Insert Generic Herman Cain Joke Here

So much has happened since we last heard from our Republican friends.  Rick Perry showed up in New Hampshire, seemingly drunk or stoned or something.  Herman Cain made the difficult journey from amusing fake candidate to creepy old guy.  Now he's like Bill Clinton without the intelligence, or ideas, or accomplishments, or likability.  Cain and Newt apparently had their own little pretend time debate that nobody saw or cared about. 

Most importantly, I went a whole week without power or heat or hot water.  And, to be honest, that's left me in a bit of a foul mood, and I can't wait to make fun of some stupid people.  Let's get to it.

Tonight's debate is being hosted by CNBC.  Looks like Jim Cramer will be asking some questions, I'm looking forward to this.

8:00PM: Everything Herman Cain says sounds dirty now.  I'll miss you, pizza man.

8:03PM: I always think it's funny that all the other candidates get introduced by their current or former titles (Governor Huntsman, Congresswoman Bachmann, etc), but when they get to Cain, it's just Mr. Cain. 

8:05PM: Cain just declared Italy "beyond the point of return".  Somebody should tell the Italians he has no idea what he's talking about before they panic.

8:07PM: Romney doesn't think the US should be setting up a "TARP-like" program to bail out Italian banks.  Is somebody suggesting that?  What is Mitt talking about?

8:08PM: Cramer starts his first question by yelling loudly at the candidates and asking Ron Paul if he would really just let Italy fail.  Ron would let pretty much anything fail, as he just made clear.  I think he just suggested liquidating Italy...I may have missed some words there.

8:10PM: This is fun, Cramer will not take no for an answer on Italy.  He's basically telling them what the right answer is, but they still won't say it.  Other than my man Ron, they won't even address it.

8:12PM: I could swear I just heard Romney use the phrase "gay market share".  That can't be right, I need to focus.

8:13PM: I don't know who these people running the debate are, so we'll just call them Question Dude and Question Lady. 

8:13PM: Question Dude just asked Romney why Republicans should believe he has any actual principles.  He responded with a barrage of talking points and a promise to never apologize for the United States of America.  So there.

8:16PM: Question Lady just asked Newt why tax reform is the path to job creation?  Are you kidding me?  That's like asking these people to explain how gay people are destroying the family.  They can't explain it, it's just an article of faith:
Step 1: Tax Cuts
Step 2: Magical Things Happen
Step 3: Jobs

8:19PM: Bachmann just squeezed all of her talking points into one answer.  It had everything...tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, magic Mexico border fence.  She should have finished by dropping her mic and walking off the stage.

8:20PM: Santorum continues to defend his proposed 0% tax on manufacturing corporations.  Then he said "some people talk about trade wars with China", as if he disagrees with that.  Like two debates ago, Santorum said he doesn't want to have a trade war with China, he wants to win a trade war with China.  As always, Rick Santorum sucks.

8:22PM: Cain's defense for his sexual harassment charges?  For every woman that says he harassed her, he could produce 1,000 women who would say he didn't.  That's pretty air tight..."well, your honor, maybe this one guy says I murdered him, but I could show you a whole courtroom full of people who would say I haven't murdered them...yet."

8:25PM: Huntsman just opposed the auto bailout in Michigan.  That's balls right there.  Stupid balls, but still.

8:26PM: Important point about how Republicans see the economy.  Cramer asked Romney if corporations should focus on job creation or on creating profit for shareholders.  Romney said they go hand in hand, so did Perry...no they don't!  You can keep the money and give it to your shareholders, or you can use it to create more jobs.  Yes, more profitable corporations have more money to re-invest in jobs, but that's only helpful if they actually do that at some point.

8:27PM: Perry suggests planting "a big ole flag in the middle of America that says 'Open for Business Again'".  Well, that should do it.

8:28PM: Newt thinks it's sad that the media doesn't accurately report how the economy works in his imagination. 

8:29PM: Cramer seems genuinely amused by these morons.

8:32PM: Cain is still pushing his hilarious 999 plan.  Question Lady asked him how he would guarantee the rates would stay at 9%.  In Herman's mind, people love his 999 plan so much, that they'll never let politicians mess with it.

8:34PM: Romney - "The Obama economy has really crushed middle income Americans".  I don't want to get too technical here, but, in the business, we call that bullshit.

8:35PM: Michele Bachmann's tax plan? "I have everyone paying something".  I'd go for paying "something" as a tax rate.  Where do I sign up?

8:37PM: Ron Paul is suggesting the market should determine interest rates, not the Fed chairman.  He's not suggesting lower or higher rates, just rates determined by the market.  Question Lady is not getting it.  Ron seems frustrated.

8:46PM: Perry makes the blanket Republican point that regulations are killing America.  He suggests doing away with every regulation that isn't creating jobs.  Right, because that's the only thing in the whole world that matters.  Child labor laws don't create jobs.  In fact, they destroy jobs, millions of tiny little adorable jobs.  I wonder how Rick feels about them.

8:49PM: Newt says he warned Freddie Mac not to give out bad loans to people who couldn't pay them back.  I can't believe they didn't listen to him, just look how big his head is.

8:51PM: Cain says he would solve the problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by not starting them in the first place.  Does Herman Cain have a time machine?  Why hasn't he mentioned this before?  Why doesn't he go back and tell himself not to harass those women?

8:53PM: Question Dude asked Huntsman if he would break up the big banks.  Huntsman says he would "right size" them.  Question Dude asked what he meant by that, and he said something about making the banks set up some kind of fund to mitigate the risk that they would otherwise be passing on to the taxpayers.  That sounds like a non-moronic idea, but it also kinda sounds like a tax.  Luckily for Huntsman, nobody else on the stage was smart enough to figure that out, or they weren't paying attention.

8:57PM: We're doing a thing now where every candidate gets 30 seconds to talk about health care.  I can sum up the Republican health care position in two seconds - "NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!"

8:58PM: Romney suggests health care should work like a market.  Why?  Why is that automatically better?  Not everything can be fixed by the magic of the free market.

8:58PM: Question Lady has been subtly but effectively interrupting Newt every time he starts bitching about the questions.  This time, when he kept bitching, she interrupted with "would you like to try to answer a question about health care tonight or not".  I like her, I should learn her name. 

9:01PM: Santorum just gave us a brief history of all the things he did back in the 90's.  Ya know, back when people gave a shit about Rick Santorum.

9:05PM: Ron Paul says bailing out Europe would be "a real tragedy." I'm not sure tragedy is the word he was looking for.

9:12PM: The CEO of Caterpillar (who got to ask a question for some reason) just asked how they will put party aside and compromise for the good of the country.  Santorum finds a way to suggest that his 0% tax rate for manufacturing corporations is somehow a big compromise.  I'm not sure compromise means what Rick thinks it means.

9:15PM: Romney just criticized the President for only worrying about his re-election.  Yeah!  Mitt Romney would never just say anything people wanted to hear just to get elected!  Wait, did I say never?  I meant to say Mitt Romney constantly does that.

9:16PM: Perry just spent a full minute failing to remember the third government agency (I think he meant Cabinet Department) that he would get rid of.  Education, Commerce and...something.  We never found out what the third one was.  If you go back through the tape, you can see the exact moment when it went from funny to sad.

9:20PM: Newt just accused Lyndon Johnson of faking a balanced budget in 1969.  Yeah! Fuck Lyndon Johnson!  Seriously, what's going on here?

9:21PM: Romney just said he won't raise taxes four different ways in about 9 seconds.  This gets close to the heart of the problem.  We should have two parties arguing over what the appropriate tax rate is.  The problem is, for one of the parties, the appropriate tax rate is just "lower". 

9:25PM: Huntsman just said we have a real trust problem in this country with our institutions.  In a related story, let's go back to our debate where 8 leading presidential candidates tell us why we can't trust the government to do anything.

9:27PM: Ron Paul says the student loan program has failed and given students more debt and a worse education.  First of all, I work in higher education.  I could give you 100 reasons why students aren't getting better educations at colleges, and none of them have anything to do with student loans.  Secondly, failed at what? 

Here's the thing about student loans.  The fact that students borrow so much money to go to school allows colleges and universities to explode costs, because nobody expects to actually be able to afford college on their own anymore.  It's a crappy system, but you can't put the horse back in the barn.  Like housing, college is insanely expensive now, and we can't go back.  What we can do is find a way to create quality entry level jobs across a variety of industries so college becomes a good investment again, and that's why I'm proposing my 999 plan for...wait a minute!

9:31PM: Perry just remembered the third department he was trying to think of before...Energy!  Man, I'm so glad he remembered, that would have kept me up all night.

9:38PM: Wait, I'm confused.  Is Barack Obama killing jobs, or is China killing jobs?  Or is Barack Obama secretly Chinese?

9:40PM: Newt suggested yielding to Huntsman on the China question because, ya know, he used to work there and stuff.  An actual coherent thought from Newt, now I've seen everything.

9:42PM: Hunstman just accused Romney of pandering by suggesting punishing China with tariffs and calling them currency manipulators.  He brought up a good point, when we do it, it's "quantitative easing", when China does it, it's "currency manipulation".  Mitt responded by pandering some more.

9:43PM: Bachmann just accused China of building 3,000 miles of underground tunnels to house their nuclear weapons.  These people all know that everyone already knows China has nuclear weapons, right?  Is Bachmann surprised by this?  If I had nuclear weapons, I'd probably keep them underground too.  Those things are dangerous.

9:45PM: Cramer asked Cain a question that started with him specifically telling Cain that 999 is not an answer to the question.  Cain took 30 seconds to get to his 999 plan anyway.  Cramer is now lecturing Cain about why he's wrong.  Can we get Jim at every debate?  I can't tell anymore if he's genuinely amused or if he's five seconds away from killing everyone.

9:48PM: I've said this before, but it's worth repeating.  Rick Perry has a habit of starting sentences without knowing where he's going to end up.  It's like listening to a four year old tell you about his day, just a bunch of little strings of unrelated words, punctuated by strange facial expressions.

9:50PM: Ron Paul finished the debate by talking about crony capitalism while the other candidates hid behind their podiums.

Well, that was fun.  Quick programming note...there appears to be a debate this Saturday.  On one hand, watching Republicans isn't exactly my idea of a fun Saturday night.  But on the other hand, most of my friends live four hours away, outside of work people, I really only have one friend in Massachusetts, and I spent all day last Saturday bothering her.  Plus, I do enjoy this.  So, I guess what I'm saying is, the odds of me being here for Saturday's debate are about 50/50 right now.