And this is the teabaggers' choice for the Republican presidential nomination

Remember that video I posted the other day, in which one vapid, slack-jawed mouthbreathing teabagger after another said that they liked Trump for president? Here's the business genius they're supporting:

Trump has built an American empire from Las Vegas to New York with towering hotels and sparkling casinos. Forbes estimates he's worth $2.7 billion. But not all of Trump's business ventures have been constant money-makers. In 1991, 1992, 2004, and again in 2009, Trump branded companies or properties have sought Chapter 11 protection.

"I've used the laws of this country to pare debt. ... We'll have the company. We'll throw it into a chapter. We'll negotiate with the banks. We'll make a fantastic deal. You know, it's like on 'The Apprentice.' It's not personal. It's just business," Trump told ABC's George Stephanopoulos last Thursday.

A business declaring bankruptcy is nothing new in corporate America, where bankruptcy is often sugar-coated as "restructuring debt." But it might seem alarming to everyday Americans who can't get a bank to restructure their home loans. If you want to get Donald Trump hot under the collar, accuse him of declaring bankruptcy.

Read the whole sordid story here. It's as much about how the laws are rigged so that people like Donald Trump never have to accept the consequences of their own folly as it is about Trump's own multiple bankruptcies. So here we have a bunch of idiots, many of whom are probably underwater on their own houses if they haven't lost them already, whose own retirement accounts have lost much of their value, supporting a guy who's been able to game the system over and over again for his own advantage.

And they don't even see any irony in this.

Not to sound like a grump, but...

The story of the you-can't-make-this-up-named Ted Williams, the homeless man with the golden pipes who has in just a few days gone from the street to media darlinghood, is a lovely one. But the insanity surrounding the multiple offers and the relentless media self-congratulation on giving a hidden gem the exposure warranted by a media that loves a resonant voice disguises the larger problem of homelessness in this country.

Mr. Williams, for all his golden voice, has a backstory that fits what most people think about homeless people -- the Fall of the Substance Abuser. If not for his resonant voice, Mr. Williams would be regarded by the very same people who now want to hire him as part of the vast pool of "undeserving poor and homeless." Even as Mr. Williams begins his new live, one with which everyone wishes him success, there are homeless people everywhere that no one wants to hire, to give a home, to help.

As the Dallas Morning News reports, the new face of the homeless is families:

First, they stayed with family. Then, they rented a trailer. Finally, they went to a shelter.

Katrina Stephens, Alan Charles Walker and their three young children became homeless after Walker's construction work dried up.

Now, the family lives in a modest East Dallas apartment as part of Family Gateway's transitional housing program. Stephens plans to finish school to become a medical assistant this spring.

About 80,000 families – typically a single woman with young children – are homeless on any given night, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Families are the fastest-growing homeless population, according to Family Gateway and other local agencies.

More than 170,000 families nationwide stayed at shelters or in transitional housing programs in 2009, up 30 percent from 2007, according to HUD. Those families included 300,000 children younger than 18.

Estimates of the number of homeless families vary.

The National Center on Family Homelessness in Needham, Mass., estimates that 1.5 million children experience homelessness in a year. The center includes children who are "doubled up," living with relatives or friends because of economic hardship.

And in Dallas County, the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA), which coordinates local homeless programs, found that 1,275 people in 422 families were homeless on the night of its annual census in 2010.

On the December 26 edition of This Week, Bob Woodruff did a segment on homeless Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans:

No one is offering these people jobs in media. No one is offering these people who have served their country anything. Republican politicians regard people who still have roofs over their heads but have been laid off as lazy and shiftless and greedy. What do they make of homeless veterans? When was the last time you heard ANY Washington politician talk about the plight of homeless veterans and families?

So yes, let's get the warm fuzzies about Ted Williams' change in fortunes. But instead of self-congratulation, I hope this will re-open the discussion of homelessness in America, and help people realize that every homeless person has a backstory -- and deserves another chance.

Everything that's vile and petty about the press..in ONE Maureen Dowd column

MoDo is still pissed off that Barry isn't nice enough to her and her peeps:

Biden gave a press party at his house recently with a beach theme — complete with Uzi-size squirt guns and water slides. Journalists came with their families, schmoozed with top White House officials like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, and watched a dripping wet vice president walk around with his little grandson. One Obama aide remarked that Biden is “the most beloved person in the White House.”

Jon Stewart and bloggers mocked the journalists, suggesting they were too chummy with power. But the picnic was on the record, and good reporters can’t be co-opted by some cold French fries. Whenever you see politicians in a relaxed or stressful situation, beyond the usual teleprompter speeches and scripted photo ops, you learn something about those charged with making life and death decisions. You may even pick up some news.

We learned there that Joe Biden has been assigned the press portfolio. This is remarkable, given that it was Obama who was hailed as the charming new JFK, the mesmerizing leader who beguiled an infatuated press, as the “Saturday Night Live” skit went, to plump his pillows.

But that skit was more of a caricature of some ideological cable guys and besotted columnists — including some conservatives — than a realistic portrayal of his relationship with the “working” press.

The press traveling with Obama on the campaign never had a lovey-dovey relationship with him. He treated us with aloof correctness, and occasional spurts of irritation. Like many Democrats, he thinks the press is supposed to be on his side.

The patrician George Bush senior was always gracious with reporters while conveying the sense that what we do for a living was rude.

The former constitutional lawyer now in the White House understands that the press has a role in the democracy. But he is an elitist, too, as well as thin-skinned and controlling. So he ends up regarding scribes as intrusive, conveying a distaste for what he sees as the fundamental unseriousness of a press driven by blog-around-the-clock deadlines.

The 21st-century press beast is a scary multimedia monster, caught up in the trite as well as the vital, and reporters rarely can be as contemplative as the cerebral Obama would like.

Sometimes on the campaign plane, I would watch Obama venture back to make small talk with the press, discussing food at an event or something light. Then I would see him literally back away a few moments later as a blast of questions and flipcams hit him.

But that’s the world we live in. It hurts Obama to be a crybaby about it, and to blame the press and the “old Washington game” for his own communication failures.

“On health care, Obama told single-payer liberals that they had to deal with the world as it is, not as they wanted it to be,” said Jonathan Alter, the author of “The Promise,” about Obama’s first year in office. “But he doesn’t take his own advice when it comes to the media. Obama refuses to deal with the media world as it is. He’s holding out for the media world that he wants. But that will never be. That disdainful attitude toward 24-hour cable culture is slowing his political reflexes. We’re seeing that in the oil spill. I don’t think it’s personal with him. It’s not that he despises reporters as human beings, like Nixon. He does scores of interviews and he doesn’t rage behind closed doors. But if he doesn’t make more concessions to Washington as it is, he’s going to hurt his presidency.”

Now that Obama has been hit with negative press, he’s even more contemptuous. “He’s never needed to woo the press,” says the NBC White House reporter Chuck Todd. “He’s never really needed us.”

Assholes.