"... the largest economy in the world is [was?] the EU's - yet this rise to supreme power was not accompanied by a military buildup - in fact in many ways the exact opposite. Why? Because they're protected by America and as like nations with ideological, social and cultural affinities with America they have no reason to fear it. Ask yourself a question: If China was a democracy, an open society with a fully free press and people etc etc, would they be building up their military to the degree they are now? Would they be threatening war over Taiwan? Would they be actively enabling the nuclear insanities of N Korea and Iran? It's the differences that matter - not the thousand things we can point to that seem innocuous - it's the differences. There are always very good reasons why countries shouldn't go to war - but they do anyway. The Second World War shouldn't have happened - but it did anyway. Now, I'm not gonna compare China to Nazi Germany [although there are correspondences: a wounded sense of national pride, the gnawing impatience of a feeling of fettered cultural/historical superiority, a socialist ethos resting upon a state driven capitalism] but the 30s were full of ostensibly intelligent people who praised to heaven Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia and imagined the barbarism of The Great War a thing of the past and counselled America to learn the lessons the upstart nations had to teach and accordingly adapt and acquiesce to the 'new' order. Didn't quite work out that way. Predictions of peace always fall short for the very simple reason that they are predicated on a view of the species governed by wishes and not facts. Anyone who believes conflict between America and China is not inevitable needs to go back and read their Hobbes, their Machiavelli - their Thucydides..."

Bill Clinton calls Gingrich a thoughtful politician - I take it this means it's not lost on liberals that Gingrich would amount to electoral suicide by republicans and therefore they hardily endorse his nomination? Or maybe thoughtful is argot Bill uses when discussing fellow serial adulterers. Then again, if Gingrich becomes the nominee, Bill will have to endure constant regurgitations of how hypocrite Newt was busy getting busy while at same time  preaching gospel of purity to ol' Billy boy for being so busy with the getting busy - a nasty business, that - so possibly Clinton praises in order to bury. Nasty business for sure.

"... why is Russia sending some warships to Syria?... I assume the Russians understand what the Western media seems incapable of grasping - there can be no peaceful or anything even remotely resembling peaceful resolution here... the Syrian military is an Alawite body - if they lose control [they're not gonna surrender it] the country will become Iraq 2005, except probably worse... since there is no exogenous military power that will or can step in to adjudicate the violence to come, the eventual 'endstate' here is highly open to influence... Russia knows China's ambitions stretch through Iran and Iran's ambitions stretch though Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean - if it wants to be a player in this game their 'influence' must lean Alawite... as to whether this strategy is anti-NATO per se, well... only in the sense that Putin's dream of a resurrected Soviet Russia is not served by allowing China to go unchallenged as the dominant regional player... there's just no road through NATO that gets Putin to where he wants to go..."

What about a return up the polls by Bachman? Something tells me the Gingrich bubble will soon want for air and the zealots may go looking for the only somewhat qualified true conservative in the race - and she has been the victim of several unsavory attacks from the 'liberal media' which of course automatically makes her cause noble and just in the eyes of the aggrieved. I had said at the outset that one should keep their eyes on her - she seems reasonably smart and gives the impression of being tough as nails - I had thought that once she learned the game, once she figured out how to most effectively sell herself, that she could become a threat. Still an unlikely run I'd think - but not impossible. Which is not to suggest I'm looking forward to a Bachman presidency... no, just saying...

And what about Bloomberg? His pointed [and justifiable] criticism of Obama viz the super committee failure certainly sounded like a man positioning himself for something - the race is still ripe for a third party entry and Bloomberg has many of the necessary qualities for such a thing: he has executive experience, he's a successful businessman, he's rich, he can appeal to moderates on both sides of the aisle. He does come up short in the charisma side of things - but after a president who was more celebrity than leader, the people may be less needy in that regard.

One positive at least from the 'debate' was a questioner, Fred Kagan I believe, raisiing the issue of deteriorating US strategic relationship with Pakistan since the OBL killing and a query put to the candidates about whether the killing was worth it given this deterioration. I had come to the conclusion that the entire supposed national security intelligensia of the US had utterly missed this crucial element of the story so it was nice to see maybe not [although possibly this 'interest' merely response to recent memo from Pakistani diplomat to Joint Chief Mullen concerning dangerous instability afoot in Pakistan between the military and the gov't since the killing with looming threat of a coup - I mean this was the first thought through my head the morning after the kill so maybe then not so promising a thing that putative intelligentsia now only addressing the negative fallout from this highly questionable strategic 'victory']. But of course none of the candidates were willing to question the killing of Osama and all accordingly reached deep into their populist bag of jingoistic jargon for something satisfyingly better-dead-than-alive-like in its simplicity.

Complexity and an electorate do not fit well together - indeed, democracy demands such a thing because how would a plurality ever be able to agree on anything if faced with issues confounding in their difficulty? Problems arise when leaders see or embrace the simplicity inherent in what they covet as an end in and of itself. This is why, paradoxically enough, leadership is so important in a democracy - the leader is constantly in a position of having to bridge the gap between the simple framework an electorate is necessarily forced to operate from and the obdurate complexity of the real world outside that framework. This is why ideologically rigid leaders do not fare well in a democracy - freedom requires the phenomena of Reagan Democrats, Clinton Republicans, its nature demands such a thing - there will never be any 'Obama republicans' and that's why his presidency was doomed from the start - I know he and his followers thought themselves so cunning and his story so alluring that they could easily pull enough wool over enough eyes to make it work, but it never works - the system is geared to reject absolutist arrogance of that sort [or at least one hopes it is - the West continues its decline and who knows what doors will open - which is why I fear the dawning of an 'anybody,anybody would be better than Obama' moment in this election cycle - I mean, how else explain the popularity of such flawed candidates as Cain and Gingrich? When a democracy reaches a point of desperation that enables an 'anybody but the current body' kind of delusion, that's not good - in such a case the notion of thoughtful, informed choice is lost, the very idea of individual conscience itself starts to fade - and who knows what creatures may emerge from those shadows].

Odd but not really how my interest in the debates wanes in inverse proportion to the impact they seem to be having on the GOP race - canned answers, programmed responses, thinly veiled pandering to the base, policy proposals that even a cursory appeal to sound reasoning would render either misguided, undoable or outright stupid, grandstanding - and no actual debating. Much of the idiocy of these exhibitions is summed up in the Gingrich ostensible mistake of last night ie proposing amnesty for illegals. Now, I don't like Gingrich - I think there's a good chance he's not entirely sane - he's certainly a pretentious and arrogant blowhard blessed with a seemingly indefatigable ability to believe wholly and without shame in the intrinsic value of everything he says, even when he's lying - but, regardless, his response on illegal immigration was actually quite reasonable but of course also quite at odds with the base - therefore it was considered a 'mistake' - consequently Romney quickly jumped on this 'mistake' to claim amnesty 'wrong' even though I don't believe for a second Romney actually thinks that's true - he merely knows that it's exactly what the base wants to hear - silliness - and then I'm guessing this silliness will be doubled down on when the base, hating the idea of thinking Romney right on something, will probably flirt with the idea of forgiving Gingrich his apostasy - even though this just the tip of an iceberg of vulnerabilities and flaws the portly Gingrich is forever running up against, something the base would surely notice it wasn't so busy hating Romney. Silliness.

"... Syria... I would tend to see the Arab league as a tool of Sunni aspirations - if they've moved against Syria it's because the Saudis have decided time is right to hope for a Sunni uprising in Syria that thwarts Iran's regional ambitions... of course a Sunni insurgency in Syria equals bloodbath which is why the Alawites will not be swayed by sanctions or any other pleas of peace... they realize there is no peace at the end of this road: it's either continued Shia repression or a bloodbath... and then of course a Sunni/Shia bloodbath will necessarily draw Iraq and Iran into things - which is why I have trouble seeing Turkey committing to a military option in any significant way... a regional war is in the offing here and even though Erdogan's behavior over the last year indicates he has a grand vision for Turkey as leader of the Muslim world, I gotta believe fear of a wider war would cause him to be cautious about getting too deeply involved in Syria... regardless, if Obama is thinking of a Lead From Behind, Part II he's nuts - Part I was a travesty as far as I'm concerned as the beginnings of a civil war are already percolating to the surface... stable democracy is nowhere in Libya's future, count on it... but there'll be no leading from behind option in Syria... of course that doesn't rule out the delusional from imagining one into existence.... maybe Bernard-Henri Levy is is hunkered down in the Cafe des Artistes right now scribbling another love letter to Susan Power... and hey, let's not forget the Russians, they'll have something to say about all this... oh, and China... build a naval base in Australia will ya.... well, suck on this... and let's not forget, Iran's regional ambitions are also China's in that they see their America-countering sphere of influence stretching from Pakistan, Afghanistan etc etc right on through to the Mediterranean... for my part I listen to the Israelis when it comes to perspective here because of course whatever happens will impact them in an immediate and dramatic and probably very dangerous way... and they've made it clear that for all the reasons they might have to wish for Assad to go bye bye, they fear even more an enraptured Sunni uprising in Syria lead by the Muslim Brotherhood... all along Israel has seen the Arab Spring for exactly what it is - the lifting of a lid from a jar full of devils..."

I had said, in a poison picking scenario, that if republicans, in a mad frenzy of ideological blindness, run their ship aground upon the idiot rocks of populist delusion by turning Cain and Gingrich into serious contenders, I had said that in that sad case I'd have to, if one of them was destined to beat out Romney, hope it was Gingrich who prevailed. Having had a chance the last few days to read some not so fond remembrances and reanalysis of Newt and his 25 years of bloviating self-aggrandizement, pseudo-intellectual posturing, neo-liberal flights of fancy, hypocrisy both moral and political and abject incompetence when it came to the art of governing, I've changed my mind - given a choice of Calamity Cain or Newt the nattering narcissist, I'm gonna probably have to stick with the devil known, Obama - yes, he's been a disaster as far as I'm concerned, but if he gets reelected I'm assuming he'll be boxed in by a house and senate controlled by republicans - bad for the country, sure, since it'll probably mean four more years of ideological stunts and stare downs, but I'm guessing still better than having one of those other two wackos in charge. Jeez - I know Romney has his flaws and I understand why some conservatives would be reluctant to embrace him - but all the not-Romneys are just so objectionable and unelectable, in some cases to a degree that verges on pathetic, if Romney can't nail the nomination down early and this circus carries on for months, I gotta believe the republican brand is gonna be seriously damaged. The best thing that can happen for republicans is that Romney does ok in Iowa [can't see any way that he actually wins there] and then quickly takes New Hampshire, South Carolina and then I think Florida - and then this farce is over.

I have to believe that when all those quality candidates decided not to run they did so thinking that Romney would win and they were fine with that [indeed Christie quickly endorsed Romney after definitely closing the door on speculation of his own run for the nomination] - in other words, they didn't see their absence from the race as a great negative that might impact the fortunes of the country in a worrisome way. Wouldn't surprise me if they're all feeling a bit uneasy about those decisions as they watch Gingrich and Cain rise in the polls.

[although it's reasonable to think that the 'others' may have suffered from same ill winds arrayed against Romney - I mean Daniels was essentially chased from the race for having the temerity to suggest a truce in the culture war, a totally sensible suggestion since democracy is fundamentally about the mitigation of extremes and the tyranny of absolutism through various compromises and accommodations; yes, Christie is loved by the tea party types but also has many 'moderate' positions that would not go down well with the zealots - certainly, I can not imagine Christie grovelling in the sand to appease the Limbaughs et al, in fact I get the feeling he'd relish in pissing them off; a lot of Ryan's work would certainly appeal to the uber right, but he's quite cerebral and I don't think he would have been a comfortable fit with the revolutionary zeal the base seems to be craving]

[and one has to wonder how much of the anti-Romney sentiment is driven by talk radio and how much of that 'talk' is motivated not by a fear that Mitt is the wrong man but rather by a fear that he is indeed the right man and therefore in a position to significantly delegitmize the hyper partisan rhetoric of outrage that is the life blood of talk radio. Certainly there's a palpable segment of right wing animus that is heavily invested in demonizing the Romneys of the world and therefore one imagines that at least some of the anti-Romney fervor is entirely self serving - I mean, how else explain the absurdity of pumping up Gingrich who shares many of the same shortcomings the uber right sees or imagines seeing in Romney plus many, many more on top - I mean he was a paid lobbyist for Fanny and Freddie which means he was essentially a manifestation of everything the uber right supposedly hates about Washington - and yet a poll today on National Review website indicates a majority don't think that's a problem - that's simply insane, it's not rational - and it's usually fear that drives people towards such nuttiness]

"... apologies for being the cynic but I'd guess any noise Obama makes regarding a long term military strategy encompassing a realistic maritime policy that actually addresses the threat will be done in the name of politics, not action. Two reasons for this: one, they're assuming Romney is going to be the opponent in 2012 and ol' Mitt is already staking out this territory for purposes of mounting an attack on Obama and the chosen one's unique interpretation of American vital interests... so the administration needs to look like it's engaged if it hopes to avoid envelopment of its foreign policy flank... look engaged you understand, not actually be so... and two, you cannot fashion a coherent naval strategy while at same time keeping the left wing base happy as concerns military expenditures and Obama cannot win in 2012 without his base... therefore my guess is you'll hear some talking of the talk but little walking of the walk on this issue... expect more leading from behind and theatrics, as in recent announcement of establishing American naval base in Australia ... nothing wrong with this per se, it's just that it looks to me like a typical Obama feint... do enough to give the appearance of something substantial, but then don't follow up on it with the numerous ancillary moves needed to keep the substance from devolving into mere tokenism... not unlike his approach to Afghanistan..."

Hopefully this will mark the end of Cain and I can now move on to something else - as in how lemming-like the migration from Cain to Gingrich will be - and accordingly I look at National Review's website and I see a picture of Newt and declaration that his rise in the polls stems from his fearless abuse of the press at the debates - fearless you understand - yep, without even taking a pause to consider Gingrich's many, many, many flaws already the lemmings are being wrangled towards the next cliff - quite a spectacle. The annoying thing is I'm stuck here having to defend Romney against these morons and I'm not even a Romney guy - I'm just acknowledging the obvious - it's either Mitt or a second term for Obama - or someone gives Mitch Daniels a billion dollars so he can run as an independent. That's it - all the not-Romneys are too flawed and otherwise compromised to imagine them beating Obama - but even if they could beat him, they're too flawed and otherwise compromised to imagine being any better than Obama - in fact there's a couple in there I could see as being decidedly worse.

Looks like I pretty much nailed it awhile back when I called Cain a sideshow charlatan - see this via Jen Rubin. Dangerous man - but just as dangerous if not more so as far as I'm concerned is how many conservatives are so willing to ignore obvious problems with the man in order to keep afloat a narrative that is so tenuous, simplistic and otherwise deeply flawed that it borders on delusional to remain attached to it. Although, since Cain is willing to compare himself to Moses, literally compare himself to Moses, I guess it's not surprising that delusion and his supporters would seem such a comfortable fit.

Polls [again with the polls - they're like barometers of idiocy] appear to show that Gingrich has now surged passed Cain into second behind Romney and in some cases a virtual tie with Romney. So does this mean all the hand wringing by types like me viz Cain was misguided or over stated? Possibly - but a shift to Gingrich could also show that the right is definitely in the grips of a fanatical obsession with a vague yet strongly felt ideological urge that may have entirely detached itself from coherent thought altogether and consequently has little to do with the actuality of candidates themselves - except when it comes to Romney and I guess Huntsman whose caricatures, as fashioned by the uber right, seem to represent the forces of the anti-urge [demi-urge you say?]. I mean, when it comes to ideological purity Gingrich probably carries as much if not more baggage than Romney - plus he has significant character issues - so how explain a swing to Gingrich? Easy - he's not Romney and in all the debates he argues with, scolds in fact the moderators who are all generally members of a press so reviled by the ideologues - with this dyspeptic role now assigned to him regardless of any objective reality [as at various times it has been given to Bachman, Perry, Cain] Gingrich satisfies the uber right's need to be purged of its fear and loathing through an angry mimesis - very Aristotelian I guess, other than it's complete divorce from logic.

And so it was in this sense that Cain disturbed, still disturbs actually since his poll numbers remain high enough to cause worry - it may be unlikely, but I still see a real potential here for a great Obama-like wave of fatuous emotion sweeping some inept, ill-suited for the job cretin [although Gingrich nor Obama for that matter are cretinish in the sense of being 'dumb' - Cain, on the other hand...] into the White House - well, actually, it's hard to see any of the not-Romneys beating Obama - I mean, Newt's closet is just bursting with skeletons and he has a very well earned reputation for putting foot in mouth - and Cain - still a year removed from the election! - has already spilled enough toxic waste to make a serious nurturing of a presidential bid seem highly dubious at best.

I will say though, if forced to pick my poison, and it would be poison of a sort, if Obama's ineptitude actually ends up enraging people so much that the doors open for the likes of a Cain or a Gingrich - I guess I gotta hope it's Newt. It almost makes one wish Sarah would jump into the race - and wouldn't surprise if she's thinking the very same thing - after all, if the base is so agitated that it's actually willing to consider the absurdity of Gingrich, then imagine how they'd respond if she came in - she'd shoot to the lead by ten percentage points [not that I'd necessarily consider that a good thing understand - but what circus isn't improved by a pretty girl on a tightrope?]

Krauthammer for all intents and purposes in latest article disqualifies Perry and Cain as serious [or prudent] presidential nominees and essentially endorses Romney. This is last paragraph of piece concerning what the electorate will be looking for in 2012:

This is no disoriented, easily led citizenry. On the contrary. It is thoughtful and discriminating. For Republicans, this means there is no coasting to victory, 9 percent unemployment or not. They need substance. They need an articulate candidate with an agenda and command of the issues who is light on slogans and lighter still on baggage.

Now, I would have trouble delineating any given electorate as thoughtful and discriminating - but people do have instincts and those instincts can be as right as anything else when it comes to understanding a problem of the type electorates are usually asked to adjudicate.

Unfortunately, Krauthammer is hardly a kingmaker - in fact very likely the exact opposite of such given that when he in similar fashion a year or so ago advised running the Palin bandwagon off the road the base excoriated him as a typical example of the out of touch elitism of Washington smarty pants - so I'm not taking this back door endorsement as a sign that Cain the Idiot is done for and the path is now clear for Romney [and I suppose I shouldn't rule out possibility that Charlie in a roundabout way has a third party challenger in mind here - can't be he's talking about Gingrich, can it? No, no - Newt's virtually a personification of baggage]

It does sort of set up an interesting dynamic though, ie should Cain, through the sheer stupefied will of his supporters, manage to survive his many shortcomings and continue to pose a serious threat to Romney, one could foresee a damaging bifurcation of republican sympathies on the horizon - because my take is a large proportion of conservative intellectuals have come to the same conclusion I have, that Cain would be a disaster and Romney is clearly the only logical choice here given the options - but the base seems to be thinking, rather, feeling something entirely different. If Cain becomes a serious threat you could definitely see a destructive fracturing on the right.

The debate... I dunno... one is tempted to say that if this is the best the greatest democracy on earth can do then, well... not good. Romney again is obviously the only guy up there that strikes one as presidential material, Perry's painful gaffe making that fact even more demonstrably clear - but Obama has the uber right so riled up with anger and fear and Romney is so not the guy to toss them the red meat they hunger for that I still think Cain, as frighteningly shallow and damaged and unprepared as he is, could surprise [again last night Cain showed he is basically incapable of speaking in depth on anything including his own policy proposals without resorting to the mindless incantation of empty slogans and catch phrases - and yet I read this morning supposed serious pundits claiming he 'performed well' - that it was indeed a performance I can agree with - that he did well in the sense of proving he was anything other than a character playing a role designed to appease and pander to the outraged angst of the uber right, then no, definitely not].

Of course the format by default encourages nonsense - moderators feel compelled to ask too many questions and that problem is aggravated further by there being too many candidates who are provided virtually no opportunity to interact and so a real and substantive debate becomes impossible thus forcing participants to consequently focus entirely on two things: don't make a mistake [sorry, Perry, you're toast] and efforts to squeeze out some little sound bite or applause line, no matter how utterly superficial it may be, that hopefully gets played on the morning news and causes the average clueless voter to go "Hey, that kinda makes sense... I guess... I dunno... seems like a nice guy anyway..." It's really rather pathetic.

It would almost be disappointing for me if Cain's campaign is sidetracked by a sex scandal since there are more, much more substantive reasons to repudiate the man's highly questionable run for the highest office in the land that are now just going to be ignored or lost in the noise, to wit: he doesn't seem particularly bright; he either doesn't understand his own policy prescriptions or entirely lacks the ability to explain them in a way that would lead one to believe he understands them or even allow one to just simply give him the benefit of some doubt that he understands them - it's as if he hired someone to come up with some ideas for him and then hired someone else to write out 'talking points' on those ideas and then he memorized, sort of, the talking points; his popularity seems to completely be held together by two largely superficial attributes, ie people apparently like him personally [and he does come across as an affable gladhander] and as a former motivational speaker and talk show host he knows how to shovel appropriate rhetorical  fodder to the gathered cattle; he has no governing experience, which of course his 'fans' see as a shining virtue but then that's because they're idiots [not that I have great love for politicians but just as you'd never hire someone without business experience to run your business, never let someone who'd never worked on a farm run your farm, never let your blind neighbor cut your hair or let his ten year old son borrow your car for the weekend, so to only the willfully stupid would waste time imagining that governing a super power does not require at least some applicable experience in the field of, ya know, governing - sure, there can always be exceptions - Ike for one I guess - but then Ike had been Allied Supreme Commander during WWII, the fate of the free world had rested on his shoulders - wee bit different from being CEO of a crappy chain of pizza stores]; and worst of all, as far as I'm concerned, not just his alarming paucity of knowledge concerning foreign policy but possibly even more disturbing the inference one draws from that sorry lacking, ie that either he has no interest in foreign policy, none at all, or is intellectually lazy - and given that the IAEA will be releasing a report tomorrow that may set in motion a chain of events that will result in the next occupant of the White House having to order a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities and thereby unleashing God only knows what dire consequences - that republicans would even be playing with the idea of nominating a guy like Cain is just... I dunno... shocking? Am I shocked? I know that if I were trapped for five minutes in a room with the extremes of either party that it'd be a struggle to keep from vomiting - so maybe not shocked - still...

"... an electorate is an unstable amalgam of loose sentiment, emotional noise, inchoate cultural signifiers and untold half baked ideas to begin with... throw astringents like fear, anger and resentment into the mad jumble and you have a recipe for complications that can easily escalate towards the worrisome and unleash forces that any sane person would view with great circumspection... Obama is an example of this... Hillary was obviously the superior candidate but she was overrun by a wave of sentimentality, a dream of a wish of a desire, that carried Obama forward... expertly guided by him of course... and lent to the illusion of the man the pretense of a truth that people wanted very much to believe in... Cain is cut from similar cloth, although in this instance colored red and not so cleverly woven... even though my dislike of Obama is plain, he at least looked and sounded presidential... his game was quite polished and I understood how people could be seduced by what he was selling... Cain on the other hand comes across as a congenial yet still foppish huckster, a sideshow charlatan, a guy whose unabashed arrogance has landed him on a playing field that looks to easily overwhelm his limited skills... all the more reason I guess to be deeply troubled that so many seem so willing to be so easily fooled..."

Hmm... well.... from farcical embarrassment to... words cannot possibly express one's dismay? I dunno. Cain, in trying to talk the talk and walk the walk on foreign policy, even though evidence shows and he himself grudgingly admits that he's capable of neither - Cain says he's worried about China because they may be trying to become a nuclear power some 40 odd years after they already did. Republicans are supposed to be the national party that can be trusted on security and foreign policy issues, that they take this stuff seriously - and this is the guy they wanna nominate, a person who appears to have not spent one day of his life considering these problems? To say the least, Cain supporters are decidedly not exhibiting rational behavior - like the uber lefties that recklessly clamored for Obama, they are drunk on an emotion masquerading as an 'idea' that is utterly detached from a coherent understanding of and appreciation for reality.

Ok, it's now gone from 'are you kidding me?' to embarrassing farce - Herman Cain compares his lack of knowledge viz foreign policy etc to his lack of insight into how pizza dough is made when he became CEO of Godfather's Pizza. This is embarrassing, sad and pathetic - the Chinese politburo will read that quote aloud over tea this morning and be smiling from ear to ear. An absolute farcical embarrassment. Putin, taking a pause between the wrestling of bears and the hunting of Siberian tigers, will throw back a shot of vodka and laugh with mocking contempt.

The frightening thing though is that, browsing through some conservative websites this morning, I see that support for Cain is actually up - now, this has more to do with the accusations of sexual impropriety made against him in the past and the ideological pack mules of right wing populism being all up in arms about a left wing media witch hunt [even though it's much more likely a republican as fearful of a Cain candidacy as I am leaked the info - if you were a liberal and wanted to smear the man you'd wait til he was actually the nominee] - and certainly this story is interesting for me anyway [as opposed to the caterwauling ideologues] insomuch as one, Cain is obviously lying when he says he was unaware of a settlement being paid to the accusers, and two, the mishandling of the scandal [Politico, the publisher of the story, gave him two weeks to respond before going public and he had nothing] seems to smell of incompetence - but no, sorry, the ostensibly 'manufactured' sex scandal may feed the current right wing mania of putting everything into some emotionally driven ideological context so as to avoid I guess at all costs the application of logic ie, logic in the sense that if the guy you want as president compares the art and study of foreign policy to pizza dough there's probably a good chance he's not a good fit for the job - yes, I see why the trolls fixate on the sex scandal stuff cause a liberal conspiracy gives them a perfect pretext for rationalizing their native idiocy - but sorry, there's no possibility of talking your way around a pizza dough foreign policy - that analogy is the real news here and has me thinking it may be a good day to crawl back into bed with a bottle of scotch and throw on my new Deadwood blu-ray.