All you need to see in our Debate In 100 Seconds.

Apparently unsure whether he'd sufficiently demoralized supporters and pushed himself officially into the second tier of presidential candidates, Rick Perry after the debate started riffing on how the American Revolution happened in the 1500s.

Possibly after Henry VIII executed one of his wives who was born in America. Or something like that.

All jokes aside, NBC News Carrie Dann quotes Perry explaining how the "reason we fought the revolution in the 16th century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown."

9:29 PM: I was misled into thinking this debate was only 90 minutes. Didn't pace myself. Ran out of cleverisms. The blogging equivalent of bonking.

9:32 PM: I want to believe Herman Cain sang Alan Greenspan's praises just to watch Ron Paul's head explode. I could respect him for that.

9:35 PM: Over an hour and a half into the debate, and I think that was the first time Cain spoke without saying "999." Small victories.

9:37 PM: Meanwhile, back in the real world, President Obama's jobs bill has officially been filibustered in the Senate.

9:42 PM: At a certain level, you can't blame Newt. His schtick has worked for so long, why change it now? So you get things like this:

There's a stream of American thought that really wishes we would decay and fall apart and that the future would be bleak so that the government can share the misery. It was captured by Jimmy Carter in his malaise speech. It's captured every week by Barack Obama in his apologias disguised as press conferences.

9:45 PM: The average low-information voter isn't going to be exposed to any account of this debate that includes this necessary corrective: The prescription for economic recovery offered by the Republican presidential field is completely divorced from reality.

9:52 PM: At least Mitt didn't join in the "I was born in a log cabin" hagiography parade.

9:06 PM: This could be fun. Candidates get to question each other.

9:07 PM: Yup. Michele Bachmann kicks it off, asking Rick Perry about his support for Al Gore in 1988.

9:08 PM: Finally. Cain and Romney engage.

9:10 PM: Cain challenges Romney to name the 59 points of his economic plan. Romney: "Simple answers are helpful but often inadequate." #999throwdown

9:11 PM: Someone forgot to tell Michele Bachmann that Rick Perry isn't relevant anymore. Everyone else targeting Romney with their questions.

9:12 PM: Right now it's Mitt Romney and the also-rans. It's that simple.

9:14 PM: Ron Paul can't resist going after Cain for serving on the Federal Reserve board.

9:18 PM: Perry joins in the Romney onslaught, but Romney holding his own.

9:19 PM: Romney's turn. He tosses a nice easy one Michele Bachmann's way. Well played.

9:20 PM: Cain eclipses Perry in this debate. Strange but true.

9:23 PM: Someone might want to tell Rick Perry that the debate started 83 minutes ago.

In an interview just now with TPM, Barney Frank responded to Newt's threat to jail him for the financial crisis: "This self-styled intellectual leader of the free world struggling to stay ahead of Michele Bachmann in the polls is unsettling him so he talks even sillier than he sometimes does."

8:43 PM: Can we elect the disembodied head of Ronald Reagan as President? #PresidentHeadroom #bad80sreferences

Late Update: TPM Reader BS correctly fails me on this '80s reference. I'd forgotten that in fact Garry Trudeau already made the Ronald Reagan-Max Headroom connection, morphing them into the Doonesbury character Ron Headrest.

8:46 PM: Herman Cain is going to make me pay more for beer?

8:48 PM: Charlie Rose: "We know about China. We know about India." Yes, yes we do.

8:50 PM: Mitt a hawk on China?

8:52 PM: Perry's plan for economic recovery: Drill, baby, drill.

8:54 PM: Rick Santorum outhawks Mitt: "I want to go to war with China." He seemed to be referring to an economic war, not a military one. But still.

8:56 PM: Barney Frank slams Newt over threat to put him in jail.

Barney Frank spox tells TPM that Newt's threat to jail the congressman is "idiotic."

8:21 PM: That first foray into the economic crisis was about as shallow and ineffectual a discussion of how to achieve economic recovery as I've seen so far in this campaign. But they've already moved on to ... prostate cancer exams. Really.

8:24 PM: Hard to believe Democrats are training their oppo research sights on Herman Cain. But Cain's polling too well to ignore him any longer.

8:29 PM: Here goes Mitt being reasonable again. He's not willing to say the financial bailout was a catastrophic mistake that ended America as we know it.

8:30 PM: Waiting for Mitt to get in some jabs at the surging Cain. Nothing yet.

8:31 PM: Newt: I'd jail Greece, too.

8:33 PM: While they take a break, a Ron Paul retrospective.

Pressed by Charlie Rose for his specific plan for economic recovery, Rick Perry parried: "Mitt's had six years to be working on a plan. I've had about eight weeks."

7:51 PM: In a twist of timing, the Senate will finish voting on President Obama's jobs bill sometime toward the end of tonight's debate. The vote is being left open to allow Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) to return to DC from New Hampshire, the site of tonight's debate. The bill is not close to getting the 60 votes necessary to advance, but Shaheen will give Democrats a symbolic 51st vote in favor.

7:57 PM: Tonight's debate is sponsored by Bloomberg TV and the Washington Post. It's taking place at Dartmouth, where Mitt Romney's well-worn jab at the "Harvard faculty lounge" gets a different kind of applause.

8:00 PM: Bloomberg has 40,000 junior staffers fact-checking this debate.

8:01 PM: Can we just skip tonight and fast forward to SNL's parody of Charlie Rose?

8:03 PM: Debate kicks off with the conventional wisdom that Washington is afflicted by "bipartisan dysfunction." Sigh.

8:05 PM: Asked what he would do to end paralysis in Washington, Herman Cain said he'd call 911 999.

8:06 PM: Rick Perry: Every job at Dartmouth is a direct result of my Texas miracle. Only kinda joking.

8:08 PM: Karen Tumulty is a solid DC journalist. A good follow on Twitter.

8:10 PM: Michele Bachmann: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to blame for everything since the Norman invasion.

8:12 PM: Did Newt just threaten to jail Chris Dodd and Barney Frank for the financial crisis?

8:15 PM: Newt Gingrich comes out with guns blazing tonight: "If you wanna put people in jail, I'll second what Michele said. You ought to start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd."

GOP presidential debate coverage here at and TPM Livewire at 8 p.m. ET. See you soon.

FBI to bring Lockheed Martin's facial recognition technology to law enforcement nationwide in 2014.

With Herman Cain rocketing in the polls, could the Cain-Romney bromance officially end tonight?

The numerical logic is strong. But I actually wonder if Mitt's going to go down that path. In some ways, Cain could be useful to Romney. I don't think anyone thinks Herman Cain is going to be the Republican nominee. So he's a much more convenient person for the right-wing of the party to get all jazzed up about than Rick Perry, who definitely could be the nominee.

Curious what you think.

Listening to Mitt right now at the Christie endorsement press conference he is not shying away from this weekends Mormonism 'controversy'. Really going in for the kill, sticking the issue to Perry, not waiting for others to do it. Got the lay up from Christie.

As you've likely heard, the US government is reporting this afternoon that it has broken up a plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to Washington and to attack the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington. Our reporter is at the press conference which is underway at this moment -- so we'll be reporting more shortly.

Here are the two keys though: Listening to the press conference the Justice Department is pushing very hard on the claim of Iranian government complicity. AG Holder spoke of "factions of the Iranian government" being involved. Needless to say, the claim that Iran would try to mount a violent attack in the US capital and trying to assassinate allied foreign ambassadors would have vast and dramatic international implications, to put it mildly. And no doubt -- as I listen to the discussion at the press conference -- the DOJ officials are pushing the Iranian government role very hard.

Second, the claim is that agents working on behalf or in league with the Iranian government allegedly approached Mexican drug cartels for assistance carrying out the assassination/attack. Given the controversy over the US-Mexican border, the idea that Mexican drug cartels might be involved in such an attack is sure to shoot that controversy to the moon as well.

Our initial read of the court documents suggests that FBI and DEA agents were involved from the first. We'll bring you more shortly. It sounds at this point that the plot was aspirational until US government agents became involved and worked with the alleged conspirators to move it toward operational.

Read More →

The White House is saying this afternoon that unanimity among Senate Democrats is not the standard that should be applied to his jobs bill. This is in advance of a vote tonight in the Senate on the bill. Republicans plan to filibuster the bill. So it is a certainty that the bill will not pass because it cannot get 60 votes. The question is whether it could even get 50 votes, which of course comes down to whether the President and Harry Reid can get the support of every or almost every Senate Dem.

The news peg is that the White House is going to go along with breaking the bill into chunks and voting on them individually rather than doing it in one big bill. And that's supposed to be the White Flag getting run up the flag pole.

Read More →

White House: Unanimous Dem support not the right standard for jobs bill.

Playing off of the "We are the 99%" slogan, right-wingers have started a contending "We are the 53%" -- of people who pay income tax vs the loafers and slackers who don't.

Chris Christie endorses Mitt Romney.

Steny Hoyer (D-MD) on this evening's Senate vote on the jobs bill: "I think you're correct that if we can't get 51 Democrats to vote for it, it will clearly be argued by Republicans and construed by all of you as undermining the President's message."