meh. never had a chance.

Milestones: Rick Perry
An interactive timeline of Gov. Rick Perry’s life and career.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/31/us/politics/20111031_PERRY_TIMELINE.html?ref=politics

For Perry, Life Was Broadened and Narrowed by the Military
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 25, 2011

COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Rick Perry arrived on the campus of Texas A&M University in the tumultuous fall of 1968, cut his hair short, regulation military style, and donned a uniform. College students across America were rising up against the Vietnam War, but Mr. Perry, a member of the Corps of Cadets here, would not be among them.

“There will be no Columbia, no Berkeley here,” the university president, Earl Rudder, declared that fall. When a small band of antiwar protesters took to the steps of the Memorial Student Center, a building dedicated to “Aggies who gave their lives for our country,” young Mr. Perry was incensed.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘long-haired hippie types,’ ” said John Sharp, a Perry classmate and chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, “but a person who did not look like they fit into A&M said some kind of Jane Fonda-type stuff, and I remember Perry got up in his face pretty quick over that. He took exception to it, shouted the guy down.”

Today Mr. Perry, the Texas governor, is running for president in a crowded Republican field as one of just two candidates with military experience. (The other is Ron Paul.) As an Air Force pilot, he flew C-130 cargo planes out of Dyess Air Force Base outside Abilene, about an hour south of the tiny town of Paint Creek, where he grew up.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Perry has focused on domestic affairs, pitching himself as the man who can “overhaul Washington.” His Air Force days give a hint of how he might handle another aspect of the presidency, national security. In recent debates, he has emerged as a muscular interventionist, a stance that can be traced, in part, to his military service.

It was an experience that both expanded and narrowed him, taking him to exotic locales while cementing his Texas roots and the traditional, conservative values that have been so central to his political identity. On Air Force missions overseas, he told students at Liberty University this fall, he had his first encounters with “oppressed people” — an experience that sharpened his idea of the United States as a beacon of democracy and helped convince him that Americans “cannot isolate ourselves within our borders.”

Today, the college student who backed the Vietnam War is, at 61, the hawkish presidential candidate. Mr. Perry has called President Obama “irresponsible” for ending the Iraq war, urged the overthrow of the Iranian government — he would not rule out a military strike — and suggested he would deploy troops to Mexico to “kill these drug cartels” there.

He has also pledged to reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military policy that barred openly gay soldiers.

Vietnam hung as a shadow over Mr. Perry’s service. As a young cadet, he mourned A&M graduates killed in battle. But with the war winding down, Mr. Perry did not see combat. Instead, he carried people and supplies (“trash hauling,” he and his buddies called it) around the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.

“I saw the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, the old cities of Europe that existed long before Columbus ever set sail for the Americas, and the sands of the Persian Gulf, occupied by Bedouins who seemed stuck in a previous century,” Mr. Perry wrote in “On My Honor,” his book about the values of the Boy Scouts.

Yet Mr. Perry’s world travels did not stir any longing for a life on the road. Rather, he felt “a growing sensation of homesickness,” he wrote. When stationed in Abilene, he lived in a little house he had fixed up out in the country. His fellow pilots remember him more for the cookouts and hunting trips he organized than for any zest to see the world.

“He barely left home, and while he moved around the world it was in the military bubble,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who has followed Mr. Perry’s career. “My sense of it is that it insulated him, as opposed to broadening his perspective...”



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/us/politics/for-rick-perry-air-force-service-broadened-and-narrowed-life.html?ref=texas

Canadians Hate Rick Perry.

Imagine that!

Rick Perry cites fake Canadian Occupy Toronto quote on campaign trail
By Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – 14 hours ago.

WASHINGTON - Rick Perry's fumbling, stumbling campaign to win the Republican presidential nomination can add another gaffe to its growing roster: the Texas governor is the latest conservative to ridicule a fake quote in a satirical Globe and Mail piece in an effort to discredit the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

At an appearance in New Hampshire last week, Perry, struggling to regain momentum in the race, made reference to the quote, which he said was sent to him by his son.

"This was in Toronto," he told the crowd before paraphrasing the fabricated quote in an Oct. 21 Globe and Mail essay by freelancer Mark Schatzker. The piece was clearly labelled satire.

Perry summarized the quote as: "I guess greed just makes you work hard."

The actual fake quote in Schatzker's piece was attributed to "Jeremy, 38," from the Occupy Toronto protests: "It's weird protesting on Bay Street. You get there at 9 a.m. and the rich bankers who you want to hurl insults at and change their world view have been at work for two hours already. And then when it's time to go, they're still there. I guess that's why they call them the one per cent. I mean, who wants to work those kinds of hours? That's the power of greed."

Perry's remarks came on the heels of a hue and cry amid the conservative blogosphere last week about the boneheaded "Jeremy."

Conservative blogger John Hinderaker seized upon Jeremy on the Power Line blog in a post entitled: "Greed? Try Sloth!" In a later update, Hinderaker said his wife had pointed out to him that the quote was a joke but added: "The point, I think, remains valid."

On the American Spectator, another conservative blogger, J.P. Freire, wrote: "Those perceptive Canadians notice that a disparity of income isn't the only thing that separates protesters from the so-called one per cent." Freire soon realized the quote was parody and quickly updated his post.

The Facebook group "I Am The 53%" also posted the quote, adding the comment: "By that logic, greed converges almost surely to having work ethics."

"I Am The 53%" is made up of conservatives who claim they represent the percentage of Americans who pay federal income tax, suggesting the Occupy Wall Street protesters don't.

It was in the midst of this outrage last week that Perry repeated the quote in New Hampshire.

The misstep wasn't noticed until this week, when the Mediaite website posted video of Perry making the gaffe. But it's just the latest in a series of eyebrow-raising moments in Perry's flailing campaign that have run the gamut from suggesting U.S. President Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate is fake to making a garrulous, free-wheeling speech in New Hampshire.

A YouTube video of Perry's speech, made just hours after his "Jeremy" gaffe, went viral, but not for the reasons his campaign might have hoped.

"This is such a cool state," Perry said.

"I mean come on. 'Live free or die.' You got to love that, right? I come from a state, you know, where they have this little place called the Alamo and they declared: 'Victory or death.' We're kind of into those slogans: 'Live free or die.' 'Victory or death.' Bring it."

Brent Budowsky, a columnist at the congressional newspaper The Hill, marvelled at Perry's recent campaign conduct.

"In recent days, Perry has careened from a weird and silly digression into birther territory to a public display more worthy of a guy who had spent all night at a frat party than a would-be commander in chief," he wrote Tuesday.

Amid rumours Perry is planning to stop participating in televised debates altogether due to his dismal performances so far, his campaign has also released a cheerful campaign ad in which their candidate declares himself "a doer, not a talker."

Still in possession of a deep war chest, Perry is spending most of this week in Iowa, a key primary state, hoping to capitalize on the recent misfortunes of Herman Cain. The former pizza magnate, currently dogged by a sexual harassment scandal, has jetted past Perry in the polls to sit atop the field with Mitt Romney.

Schatzker, for one, the author of the Globe and Mail satire, said he's hoping Perry succeeds in turning things around now that the governor is quoting the Canadian's work on the campaign trail.

"It's actually thrilling," Schatzker said in an interview from Toronto.

"If he gets in, I am due for a major appointment of some sort, like secretary of state. This is a lifetime achievement. Everything's downhill from here."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/rick-perry-cites-fake-canadian-occupy-toronto-quote-174001779.html

Scotch? Roofies? Muscle relaxants? Your guess is as good as mine. The Texas governor is loopy as a jaybird in this New Hampshire address. Great campaign, buddy. thumpandwhip.com

"Three Minute Version"

Rick Perry Goes Viral

Must be the flu. LOL

Absolutely agree Social Security is in a way a Ponzi Scheme by definition alone




Ponzi Scheme definition:

a pyramid investment swindle in which supposed profits are paid to early investors from money actually invested by later participants



Sounds a little like Social Security to me




JER1

Perry Is Right, Social Security Is A Ponzi Scheme

Last update: 9/16/2011 9:51:57 AM

These are the personal views of Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission:

When established in 1935, Social Security made its first payments to Americans age 65. These first recipients never contributed and were paid from contributions made by younger Americans. Those Americans and successive generations believed their contributions were investments, and that they would be paid at retirement by the earnings on those investments.

In fact, those younger Americans were paid by the contributions of successive generations of "investors," as the federal government spent their money to help finance operating deficits. With the ratio of retirees to contributors rising, the Trust Fund will run out of money by 2036, if not sooner.

Such a scheme could only continue if the working age population grew more rapidly than the number of retirees, but it hasn't because Americans live longer and the birth rate has declined.

President Barack Obama's claims notwithstanding, Social Security is now a growing burden on federal finances, as the difference between the Trust Fund's income and what it pays out grows each year. As we approach 2036, either payments will have to be dramatically curtailed, or the government will have to shut down, on a massive basis, other activities.

Either Social Security fails, or the U.S. fails.

In a Ponzi scheme, first investors, through a mechanism like a chain letter, are paid immediate returns by monies collected from subsequent investors, who are in turn paid by other investors who follow them in time.

Social Security did not even ask the first recipients to put up a dollar, and by any reasonable reading of the definition of a Ponzi scheme, Social Security qualifies for that appellation.

Social Security can work as long as it finds more and more workers to support the growing number of retirees but it can't, because the system encourages folks, who once relied on their children and savings to help them through old age, to have fewer children. And by its nature, reduces incentives for savings and investment, thereby slowing economic growth and making it more difficult for each successive generation to support the elderly.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is right to call Social Security for what it is, but he is wrong to think going to a privately funded system--Americans' contributions would be invested in stocks and bonds--is the answer.

Not enough money could be invested on behalf of young contributors, because the government would still have the burden of paying off the present and next generation of retirees, and so not enough of young folks' money could be invested for their old age. The government would still have to provide a subsidy.

Second, in the end, there is no getting around the fact that folks above a certain age can't work, and that some of what is made by the economy--think of it as a slice of a big pie--must be transferred from working-age folks to support them. Whether done by the government or through investments, a public versus a private system only defines how the claim of old folks is defined.

Third, individual investors are not particularly good at managing money, and guaranteeing investors a minimum return, as Congressman Paul Ryan proposed, is just a back door to the present poorly run system. Moreover, the U.S. stock market has not returned a dime to investors for more than a decade, and interest on bonds and savings accounts are too low to make the system work.

Fourth, most ordinary Americans are already too heavily taxed by falling real incomes, and ever more acquisitive federal and state governments, to invest enough additional dollars that a truly private system, not guaranteed by the government, would require.

In the end, the only way to make the system work is to ask Americans to work longer--frustrate investors' expectations for future returns, much like a Ponzi scheme.

If Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney want to fix the system, instead of arguing over terminology, they must address the retirement age. It simply must be raised to something close to 70--no exceptions but for the truly disabled.

Americans won't like that but it beats what President Obama is offering. Characteristic to his thinking on economics, he prefers to believe what his liberal ideology, not the facts, requires--and incorrectly insist the system is solvent.

Social Security, by the findings of Obama's own Social Security Administration, is insolvent and hence a Ponzi scheme. Americans would be better served by hearing the truth if they are to have some dignity in retirement.

The author can be reached at pmorici@rhsmith.umd.edu

(TALK BACK: We invite readers to send us comments on this or other financial news topics. Please email us at TalkbackAmericas@dowjones.com. Readers should include their full names, work or home addresses and telephone numbers for verification purposes. We reserve the right to edit and publish your comments along with your name; we reserve the right not to publish reader comments. Talk Back comments can be found under the N/TLK code.)
(END) Dow Jones Newswire

The Donkey Whisperer

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2011/08/24/is-this-the-best-political-ad-of-2012/

http://rogerforcongress.com/posts/the-donkey-tale

The Donkey Tale

By Jessica Seale | Director of Internet Operations

Last Tuesday the campaign released Roger's latest video, The Donkey Whisperer. I remember back when we filmed this laughing so hard that I almost cried. I always knew the video would be well-received, but I never expected anything like this.

Within the first twenty four hours, we received over 30,000 views - more than our previous two web ads combined. Nearly a week later, we've surpassed 100,000 views, which is a number I could never have imagined.

LOL: It took him LESS than a week!

Poor Ben, Born Yankee.

Rick Perry Wants to Get Ugly With Ben Bernanke

By Connor Simpson | The Atlantic Wire – 12 hrs ago..

Republican Presidential nominee Rick Perry spoke in Iowa tonight and had some nasty words for Ben Bernanke. Think Progress first reported Perry's unusual words for the head of the Federal Reserve. Perry told supporters at the end of his first full day campaigning in Iowa that he wasn't a big fan of the head of the Fed, and suggested that Texans would probably beat Bernanke up if he prints anymore money before the next election.

As TP points out, the punishment for treason is capitol punishment. Therefore, as Gawker's Max Read puts it, "Rick Perry Wants to Execute Ben Bernanke." ABC News has an expanded answer, with a little more economic analysis and fewer physical threats, as pointed out by Politico's Maggie Habberman.

The new quotable comes right on the back of the new Rick Perry backlash occurring in Iowa. Conservatives forwarded a 14 point memo highlighting the candidate's problems before a radio interview Monday. Karl Rove warned about his "electability." New York Times Washington correspondant Binyamin Applebaum tweeted that Perry's comments were "horrifying," and asked the question, "This is a major party presidential candidate??

Related: Rick Perry Tests Out Stump Speech

http://news.yahoo.com/rick-perry-wants-ugly-ben-bernake-053900247.html

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion.”

“We’ve already tried this. All it’s going to be doing is devaluing the dollar in your pocket and we cannot afford that. We have to learn the lessons of the past three years that they’ve been devastating. The President of the United States has conducted an experiment on the American economy for almost the last three years, and it has gone tragically wrong and we need to send him a clear message in November of 2012 that new leadership is coming.”

How to make Adios MoFo

Rappin Rick Perry (Texas Governor) Adios MoFo!

Rick *39 Percent* Perry - Adios Mofo

Adios Mofo

http://stivzcreative.com/?tag=adios-mofo

Dear Yankee - Eight things you ought to know before you start writing stories about Rick Perry. You’re welcome.

by Paul Burka

August 2011

Here we go again. As you know, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, is contemplating a presidential run, which means that any day now, your boss will be sending you down here to take the measure of the man. Though he managed to avoid the 2012 spotlight longer than any other candidate, Perry, the nation’s longest-serving governor, has lately become, in the words of a recent NPR report, “the eight-hundred-pound gorilla on the sidelines of this race.” The trickle of stories about him has become a stream, and the minute Perry declares his candidacy, that stream will become a flood, a flood that will carry you straight to Austin. I am writing you this note in the hope that it will help you avoid the political and sociological clichés that Texas is subjected to every time one of our politicians seeks the national stage.

It’s an experience we’re all too familiar with. A Texan has occupied the White House in 17 of the past 48 years—just over a third of the time. Texas has become an incubator for presidents, as Virginia and Ohio were in America’s distant past. I’ll grant you that the presidents we have sent to Washington, from LBJ to George W. Bush, have not always served as the best advertisements for Texas. Nevertheless, we have endured a disproportionate amount of bad writing about our state from journalists who don’t know very much about the place, and I for one can’t bear to suffer through another campaign of it.

So please, heed this advice. Rick Perry, as you have no doubt already discovered, is not the easiest man to write about. He is secretive and leery of the media (sometimes to the point of hostility), and he has a strategically valuable knack for being underestimated by his critics. I have been writing about him since the eighties, when he began his career in the Texas Legislature. Along the way I have learned a few things, which I have arranged in this handy list of Eight Points to Keep in Mind When Writing About Rick Perry.

1. Perry is not George Bush. Don’t assume that because Bush and Perry served together in the Capitol, or because they’re both Republican Texans who wear boots, the two men have a lot in common. They don’t. As governor, Bush positioned himself as “a uniter, not a divider,” championing education as one of his main priorities. Perry has been the opposite kind of chief executive: dismissive of Democrats and fond of political maneuvers that put the heat on moderates within his own party. And in the legislative session that just wrapped up, he presided over a budget that cut $4 billion from public schools. The cultural differences are striking too. Perry, the son of a Big Country cotton farmer, is at ease with a populist tea party message; W., the scion of a political dynasty, always seemed more comfortable with the country club set. They have followed starkly different paths. When W. began his political career, he had a famous name, access to his father’s huge national fund-raising base, and the backing of the establishment wing of the Republican party. As a late arrival in the Republican ranks, Perry had no fund-raising base and little name identification. He had no choice but to gravitate to the conservative wing of the GOP, where he could prove up his conservative bona fides. Nor is there any love lost between the two men. When Perry ran for lieutenant governor, in 1998, Bush’s camp wanted everyone on the ticket to run positive races; the Perry team defied the order, and ever since, relations have been frosty. There is one other critical difference. Bush lost his first race, for Congress. Perry has won every race he’s ever run.

2. It’s not a big deal that Perry was once a Democrat. To suggest otherwise will make you look foolish. When Perry was elected to the statehouse, in 1985, conservative Democrats ran the Legislature. In 1989, realizing that a conservative had little future in the party, Perry switched to the GOP. He has been a rock-solid Republican ever since and has driven the state party further to the right. Only twice has he made strategic errors that brought him into conflict with his hard-right base. One was an edict that twelve-year-old girls be inoculated against cervical cancer (it was quickly overturned); another was his promotion of a giant system of toll roads called the Trans-Texas Corridor, which stirred up significant opposition from landowners. These two bobbles aside, Perry has a genius for sensing where his base is on any given issue.

3. Perry is cannier than you think he is. Perry revels in political plays that are initially misunderstood by the press and his critics. Take his secession “gaffe” on tax day 2009, when he responded to a TV reporter’s question with an acknowledgment that if the federal government continued to interfere with Texas, the state might have to leave the union someday. His response may have repelled Democrats and independents, but it hit a nerve among conservatives and led to his shellacking of Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Republican primary for governor.

4. Texas is not a “weak governor” state. A common misconception. It used to be true, but during his historic governorship, Perry has reinvented the office as a power center. This may be his greatest accomplishment. Yes, our state constitution, written the year before Reconstruction ended, created a weak governor’s office (as did most constitutions of the states of the former Confederacy). We had two-year terms (the Legislature changed it to four-year terms beginning with the 1974 election) and a fragmented executive department with power divided among the governor, the lieutenant governor, the comptroller, the land and agriculture commissioners, the attorney general, and the railroad commission. But Perry has used his appointment power to install political allies in every state agency, effectively establishing a Cabinet form of government and making him vastly more powerful than any of his predecessors. In this regard, the Texas politician he most resembles is LBJ, who, Robert Caro reports, once told an assistant, “I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it and how to use it.” Rick Perry, to a tee.

5. Perry is not a male hair model. The late Molly Ivins coined the nickname Governor Goodhair, and it has stuck, especially with ­liberals and journalists from up north. It is true that Perry has a much-remarked-upon coif, but don’t let this lead you to assume that he’s soft, or feckless, like that other recent walking shampoo ad, John Edwards. Perry is a hard man. He is the kind of politician who would rather be feared than loved -— or respected. And he has gotten his wish. Perry does not have many friends in the ­Legislature.

6. Perry is from the middle of nowhere. The first place you need to go to understand Perry is Paint Creek, where he grew up. Paint Creek is not a town. It’s a watercourse that runs through the cotton fields of southern Haskell County. Perry’s parents were tenant farmers, and not just tenant farmers but dryland farmers, which is as hard as farming gets. In a June 2010 interview with TEXAS MONTHLY editor Jake Silverstein, Perry described an incident involving a new couch that his parents, who “rarely ever bought anything,” had just purchased. “There were places in our house that you could see outside through the cracks by the windows,” the governor recalled, “and this dust storm came in and there was a layer of dust all over that new couch. And it just, you know, kind of—it was a hard life for them.” In the interview, Perry also described taking baths in the number two washtub and using an outhouse until his father built indoor plumbing in his early years. “We were rich,” Perry said, “but not in material things. I had miles and miles of pasture, a Shetland pony, and a dog. ... I spent a lot of time just alone with my dog. A lot.”

7. Perry is an Aggie. Like many Texans with rural roots and sympathies, Perry attended Texas A&M University. This is the other place you need to go to understand him. Of course, it has changed dramatically, so you’ll have to envision it as it was when Perry was there, around 1970. A&M was uncompromising in those days. There was a saying, regarding the road to College Station, that was directed at students who resisted the A&M military culture: “Highway 6 runs both ways.” You either bought into the school’s traditions or you didn’t. Perry bought all the way in, becoming a yell leader. To this day, Perry’s style on the stump is that of the Aggie yell leader (“Are you fired up?”).

8. Don’t discount the luck factor. It is uncanny how often good fortune has been in ­Perry’s corner throughout his political career. His opponents self-destruct, as Jim High­­tower did in 1990, when Perry, a big underdog, won his first statewide race, for agriculture commissioner, and as Kay Bailey Hutchison did in 2010. In 2006, when he was at his most vulnerable, Hutchison opted not to challenge him. Perry got only 39 percent of the vote, but because there were four major candidates in the race, he won with a plurality. This spring, he lost two top aides to the Gingrich-for-president campaign, only to see Gingrich self-destruct and the aides return with national campaign experience. The list goes on and on. If you look at Perry’s career, it seems that fate is always arranging the universe so that its favorite son will be in the right place at the right time.

So there you have it. In closing, I would like to request that you please do your best to avoid tin-ear clichés about barbecue, cattle, oil, football, and the Alamo. Remember, this is an urban state of 25 million people. We don’t go to sleep at night dreaming of William Barret Travis drawing a line in the sand. We do admire our rural history, as this month’s cover attests, but our vitality is in the cities. Enjoy your visit, best of luck, and please get it right this time.

Yours truly,
Paul Burka

Visit the Perry Trove, a complete collection of everything we've ever published about the governor, and more.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/2011-08-01/btl.php