Well, Roger Simon had it right when he asked rhetorically on "Inside Washington" a couple months ago http://www.ruralthoughts.net/index.php?q=node/563 , at the time that Rick Perry first announced his candidacy for the republican nomination for the president of the U.S., whether or not Perry was "all hat and no cattle," using an ol' Texas saying.

Over the months since then, it has appearing as if Perry's hat was growing larger while his cattle was shrinking. After last night, if a person has any doubt they would have to be about as simple minded as Perry.

In what is bound to become the butt of jokes by everyone from Jay Leno to David Letterman to Jon Daly to SNL, Perry, in another republican presidential primary debate, started to say that if he became president, he would eliminate 3 departments in the federal government, and then he started to name them....commerce, education...and.. and....and. He was forgetting what the third department he was going to eliminate was! One of the other republicans shouted out...EPA? Perry seemed to say "yeah" and immediately the moderator broke in and asked...are you saying that you would eliminate the EPA? Perry said...no...but they need reworking...and then he stammered around a while more while people started laughing and then finally admitted that he couldn't remember. He had lost the game show for sure and he knew it!

We all lose our train of thought from time to time, no doubt about it. But in a U.S. presidential primary debate for one of the major parties is probably one of the worst times - especially if your previous debate performances had catapulted you from the lead to the bottom of the pack.

I mean, do you want a guy who can't remember whether or not to call in the army or FEMA or the corps of engineers in a natural disaster to be in charge of the whole kit and kaboodle?

Perry went out today and tried to do damage control. He was taking a good humored approach, but he did try to deflect some of the blame by saying that it showed that the government was too big and complicated to even remember. That was lame. Not good enough.

With Cain and his female problems, and Perry with his intellectual problems, and Huntsman invisible, it looks like it's going to be Romney by default. In the meantime, I'm not sure how many gallons the biggest texas hat is, but order the biggest that they come for Rick Perry. Ten gallons won't be enough, I'm sure.