Booby trap

Herman Cain is an asshole. That's why Republicans are dating him. They won't marry him, but for the American right, being an asshole isn't an unfortunate personality defect. It's an ideological necessity. It's a point of pride.

That's the way it has to be when your economic program is, "Tough shit. You're on your own." Cain goes another step, to wild applause from the fuck you caucus, blaming unemployment on the unemployed as if a sailor becalmed were responsible for the lack of wind, as if there were no larger forces affecting our economic lives.

Oh, and by the way, the middle class aren't paying enough taxes.

Cain also doesn't know much outside the pizza business. He doesn't know what Palestinians mean when they demand the right of return. He doesn't realize that we have no diplomatic relations with Taiwan - and haven't since Nixon. He doesn't realize that the Great Wall of China was an expensive failure.

So it makes perfect sense that Cain would call for fortifying our 2000-mile southern border with an electrified fence that would at least injure and maybe kill anyone trying to get across the border illegally.

[W]e need to secure the border. How? Build a tall fence, make it electrified and a sign on the other side -- in Spanish and English -- warning of injury.

He doesn't realize how easily the fence could be sabotaged - would that bring down the power grid in the Southwest? How many deer would the coyotes have to drive into the world's biggest bug-zapper before Cain realized it wouldn't work?

Maybe that's why Cain backed off and lamely claimed that his mojado-zapper was a joke. Seriously, he knows that wingnuts won't care that "joke" is the all-purpose alibi of conservatives who show their ugly sides a little too graphically. And they claim liberals have no sense of humor. I think they're projecting again.

Update (10/17): Okaaay, not a joke after all. So, in summary, stupid vicious idea, bullshit excuse, no sense of humor, and flip-flop. Cain hits the quadfecta of lame politics.