $100,000 or below box, you can probably still make ends meet while paying the much higher total tax rate because Cain promises you'll be working a second job, anyway.

When questioned on the Face The Nation television program as to exactly how his economic plan would bring about an improvement in the economy, Cain responded that his plan would expand employment so much that "the working poor would be able to hold two jobs."

We could ask Cain what he thinks about pizza delivery as a moonlighting option but I'm not sure Godfather's ever offered that service. Besides, as is often the case with Cain when pressed for details, the odds are he has "no idea".

I wonder if Gene's Po Boys is still looking for help.