Seventeen

I recently heard that dancing with the stars is interested in Tim Tebow.  I hope he does it.  I'd love to see people other than football fans have something they enjoy ruined by idiots.  I can't wait to hear people tell me about how Tebow may not "know all the steps" and maybe he "falls down a lot" and "can't dance", but he's a winner and a real leader out there on the dance floor.

Dancing with the stars is the perfect venue for Tebow.  When you play football, if you suck at it, eventually everyone has to watch in horror/glee while you get destroyed by the Patriots.  When you're on dancing with the stars, you can suck all you want, your redneck minions can still vote you to victory.

Speaking of rednecks, goodbye Rick Perry.  You literally could not have been dumber.  At no point in your rambling, incoherent campaign did you do or say anything that even resembled intelligence.  Everyone in this country is now stupider for having experienced it.  You are awarded no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.

Tonight's debate is hosted by CNN and, frankly, I'm a little nervous.  Monday's debate was an unmitigated disaster.  The candidates had no respect for the moderator and the crowd had no respect for anything except factual inaccuracy and subtextual racism.  Obviously, being a network that actually employs journalists, sort of, CNN is in a better position to control tonight's festivities, but I fear there may be no controlling Newt tonight.  John King drew the short straw at CNN, and will be trying to keep this three ring circus on track.

8:00PM: CNN starts us off with their usual ridiculously dramatic opening.  I predict that 10 years from now CNN will be 24 hours of nothing but photo montages and dramatic music.

Debate Fun Fact: In defiance of popular wisdom, Mitt Romney has a tree in his backyard upon which money actually grows.  Obviously, genetically engineering the tree cost way more than the tree will yield over it's lifetime, but Mitt financed the tree with other people's money, so he's cool.

8:05PM: National anthem before the debate.  Arrrrrrrggg!

8:07PM: Santorum wastes no time in reminding us that he actually won Iowa.  How exciting for him.  Also, it looks like CNN didn't give John King a desk.  Odd choice.  He'll just sort of be wandering around the stage all night. 

8:09PM: King started by giving Newt a chance to respond to the recent accusation that he asked his second wife for an open marriage.  Newt responded by admonishing King for asking about it, for a good two minutes.  What a dick.  He finally got around to claiming the story is false, but also somehow tied it to the elite media protecting Barack Obama.  Seriously, what a dick.

By the way, do you want to know why you should care about Newt's personal life? Because, allegedly, Newt, while attacking President Clinton for marital infidelity, was simultaneously asking his second wife for an open marriage.  He has no conscience, he is essentially a sociopath, and he wants to be your President.

8:13PM: Santorum says he won't judge Newt, but his buddy god will.

8:14PM: Good on King for not responding to Newt's infantile temper tantrum.  It must be difficult for such a pompous ass to be so directly confronted by his own ridiculousness.

8:16PM: Newt claims that the Dodd-Frank bill is "killing small banks", which is patently false.  Nobody repeats bullshit better than Newt.

Debate Fun Fact: Newt is made of 95% salt water taffy.

8:18PM: Mitt just accused Barack Obama of "crony capitalism", and then called him the biggest impediment to job growth in this country.  There's no room in Mitt's capitalism for cronies, just ruthless destruction of faceless enemies.

8:20PM: Mitt says "I know that my style of capitalism works".  He added, "for me, anyway". 

Debate Fun Fact: Rick Santorum wears sweater vests because he believes they repel homosexuals.

8:24PM: Ron Paul claims that we didn't need any special programs to put 10 million veterans back to work after world war 2.  Ummm, I vaguely recall hearing about something called the G.I. Bill.  Everybody seems to think that went pretty well.

8:28PM: Mitt likes the idea of incentivizing the hiring of veterans, but only at the state level.  Because, as we all know, anything the federal government does is a communist overreach, but state governments can do literally anything they want to us with no consequences.

8:29PM: Newt just made my point about Ron Paul's answer and the G.I. Bill.  I don't like it when Newt's right, it makes me feel scared.

8:31PM: Mitt thinks he can repeal "Obamacare" by convincing democrats that the majority of the American people are against it.  And while that isn't, ya know, true, Mitt's probably right in thinking the democrats will fall for it.

8:34PM: Newt says President Obama wants to allow children to stay on their parents' health care until they're 26 because he knows he can't get them jobs.  Newt seems to believe that if you stop insuring them, the jobs will magically appear.

8:38PM: Romney continues to defend his Massachusetts health care plan using the exact same language the democrats used to defend the federal law. 

8:41PM: Newt says you can go to his website and find hundreds of ideas about health care, none of which resemble Obamacare.  I assume none of them resemble a coherent thought either.

8:42PM: Santorum just referred to himself in the third person.  I think winning Iowa may be going to his head.

8:43PM: Still talking about health care (ugh), Ron points out that Republicans, like Rick Santorum, for example, have no problem with expanding federal power when they're the ones wielding the power. 

Debate Fun Fact: Ron Paul is only 24 years old.  His appearance is the result of a curse put on him by a fortune teller at a carnival.

8:50PM: Quote of the night from Santorum: "Grandiosity has never been a problem for Newt Gingrich".  That's literally the most true thing that any candidate has said in any of these 17 debates.  Santorum went on to stop just short of calling Newt unstable.  I just spent two minutes liking Rick Santorum.  I feel dirty.

8:52PM: Newt likes to take credit for the 11 million jobs created while he was Speaker.  He also likes to say that government doesn't create jobs.  Newt likes to say a lot of things.  Later, he tied himself in knots trying to say both at once by saying that government that can "create an environment in which something something something jobs".  I admit I wasn't really listening.

8:54PM: Santorum just tore Newt apart on a rant about their time together in Congress.  Santorum claims he, as a freshman Congressman, blow the lid off a scandal Newt knew about for 10 or 15 years but didn't have the courage to do anything about.  Newt defended himself by ignoring Santorum and telling us about some other stuff he did.

8:56PM: Mitt leaps on the opportunity to paint Newt and Rick as Washington insiders while completely forgetting the question King just asked him.  Then he pointed out that Newt was only mentioned once in a Ronald Reagan biography.  I think Newt cried a little.

8:59PM: Ron says he's not releasing his tax returns because he'd be embarrassed by comparing his income to these other guys, adding that we don't really need that and he doesn't take money from lobbyists anyway and no one really cares about his taxes.  Sometimes Ron's still the best.

9:01PM: Mitt says he'll release his tax returns when they're finished.  Apparently, it takes a highly paid team of accountants at least three months to figure out Mitt's tax return.  That doesn't really surprise me.

9:02PM: Mitt promises that he'll release his tax returns right after everyone votes for him.

9:03PM: Apparently, Santorum does his own taxes, which is kind of funny.  He promises to go home and get them after the debate.  Do we all have to wait?

9:04PM: Romney is 100% flummoxed by this whole tax return release thing.  It's like they never programmed him for this.  Then he said he "earned" what he has.  That's one way to put it.

Debate Fun Fact: Newt has married and divorced twice more since the start of this debate.

9:07PM: Question about Apple having 500,000 employees in China.  Santorum says he'll give Apple a 0% tax rate to bring their money back to the U.S.  He also promised to go around the country smashing iPhones with a sledgehammer, claiming that he would "be the hammer of the free market".

9:10PM: King is always somewhere else on the stage when the camera finds him.  He's like the world's slowest and most boring ninja.

9:11PM: Question about SOPA.  I predict three of these guys will side with their corporate overlords and Ron will talk about civil liberties, but maybe I'm wrong.

9:12PM: I was wrong.  Newt is against SOPA, and made a perfectly coherent argument to support his opinion.  So there.  Romney agreed with Newt, but I can only assume he did that because he heard the crowd cheer Newt's answer and he doesn't really give a shit either way.

9:13PM: Well, I was right about Ron at least. 

9:14PM: Man, even Santorum said he's against SOPA.  Who are these guys? Santorum sort of hedged though saying "the internet is not a free zone where people can trample the rights of other people".  That kind of sounds exactly like the internet.

9:21PM: King asks each of the candidates what they would do differently in this campaign if they could do one thing differently.

Gingrich: He wouldn't have hired all those people who quit on him last year.
Romney: Mitt, in a bold move, took the opportunity to give us a minute of his general election stump speech.
Santorum: Rick wouldn't change a thing. 
My Man Ron: Also wouldn't change anything, but I believe him a hell of a lot more than I believe Rick.

9:24PM: Some lady in the crowd asked how the candidates would protect American citizens' jobs if illegal immigrants were given amnesty.  Why do they let the audience ask questions? 

9:25PM: Newt's answer to the lady's question somehow took us to making English the official language of government.  Newt also suggested allowing local citizens to decide whether or not their local immigrants would get to stay here or would have to go home.  He's suggested this before, but it's still one of the worst ideas I've ever heard.

Debate Fun Fact: Rick Santorum spends 5-6 hours a day on the phone with "the internet" trying to fix his google problem. 

9:28PM: Mitt brings up building the stupid fence.  I hate when these guys get into immigration.  It's even worse now that there's less of them, so they all get to say more stupid things. 

9:29PM: Santorum is all for immigration.  Not now, but back in the 20's or whenever his grandfather came here.  Immigrants today are the worst.

9:31PM: Mitt is very proud to say his position on immigration is the same now as it was four years ago.  I think that's a first for him.  Oh, wait, I think Santorum is saying that's not 100% true.  Oh well.

9:33PM: We just found out that Ron Paul is for the federal government doing something (dealing with immigration).  King, correctly, stopped the debate to have a quick celebratory ceremony.

9:36PM: I still don't understand why anyone thinks it's OK for government health care programs to refuse to provide for abortions, which are a perfectly legal medical procedure.  Why do we allow Republicans to get away with this kind of stuff?

9:38PM: Mitt just said "pro-life" 5 times in 8 seconds.  I think he's trying to make a point.  By the way, "pro-life" is a nonsense phrase that tries to paint pro-choice people as anti-life, when the more accurate dichotomy is pro-choice vs. anti-choice. 

9:42PM: This has now become a ten minute argument about who is the most pro-life.  On a related topic, everyone here except Ron (I think) is super supportive of the death penalty. 

9:43PM: King tried to move on without letting Ron talk about abortion.  The crowd jumped in and screamed for King to give them some Ron, and King obliged.

9:44PM: Good one minute demonstration of the difference between Ron and Rick.  Ron follows his understanding of the Constitution, Rick listens to his invisible friend in the sky.

Debate Fun Fact: Whenever Mitt Romney enters your state, 5,000 people are immediately laid off.

Closing Statements (King asked each of them to "make their case to the people of South Carolina"):

My Man Ron: Ron started by saying he wouldn't just make promises to the people of South Carolina (good for him) and ended by saying that freedom is good and spending is bad. 

Newt: Newt called Obama our "most dangerous" President, and then called him a "Saul Alinsky radical who is incompetent".  I don't know how any of these guys plan to win once they start having to debate the President in front of normal people.

Mitt: More stump speech.  Something about returning to American greatness and getting away from Barack Obama's entitlement state.  In Mitt's America, nobody is entitled to anything, because everything belongs to Mitt.

Santorum: Rick tried to squeeze every talking point he could think of into two minutes.  It was as annoying as it sounds.

That'll do it for tonight.  I think I'll be back next week for the State of the Union address.  It'll be weird watching somebody say things that, ya know, make sense and are based in reality.  Other than the occasional answer from Ron, I really haven't seen that in a while.  Should be fun.