Friday Double: (9) Herman Cain's perpetual gift

I'm so happy about GOP presidential hopeful (and master crap marketer) Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax scheme.  It's made this Friday Double so much easier to compose than usual.  Thanks, Pizza Guy!

Leave aside the fact that even other Republicans hate 9-9-9; just note that it might have been stolen from a video game.  One of Cain's rivals, Michele "Corn Dog" Bachmann, even poked fun at his plan by insinuating a connection to the number 666, that well known symbol of the Antichrist.

Naturally, then, my first selection today comes from Omen III: The Final Conflict.  This 1981 mess was (fortunately) the last* of the Omen movies, which centered on one Damien Thorn, who is meant to be Antichrist.  This selection contains both the main title and a second track ("The Second Coming").  Combinations like this aren't uncommon in modern films, but Jerry Goldsmith made it a habit.


I could have picked the better known "Ave Satani" from the first Omen movie, which Goldsmith also penned.  Since Herman Cain is running for President, just like Damien Thorn did, this choice made better sense.

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The best thing about Cain's 9-9-9 scheme is that it's so easy to mock.  The folks over at Stephanie Miller's talk-radio show have taken to calling it "Nein! Nein! Nein!" and that inspired me to come up with another renaming:  "Plan 999 from Outer Space."

Oh, well.  I might as well just give you the theme to the classic Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).  I'm not sure who wrote it.  Wikipedia credits someone named Frank Worth, but IMDB claims that it's Emil Asher, who didn't get the credit.  Neither man sported a long film résumé.

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On the other hand, I could just follow the lead of these stupid birds from Finding Nemo (2003) and just call Cain's scheme the "Mine! Mine! Mine!" plan.


It's at least as stupid as those birds.

*There was a 2006 remake of the first Omen movie.  It was so forgettable, I forgot about it.

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The Bachmanns' unfunny corn-dog joke

Yeehaw!  You go, Optimus!

With Texas governor Rick Perry coming on board as a GOP Presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann's campaign will probably fade.  Perry's a gun-totin', macho man from Texas (just like his predecessor, George W. Bush), so conservative evangelicals will probably fall behind him.  For now, though, Bachmann still holds the Dominionist banner.  However quickly Perry's campaign overtakes hers, those corn-dog pictures that have won such attention last week still hold a lesson for those of us who would like to keep her like out of power.

I've wondered why Michele hasn't more forcefully defended her husband Marcus against all the questions and jokes about his sexuality.  It's not that he doesn't deserve criticism regarding his counseling of gays.  Those "pray away the gay" tactics Marcus has used in his practice are offensive.

The Bachmanns, unlike fellow fundamentalist-Christian favorites Perry, Bush and Sarah Palin, are hard-core Dominionists.  I don't think Bush has even wondered whether he is one, but he did appeal to them.  Palin is one, but she's more like the lead choir singer at Sunday services than an actual church official.  Perry isn't one, yet, although he has quite consciously moved into their corner.  Unlike any of them, the Bachmanns know what they are preaching.

Given that the Bachmanns's beliefs include "complementarian theology," which boils down to the notion that wives must submit their husbands, you'd think that Michele's candidacy contradicts itself.  How, after all, can a woman rule a nation is she is subservient to her husband?  Shouldn't Marcus be the one running for the White House?  What's wrong with him, anyway?  At face value, it's Michele's Dominionist supporters who should be going at her in weapons-free mode.

Michele can answer that:  wifely submission serves the larger goal submitting to God.  I would imagine that some of her supporters also think that Marcus's counseling would be much better served with Michele running the Oval Office.  Not all Dominionists buy those arguments; some would still feel obligated to attack the Bachmanns.  But even then, why bother, when their common enemies are doing all the hard work for them?  This way, Dominionists (and the rest of the Fox News set) can yet again pretend the victims of the godless pinko Muslim pagan Communist socialist heathen mutants who supposedly dominate the mainstream media.

Enter these photos of the foot-long corn dog:

A starburst in every bite.  Oh, wait:  this isn't Caribou Barbie, is it?

You know what they tell me?  The Bachmanns have decided to stop fighting all the questions about Marcus's sexuality.  If they really cared about quelling the rumors once and for all, they would have just stayed away from the corn-dog lines in Ames.  They've seen all the phallic jokes, and now they're just playing along.

Sometimes a corn dog is just a corn dog.  And sometimes it's a big, fat middle finger to the world.

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