Barbour Says No

Via Memeorandum, word from Haley Barbour:

I will not be a candidate for president next year. This has been a difficult, personal decision, and I am very grateful to my family for their total support of my going forward, had that been what I decided.

Read the rest.

I can't say this is good news. I don't think he'd have been elected in the end, but it would have given voters a choice.

2012 Looks Grim

I'm so disgusted with the current GOP field of potential challengers for 2012.  This, in turn, makes me totally disgusted with the GOP in general.  More so than usual, I mean.

Where in the hell are the challengers to Obama that can actually get elected!?!  Our front runner right now is Donald Trump?  Seriously?  In what ridiculous world is THAT ever going to happen? 

Newt Gingrich?  Puh-lease.  No fricking way.

Mitt Romney?  A reject from last go-around?  Nope. 

Haley Barbour?  Nobody north of the Mason-Dixon line would vote for him.

Mike Huckabee?  Can you say B-A-G-G-A-G-E?  Can you Google "Maurice Clemmons"?

Even if Sarah Palin throws her hat in there, she can't get elected.  Sorry, folks, but it's true.  She can't.  She has a fired up base, she has a role to play in the party, but candidate isn't it.  It's just not. 

I'm furious at Mike Pence for NOT running because he's one I think could actually get elected.  What's he doing, anyway?  Waiting for the safer bet in 2016?  What's the field going to look like then?  Rubio?  Ryan?  Pence?  We're saving all our good candidates for a year when only one can get elected? 

I know, it's too soon now for Rubio.  It just is.  He has to prove himself.  I'd vote for Ryan right now, though.  And Pence. 

But instead, I've got Donald Trump.

The GOP needs to get their act together and fast.  Obama is already in full campaign mode and somewhere ACORN is organizing something nefarious. 

We can't stand another four years of Obama.  He's ready to "finish the job" and that doesn't bode well for freedom, free enterprise, capitalism, or democracy. 

A Kidney for Your Freedom

Governor Haley Barbour is in the news again today.  The New York Times reports that Barbour has granted "indefinite suspension of sentence" (not exactly a pardon...) to the Scott sisters; Jamie and Gladys Scott are each serving two life sentences in a Mississippi prison for armed robbery.

The condition?  Gladys has to give her sister one of her kidneys.

Can a governor require that!?  I guess he can. 

The Times reports that the original idea belonged to Gladys.  It seems that Jamie is in need of a transplant and her medical care is now costing the state a lot of money.  

Barbour has decided the women are no longer a threat to society and the NAACP (among others) has long protested the sentence they received, based in part it seems on the fact that they only got $11.00 in the attack.  In addition, the Scott sisters had no previous criminal conviction, so many decided the sentence was unfair.  (I'm not sure why they think the fact that they only got $11.00 means their sentence was too harsh, but there ya go; would it have been fair if they'd gotten $1,000?)   

Jamie Scott says they're innocent and didn't do it.  That could be true, I suppose.  One of their accomplices (after the robbery they left the scene with three young men) submitted an affadavit saying the sisters weren't involved.

It all sounds like a John Grisham novel.

At any rate - a kidney for your freedom is now the law of the land in Mississippi.

Piling on Barbour

The second attack on Haley Barbour in as many weeks suggests to me that he must be making some people nervous.