Cain Pain II: First Blood

Seems Herman Cain's continued frontrunner status has earned him the ire of Rick Perry, and garnered the first sex scandal of the campaign! Normally sex scandals are bad, but this one's far worse than it should be, thanks to Cain's inept handling of the controversy. Things are so bad, some are actively predicting the fall of the Cain campaign entirely -- though those people tend to be the selfsame ones who called him the flavor of the week a couple weeks ago. 

(Full disclosure: I'm one of those people.)

That isn't a hope, by the way. I don't hope Cain fails to get his party's nomination -- quite the opposite. From his complete lack of foreign policy gravitas, his government inexperience, his claim to fame being as Boss of a pizza family (that's mobster talk), and now this values-voter-shunning sex scandal, I could foresee another '08 happening if he were the Republican opponent. But I can't believe Obama could possibly be that lucky.

I mean, at the same time, his "leading from behind" strategy wins the war in Libya (I'd rather lead from behind and win than shock-and-awe and lose), he can claim victory in Iraq, and we've seen a few positive indicators for the economy; his numbers seem to be flirting with the idea of creeping upward. Could we possibly see the return of the political wunderkind who defeated both the Clinton and Republican political machines those many long years ago?

Chris Matthews feels differently about my hesitance to chalk this up to luck, and has even said so on his show a few times. Is Obama one of the luckiest politicians in recent history? It's certainly thought-provoking.

Not to be all about MSNBC or anything, but their token Republican has been spreading rumors of right-wing voters who say they'd rather run an imperfect but ideologically pure candidate (ie Cain or Paul) and lose than run Romney, who's already being cast as the consumate flip-flopper. I have no idea how the average GOP primary voter thinks, but I do know Kerry was beaten in 2004 on the flip-flop charge and some swiftboating. Could the same work against Romney? Could healthcare be his swiftboat?

And the scandal says something very interesting about Perry, the candidate suspected of leaking the story to Politico in the first place. I've hoped from the start that Michelle Bachmann would be the attack dog of the campaign -- and in some ways she has been -- but Perry seems to be landing the only resounding blows against the current frontrunners. Could his ambitions sufficiently soften his opponents before the general election?

So many questions! But that's why we love politics, right?

Mid-West Mafia Take Over NLR

Alright, maybe the title's a little hyperbolic... but this is awesome.

I'm pretty new in Arkansas - I've been in Little Rock, the state's capitol and largest "city," for about a year - so I'm still catching-up on the intricacies of local politics. Sometimes it can be so hard to wrap your head around city politics in a new area. It's all dense with names and locations that have no meaning, no previous relavance. In short, it's all boring. But, every so often, due diligence can result in the discovery of a juicy news morsels like this one.

I love a good corruption story, but what's really savory here is the mob connection. George Wylie Thompson was arrested by the FBI in Cabot. The charges span from possession of 147 firearms and 80,000 rounds of ammunition to bookmaking and marriage fraud, going all the way back to 2008. (A lifetime ago, really.) A felon isn't supposed to own a single gun, and I hear the Feds really start to raise an eyebrow when the total exceeds 146...

Thompson had first been arrested at the tail end of 2009, on stereotypical mafioso charges in an East Coast sting. One can only conclude drug mules that speak in broken English aren't always the best business associates. Also, Arkansas isn't as boring as it seems.

Thompson got 10 years, the Alderman got four months. At least Thompson totally knows karate. That'll come in handy in the Pen, I'm sure.

Pretty cool, huh? A made man in the Mid-West. And somehow I still can't find a decent cannoli in Little Rock.