“He wasn’t very deep on any of the issues, I’m trying to be respectful” — Herman Cain speaking about Texas Governor Rick Perry

When an intellectual heavyweight like Henry Kissinger admonishes a presidential candidate for not being very deep on any of the issues that’s one thing, but when a simpleton like Herman Cain, who was unaware that China has had nuclear weapons for decades, levels that charge against Rick Perry, it’s time for the Texas governor to throw in the towel.

Herman Cain is speaking about Perry in the past tense, even a know-nothing buffoon realizes Perry is Texas Toast.

The only thing that Perry is deep in is bullcrap, as he campaigns in South Carolina pretending to be a legitimate candidate.

Perry was humiliated in Iowa and New Hampshire, and his prospects aren’t any better in South Carolina or Florida. A huge campaign bankroll isn’t going to buy him respect, legitimacy or wisdom.

Rick Perry is a moron, and I’m trying to be respectful.

By Robert Paul Reyes

Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes

PLAYLIST: Herman Cain — [ The existence of men like Herman Cain represents a stomach-churning example of how the disease of racism continues to affect American society. -- Dr. Boyce Watkins.]

PLAYLIST: Rick Perry — [ Secessionist Governor of Texas Rick Perry is a Texas sized jerk -- who constantly dreams about an independent Tea-Party state of Texas. He has often issued not-so-veiled references to a potential Lone Star State secession. The God deluded Perry -- has surrounded himself with hoplessly bigoted evangelical Christians who believe that with Perry as president -- America can be run as a Christian theocracy, much like the Taliban ran Afghanistan or like the Muslim clerics are running Iran. Perry believes that Social Security, Medicare, and the Clean Air Act are unconstitutional, and that all money belong to the rich. The dirt poor can go to hell as far as Rick is concerned! ]

Howard Fineman: Rick Santorum wants to “beat” China. Mitt Romney warned that “if you don’t stand up to China, you will be run over by China.” Herman Cain denied that the criticism of his “9-9-9” plan’s arithmetic is incorrect because it is incorrect. Michele Bachmann said that Cain’s plan is dangerous because if you turn “9-9-9” upside down it reads “666.” “The devil is in the details,” she said with a cold smile.

   Wacko, Cockamamie Ron Paul Gesticulates [ FRIGHTEN YOURSELF! ]

Meanwhile, Ron Paul mumbled on about the superiority of Austrian economists to Keynesians…..and, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas kept quiet, knowing either that he is in over his head or that no one in the country understands what is being said.

[Cockamamie] Newt Gingrich called for jailing Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, said that new prostate exam guidelines will “end up killing people” and suggested that the chairman of the Federal Reserve should be booted — even though neither the president nor Congress has that power until his term ends several years from now. [ READ MORE ]

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At Politico, Roger Simon says: The Republican race has turned into “The Wizard of Oz.” Rick Perry wants a brain. Mitt Romney wants a heart. And any number of candidates are Dorothy, realizing there is no place like home and they should have stayed there. [ READ MORE ]

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At The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky writes: Romney was just un-bad enough to edge the competition, Cain merely sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, and Perry choked once again. [ READ MORE ]

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Highlights:

Part 1

[Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]

Reactions:

Ed Shultz: GOP Dartmouth Debate High on Rhetoric and Absent of Solutions

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Pack of Lies: The GOP’s Dartmouth Debate Gets Fact-Checked:

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   By: Matt Stoller
A few months ago, a friend in the entertainment industry told me of a new business model in Hollywood: hoarding videotapes. Apparently, the earthquake in Japan knocked offline a Sony factory that makes certain types of tape. That factory was also in the tsunami zone, so now there’s a serious tape shortage threatening the television industry. The NBA scrambled to get enough tape to broadcast the NBA finals; one executive told the Hollywood Reporter, “It’s like a bank run.”

In the last few years, economists have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about bank runs. A bank run happens when depositors think a bank is weak and scramble to get their money out before it collapses. “Tight coupling” of financial institutions, like when banks are overly dependent on each other, can create a cascading series of problems for the system itself. We saw this with Lehman Brothers when it went bankrupt. Its AAA-rated debt instruments lost value unexpectedly; that caused money market funds that held those presumably safe bonds to suddenly lose value. A shadow bank run was the result, as investors rushed to withdraw from the money market funds.

Worryingly, there’s been very little consideration of how systemic collapses can happen in another, perhaps more dangerous realm–the industrial supply system that keeps us in everything from medicine to food to cars to, yes, videotape. In 2004, for instance, England closed one single factory, which caused the United States to lose half of its flu vaccine supply.

Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation has been studying industrial supply shocks since 1999, when he noticed that global computer chip production was concentrated in Taiwan. After a severe earthquake in that country, the global computer industry nearly shut down, crashing the stocks of large computer makers. This level of concentration of the production of key components in a globalized economy is a new phenomenon. Lynn’s work points to the highly dangerous side of globalization, the flip side of a hyper-efficient global supply chain. When one link in that chain is broken, there is no fallback.

Lynn has continued to study industrial supply shocks and says, “What I have found most interesting recently is the apparent role supply chain shocks played in triggering a synchronized slowdown of industrial economies in April–production down (in USA, China, Europe, Southeast Asia), jobs down, demand down, GDP numbers down–due almost entirely to the loss of a single factory that makes microcontroller chips for cars.”

Today, the problem manifests as shortages of videotape or auto parts, but the global supply chain is so tangled and fragile that next time it could be electronics, weaponry, or even food or medicine. As Lynn noted in an interview with Dylan Ratigan, China controls 100 percent of the national supply of ascorbic acid, which is a basic food preservative. Leading oncologists are already warning that we are experiencing severe shortages of generic yet pivotal cancer drugs, because there’s no incentive for corporations to make them.

According to Lynn’s groundbreaking book End of the Line, the essential problem is a basic shift in the way that American multinationals operate. In the 1980s, the competitive manufacturing threat from Japan led most large companies to eliminate waste in their production facilities. As a result, they stopped keeping spare parts on hand. Eventually, companies began outsourcing production itself, as profits came increasingly from extractive monopolistic power over an economic system. Walmart is an important example; its profits come from the power it can exert on its suppliers, telling them what to make and how to make it, while the company itself functions as a giant autocratic marketplace and trading operation. Increasingly, this is the model of success in our global economy. Boeing, Cisco, Apple–all of them rely on their power over an ecosystem of production facilities halfway around the world. They have become rent extractive profit-machines, which is a relatively new phenomenon.

It was in the 1990s that American multinationals, spurred by government policy, began outsourcing operations to China. At the same time, the Clinton administration steadily relaxed antitrust enforcement, leading to massive corporate consolidation and the creation of the virtual firm. By the early parts of the last decade, the ideal American multinational made its profits by using its market power to gut labor and supply prices and by using its political power to eliminate taxation. All of this turned giant American institutions against making things. This is why we rely on a British factory to make our flu vaccine, why global videotape production was knocked offline by a tsunami and why that same event slowed the gigantic auto industry. US corporate leaders now see the idea of making things as a cost of doing business, one best left to others. What has happened as a result is that much of the production for critical products and services that make our economy run is constructed by a patchwork global network of suppliers all over the world in unstable regions, over which we have very little control. An accident or political problem in any number of countries may deny us not just iPhones but food, medicine or critical machinery.

Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, has made the case that America needs to be building things here, investing here and manufacturing here. We need the know-how and the ecosystem of innovation. The more corporate America seeks to push production risk off the balance sheet onto an increasingly fragile global supply chain, the more it seeks to wound the state so there is no body that can constrain its worst impulses, the more likely we will see a truly devastating Lehman-style industrial supply shock.

There’s a good amount of grumbling about the state of American infrastructure–collapsing bridges, high-speed rail, etc. But American infrastructure is not just about public goods, it’s about how the corporations that enforce, inform and organize economic activity are themselves organized. Are they doing productive research? Are they spreading knowledge and know-how to people who will use it responsibly? Are they creating prosperity or extracting wealth using raw power? And most importantly, are they contributing to the robustness of our society, such that we can survive and thrive in the normal course of emergencies?

The answer to all of these questions right now is “no.” And while this may not be hitting the elite segments of the economy right now, there will be no escape from a flu pandemic or significant food shortage. The re-engineering of our global supply chain needs to happen–and it will happen, either through good leadership or through collapse. This means that our government and our society needs to reorient our economy toward manufacturing and rededicate our corporations to productive uses. This will require a new conception of antitrust laws to ensure that monopolistic or oligopolistic practices in pivotal industries aren’t placing our culture at risk. It means understanding the networks of suppliers and sub-suppliers. And it means ending the race to the bottom that pushes deflationary pressures on labor and the social safety net. All of this can insure a more robust culture and economy, one which can withstand national security or environmental challenges. The sooner our leaders, both in public and private institutions, recognize how highly vulnerable we are to a societal collapse, the better chance we have of avoiding collapse.

References:

The total collapse of the U.S. economy is inevitable – Here’s why

The U.S. government is headed for a crisis if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by August 2.

What’s the debt ceiling, and why is everyone in Washington talking about it?

It is the legal limit on borrowing by the federal government. Before 1917, Congress had to approve borrowing each time it came up. In order to allow for more flexibility as the nation entered World War I, lawmakers agreed to give the federal government blanket approval for most types of borrowing — as long as the total was less than an established limit. [ MORE DETAILS (1) ] [ MORE DETAILS (2) ]

Instead of negotiating in good faith as has always been the case (debt ceiling was raised seven times under Bush) — Republicans predictably have opted to hold a gun to the president’s head.

Obama on the other hand is a hostage of Wall St. financial terrorists, says Max Keiser, a financial journalist based in Paris.

The president is between a rock and a hard place — Republican yokels who hate the idea of a black man in the White House on one side and the filthy rich (The Real Owners of America) who will not share their ill-gotten wealth with anybody else, on the other.

In between are Republican politicians — who are mere “Yo-Yos” — owned by wall street, lock, stock and barrel — but are answerable to the illiterate, racist yokels in the extreme right-wing of the ReTHUGliLOON party.

“The ‘NIGGER‘ must be defeated in 2012″ — is the GOP’s war cry!

Political satirist Jon Stewart sums the Republican situation best:

“It’s not, ‘Let’s all chip in a buy a keg for the party,’ it’s ‘Buy me a keg or I’ll burn your fucking house down.’” “The Republican insistence on making the debt ceiling their give as opposed to increased tax revenues is like a doctor who believes strictly in magic consulting with a patient.”

‘Debt Ceiling‘ Political Terrorism: What Are Shyster Republicans Afraid Of?

Default Lines: Republicans Treat Tax Cuts Like a Religion and ‘Will Not Sin’

Debt Limit: Ed Shultz Aks President Obama To Let Evil Mitch McConnell ‘Twist in The Wind’ (Part 1)

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The Lies and Mis-Representations on ‘Debt Ceiling’
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Fox’s Palin Advises GOP On Debt Talks: “Now Is Not The Time To Retreat – It’s the Time To Reload“

“Bony Ass” Ann Coulter Invokes Hitler To Defend Paul Ryan’s Controversial Budget Plan

While Accusing Obama Of Fearmongering On Debt, Anti-Immigrant Bigot Lou Dobbs Warns That Pushing Through A Deal Will “Screw Up The Markets“

Fox’s Napolitano Demands That Boehner “Tell The President Not A Penny More”

Mr. Syphilis Sean Hannity Cites Myth That The Stimulus Failed To Bash Obama Over Debt Negotiations

Right-Wing Media Downplay Default Risks By Accusing Obama Of “Threatening” Social Security Benefits

Fox Continues Ignoring Economists To Downplay Debt Ceiling Consequences

   Columnist – John Sammon
Arrogance takes many forms and as we prepare to celebrate July 4 I ask the question, do you think America is the greatest country on earth?

If you do, I respect your right to an opinion, but if you do think we’re the greatest, what is this based upon? Is it because we have more power than other countries? Military power? Is it because we have more money than other countries?

Recently, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer decried the behavior of Republicans who are attempting she said to stall budget talks and to engage in political one-upmanship instead of dealing with the president in extending the national debt ceiling, the ability of the U.S. to borrow money and live over our means, something you wouldn’t do with your own family budget. This is a disaster set to happen in August if the debt ceiling isn’t increased in which the U.S. could default on money owed if it doesn’t increase the amount it can borrow.

If we don’t extend our ability to live beyond our means it could collapse the United States. Both China and Saudi Arabia keep excess money in U.S.-backed T-bills because of their faith in the country’s financial institutions.

America because of its arrogance wants to fight three wars simultaneously while militarizing outer space and at the same time shipping low-skilled factory jobs over to China which in turn erodes the middle or potential middle class here.

And we borrow money instead of dealing with it.

We have two stark choices. Don’t extend the debt ceiling, default on money owed and financially implode, or keep borrowing and shuffle off dealing with the situation until next year as we have done for decades by living on borrowed time. Let’s assume the second scenario.

That will allow us to continue to be the greatest country on earth.

That’s what the Philadelphia Inquirer columnist said we are. She also said we’re the “unchallenged global leader of the world, the financial leader of the world, and in a leadership role.”

Most Americans would probably agree with those statements.

But do the people of other countries agree that we are leaders over them?

Are we the greatest because we’re powerful, militarily and financially? Is an elephant a greater creature than a mouse merely because of its size and power? Also, how many people in other countries believe America is the greatest country on earth? If it is we who are proclaiming ourselves the greatest, I have always been dubious about self-proclamations of superiority.

If we’re the greatest, are we better than other people, and how are we better? Everyone on earth wants the same things, love and affection, security and safety, comfort and an interesting and stimulating life, wealth and happiness. We can’t be greater than other people in those ways.

Are we braver? I don’t think courage is a strictly American value.

Are we more generous? A case can be made that America has given much over the years. But that assumption carries with it the automatic polar opposite that other countries give less, and give less as a matter of choice. Many countries in the world are impoverished. They have less to give if its money or raw materials.

Therefore, is being richer being greater?

Are we kinder? I don’t think kindness is a mostly American emotion.

Why are we greater than other countries?

Is it because we achieve more? We sent a man to the moon. The ability to do this again depends on money and power. The little country of Nepal and its people can hardly be blamed for having a smaller GNP and for not having an ambitious space program and as a result being a lesser people.

The concept of greatness means that you have to be greater than others, in other words, have supremacy over others. That’s the only way to be greater. Greater means better.

Let’s say that our form of free-market capitalism and our form of government are better than other countries, and remember, this is a self-proclamation, because, when was the last time you heard a Frenchman say, you’re better than he is?

I’m willing to accept that our form of government is better than that of Communist North Korea. But having a superior government is a little bit like having a better car. You’re richer and more successful than I am. You drive a more expensive and a better car. Are you greater than I am because your car is faster and gets you where you want to go? My slower more junkie car gets me where I want to go too. Most of the time.

I don’t feel you’re better than me because of your car.

I don’t feel any greater than a British person, or an Indian, or an islander on Samoa, and I think the idea of greatness comes down to simply money and power.

I think Gandhi, a truly great man who had very little except powerful ideas of equality and not supremacy, would agree. The above are the wrong reasons to feel the greatest.