Rick Perry Probably Joining 2012 Race; Celebrates By Killing A Mexican
"Y2K Redux TEXUS 4 PREZ" should be your Twitter journalizm headline any day now, according to People Who Know Things. "Sources say" Rick Perry will likely announce his candidacy within the next few weeks. A Google search on Perry's name has auto-fill "Rick Perry gay" still holding steady at the number three spot, so there's probably some comedy to look forward to there? No one is very surprised by this news, mostly because Perry recently fled Sanford-style to go suck Koch at a private summit in Colorado. And the green light from the Kochs is basically like the Michele Bachmann green light from God in terms of permission from the higher powers. So who will win, God or the Kochs?
MEANWHILE, Texas executed a Mexican national convicted of a 1994 rape and murder over the protests of the White House, the Mexican government and the International Court of Justice.
From the Guardian:
On Thursday evening, the state of Texas strapped Humberto Leah Garcia Jr., a Mexican citizen, to a gurney in a government facility and poisoned him for the crime of raping and killing a teenager in 1994. Leal's sentence was carried out with the full knowledge and permission of Governor Rick Perry, a Republican who reportedly harbours presidential ambitions and may announce a run for 2012 at any time, and the US supreme court – but over the objections of the Mexican government, the Obama administration and the International Court of Justice, which ruled in 2004 that the US violated the Vienna Convention when it didn't inform Leal and 51 other Mexican citizens of their consular rights, post arrest.
But in America in 2011, agreeing to delay (let alone halt) the execution would have caused Perry political problems – and allowing the state to carry out the most final punishment has zero downsides for an ambitious politician.
Yeah, why let all those people spoil Rick Perry's party and his chance to boost his public image with the killing of a brown? "This is just the start," Rick Perry probably said. [ Reuters / Guardian ]
The first sign Bush was vulnerable didn't come until Pat Buchanan kept him to under 80% of the vote in the 1992 New Hampshire Republican primary. Bush's post-Persian Gulf War popularity, and other factors (like how Al Gore's son had just been in that car accident and Gore actually put his family first), kept a lot of the "big names" out of the race. For example, Mario Cuomo kept floating his name but never getting in and Lloyd Bentsen declared he was too old to be president.
The actual declared candidates (a whopping total of 6) were mostly considered second stringers, leading to Ross Perot getting into the race. Doug Wilder dropped out before the first primary. Jerry Brown still had a bad reputation at that point and hadn't held an office in almost a decade. Tsongas, an early frontrunner in the primaries, hadn't held an office himself since 1984, and there were serious concerns about his health (he died of cancer before he'd have finished his first erm if he'd been elected). Bob Kerrey (war hero, governor, senator) looked fantastic on paper, but was a terrible campaigner. Harkin was not well known outside his home state, and only contribution ended up being keeping everyone from getting into the Iowa caucuses. Bill Clinton didn't declare until October of 1991, and no one even gave him much of a chance until Perot dropped out in June.