Gary Johnson Debases Self While Make-Believe Debating Pretend Barack Obama

Whoops! Former former governor of New Mexico and trying-to-get-himself-taken-seriously-as-a-presidential-contender Gary Johnson — who is not participating in tonight's debate because he's not invited — accidentally agreed to "debate" and Barack Obama impersonator* on John Stossel's Fox Business show.** Yikes!

Ugh! This is almost too painful to watch. This is almost as cringe-worthy as that time Tim Pawlenty accidentally announced he was running for president without any of his handlers telling him that he was Tim Pawlenty.

(via The War Room)

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^{* Embarrassing!
** Majorly embarrassing!}

Tags: Debates, Fox, Gary Johnson, John Stossel, New Mexico, Primaries, Republicans, Tim Pawlenty

The United States of Unflattering Stereotypes

How long does it take to travel to every state in the nation and mock it right to its face? About two minutes…

I think it's really cool that Paul Jury traveled 19,000 miles in the service of writing his book States of Confusion, but you've got to wonder if it was really necessary. If he was really interested in seeing how everybody in the country really lives, couldn't he have just gone to a Wal-Mart in a Hoveround?

Tags: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Books, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Quote Unquote: Billy the Kid Just Can't Catch a Break

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson gives his reasoning for the very important decision he made today…

"I've decided not to pardon Billy the Kid because of a lack of conclusiveness and the historical ambiguity as to why Governor Wallace reneged on his pardon."

I can't really come up with a better response to this than commenter Not Adam Schramm, so I'll just let him carry this one…

"I guess if he decides to run for office again in the future he doesn't want to get a reputation for being soft on 130 years-dead criminals."

Tags: Bill Richardson, New Mexico, Pardons, Quote Unquote

2012 GOP Hopeful Admits to Smoking the Evil Marijuana Drug

The only Republican to date that I would consider voting for in 2012 continues to be the only Republican to date that I would consider voting for in 2012…

Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and a likely 2012 Republican presidential candidate, hasn’t been shy about his support for marijuana legalization or his personal use of the drug during his younger days. "I never exhaled," he joked in a recent interview with The New Republic. But in an interview with The Weekly Standard, Johnson admitted publicly for the first time that he smoked marijuana more recently — from 2005 to 2008 — for medicinal purposes, he says.

"It's not anything I volunteer, but you’re the only person that actually asked about it," says Johnson, who governed New Mexico from 1994 to 2002. "But for luck, I guess, I wasn’t arrested." Although smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes was illegal in New Mexico until 2007, Johnson says he needed the drug following a 2005 paragliding accident in Hawaii…

"Rather than using painkillers, which I have used on occasion before, I did smoke pot, as a result of having broken my back, blowing out both of my knees, breaking ribs, really taking about three years to recover," Johnson says. He explains that painkillers had once caused him to suffer nasty side effects and the pain of withdrawing from the pills was unbearable. So, Johnson says, in 2005 "someone" who cared for him gave him marijuana to deal with the pain.

Personally, I'm definitely more of a crushed-up Percocet kind of guy than a vaporizer full of Bubblegum aficionado. But I won't hold that against the guy. Because I am willing to put our differences aside and reach across the aisle like that.

Tags: Drugs, Gary Johnson, Marijuana, New Mexico, Republicans

Texans Might Soon Be Realizing What It's Like to Put Up with Texas

Dan Savage is concerned that — with Texas quite possibly ripping itself from the federal Medicaid program –neighboring states' medical systems may find themselves faced with an onslaught of proudly-self-sufficient Lone Star refugees.

But, he has a possible solution for the problem…

"So if Texas withdraws from Medicaid we're going to have to secure the border. I'm thinking we're going to need a dang fence running along Texas's borders with New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Maybe an electrified one."

I'm thinking that Mexico might also want to consider building it's own fence to keep the Texans out just south of the one the Texans built to keep the Mexicans out.

Tags: Arkansas, Dan Savage, Economy, Health Care, Louisiana, Medicaid, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas