*Geez, this guy Rick Perry is a real idiot

It's not only what he says about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke - that Bernanke printing any more money between now and November 2012 would be a treasonous act. It's the clueless, dumb-as-dirt way in which he says it. (Perhaps someone should advise him that the Federal Reserve is an independent entity and its decisions are not subject to Presidential or Congressional concurrence.) Oh, and let's not forget that Bernanke is a Republican economist appointed by George W. Bush. Look closely at this short clip - you never say never in politics, but I have a hard time believing that this guy could catch on in a general campaign. Well, we can only pray...

*Andrew Sullivan sums it up:

The reason I've been a little circumspect in judging the Perry candidacy is that it's very hard to tell if a candidate this Texan and this far right has any traction in the middle of the country. Perhaps in hard times, he does. But then you examine his actual positions - social security is unconstitutional, secession is an option - and you wonder if this is a fantasy, if the GOP isn't actually committing the kind of grotesque suicide that Obama tends to evoke in his opponents. What Perry is now shown to have said has a plain meaning. He'd support lynching the Fed Chairman. And he believes that Bernanke's attempts to prevent a Second Great Depression are partisan politics, and an attempt to rig the election. He seems to think, in other words, that the man who was the head of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and was appointed to Fed Chairman by George W. Bush is somehow a Democratic party operative trying to win the election for Obama. It's a staggering assault on the integrity of a civil servant grappling with some of the most serious economic problems this country has faced in our lifetime.