Investing in a lot of smoke and noise...

_Okay, so according to an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday, Newt Gingrich leads Mitt Romney among Republican voters, but is breathing in quite a bit of dust in second place behind President Obama.

That poll accomplishes little more than reinforcing my belief the Republicans are just going through the motions, hoping a new wave of fresh, relevant challengers can be found in 2016, after Obama has run out of time and if there is anything left to be in charge of. If the debates in Florida showed anything, it's that the two frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination are more interested in a territorial pissing match over who has what in their stock portfolios.

Who gives a fuck? Seriously, who gives a single gram of fuck what the hell Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul or any of the candidates invest in, as long as it's legal? Why the hell wouldn't either Romney or Gingrich invest in Fannie Mae? Romney is not a stupid man, and if he can see return in an investment, especially one that's been propped up by the government for decades, then why shouldn't he make a buck on the investment?

If Newt Gingrich is on the Fannie Mae payroll, whether it's minimum wage (yeah, I hear ya...please save the uncontrollable laughter for the end) or the $25,000 a month or whatever he was getting, then why wouldn't he invest back in the company? Not entirely unheard of, investing in a company you work for. Thank God I am not running for President, because I have been guilty of owning stock in company I worked for. Some of the companies, I even hated, but they were making a profit, they had the blindingly good common sense and American good taste to hire me (even if that was the singular fucking thing they did right during my tenure), so why not earn a handful of loose change a year in dividends?

Getting beyond the irony of two multimillionaires arguing over who has the interest of the middle class best at heart, which is rather like two silent movie villains arguing over who used the better knot in tying the damsel in distress to the tracks, what is going to be the next hot button non-issue? Are we going to see interviews with people who remember back to the 80s, when one of the candidates was not kind and did not rewind? Will the last minute knockout punch be an old photo of a candidate parking in the handicapped space in front of a 7-11 to run in and grab a 20 ounce Mountain Dew and two scratch-offs? Whatever it is, will it at least be slightly less ridiculous than the two examples I'm running with?...

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