Grumpy Abe

Plain Dealer: Punting out of trouble

2012-01-27T19:42:00.010-05:00

FOR ANYONE wondering why the Plain Dealer's veteran Cleveland Browns writer, Tony Grossi, was yanked from the beat forevermore, Thom Fladung, the paper's managing editor, offered his explanation on a Cleveland radio show. Grossi, he said, had declared on Twitter that Browns owner Randy Lerner was a "pathetic figure" and the "most irrelevant billionaire in the world."

Grossi's remarks were intended to be private but they weren't shielded, to his later dismay. If he had used the same language describing Mitt Romney, give or take several million, he would have been spared his demotion. But pro football is very big business and despite the paper's denial that the Browns front office had called for the writer's put-down, surely Lerner had a lot to say about it through one channel or another.

It the Browns were at least competitive over the past decade or so, the editors might have been excused for telling Grossi to go to his room. Does anybody want to defend the owner's relevancy?

Oh, Fladung did concede that Grossi was indeed a "very good beat writer" but that his next assignment at the paper still hasn't been determined.

Fair warning to Grossi's successor.

Author Brewer: Photo-opping the president

2012-01-26T23:43:00.007-05:00

OUR POLITICAL grandstanding award this week must go unchallenged to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who confronted President Obama as he deplaned in Phoenix. Within moments she was seen in profile pointing her finger at him in what appeared to be a severely aggressive mood until he turned away in the Republican governor's mid-sentence.

Oh, she has written a book titled Scorpions for Breakfast in which she was less than kind to Obama's immigration policy. So you could say it was a photo-op for her and it worked. Book sales reportedly shot up by 150,000 as the story made the rounds.

In an intellectual showdown between Obama and Brewer I'd be quick to bet on the President. But that's immaterial. Instead, rarely would you see such disrespect to an American president, whether it is Obama or any of his predecessors. Obviously such courtesy to the office has yet to reach the Arizona precincts.

Brewer did say that she found Obama threatening and "thin-skinned". OK, that might be a little less denigrating than, say, mentioning the color of his skin.

Callista: The first among equals?

2012-01-25T16:16:00.004-05:00

FROM FIRST WIFE NANCY comes a presidential protocol question that I can't answer. She asks:

If Newt Gingrich is elected president, would Callista have the title of "First Lady"?

My view: The only way to resolve that touchy issue is to keep him out of the White House.

Jesus is coming to Summit County Lincoln Day dinner?

2012-01-24T18:33:00.014-05:00

THE SUMMIT COUNTY Republican Party's steady drift to the party's wackiest right wing will be reinforced at its Lincoln Day Dinner on Feb. 18. It will be at that moment that Chairman Alex Arshinkoff will honor the presence of Rick Santorum as the $50 a plate dinner speaker. The former Pennsylvania senator, who was defeated by 18 points in 2006, is running for president at the moment and may or may not still be a candidate by dinnertime.

Debbie Walsh, the party's executive director, said she couldn't predict whether Santorum, who has strong theocratic tendencies, will still be in the race, "but we're optimistic."

Theocratic? Santorum referred to himself as Jesus recently in explaining why he is in the race. And you thought I was trying to be cute about this! I can't make this up.

Santorum has said a lot of other things that the county's Republicans will doubtless hear about after dinner. He is fully against contraceptives; opposes abortion , even for rape victims; describes the fight against Islam as "onward Christian soldiers" ; expresses doubts about whether Mormons are Christians; opposes welfare programs that "make people's lives better;" and - you do have to wonder abut this guy - questions the need for food stamps when so many people who get them are already fat.

Had enough? So have I. But so there should be no question about my slant on the Lincoln Day dinner (Lincoln has nothing to do with it, folks ), it's not for me to tell Arshinkoff whom to invite to the event. It's his party, lock, stock and whatever, and he can invite Pope Benedict if it helps him sell more tickets.

I'm merely recording another chapter in the once moderate county party led by the late Ray Bliss. Trending? Recent speakers have been Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the speakers at Monday's March for Life, and Mike Huckabee, a former preacher and sworn enemy of Biblical impurity.

Yeah. I think theocratic is right.

What the hell is self-deportation?

2012-01-24T15:56:00.004-05:00

THERE ARE SAID to be 600,000 words in the English language. Today, there are 600,001, with Mitt Romney's addition of "self-deportation." That's how he chose to solve the problem of illegal immigrants. They must deport themselves.

Well, anything goes in politics, I guess, but I'm not sure how self-deporting works, or even can work. Totally unexplored ground in immigration policy until last night. Does deportation have some legal force behind it that can't be assumed by any individual who simply wants to go home? For the time being, I prefer the frustration of a person who commented on a national blog: Will Mitt next propose that we have self-detention centers?

Meanwhile, rising once again from the shambles of the presidential contenders, Newt Gingrich insists he will no longer debate if the audience can't participate. (It was asked to remain courteously quiet before Monday's debate.) Translation: He wants his very own cheering section for his golden utterances from the stage. How daring of him!

The voice of a homeless Republican

2012-01-24T12:36:00.007-05:00

A RECENT ISSUE of The Chronicle Review of Higher Education has a poignant glimpse of a shattered life on the homeless front. It was written in 2007 by a 53-year-old Houston man, Brian Lohse, and first appeared in a book Hard Ground by Michael O'Brien and Tom Waits. It says so much about today's human and political landscape that it demands a broader audience.

So here are the words of Brian Lohse:

"I'm formerly a Republican. Back in 1996 in Houston, Texas, I was sleeping in the field looking at the high-rise apartment that I used to live in. I couldn't believe that a few years earlier I had a nice apartment, I was driving a new car, I had an American Express card, a line of credit at the bank. I ate at nice restaurants and wore designer clothes. But now I was sleeping in the fields, eating at soup kitchens, getting clothes with vouchers, and riding the Metro. It did not make sense to me.

"But my problem wasn't logical, it was spiritual. I didn't think there was any such thing as a homeless Republican, but the Lord will get your attention one way or another."

A spectator's Horoscope for tonight's debate

2012-01-23T14:15:00.003-05:00

AS A SPECIAL benefit to keep you well prepared for tonight's Republican debate, we offer, in part, the actual forecast from today's Jacqueline Bigar Horoscope:

Mitt Romney, Mar. 12, 1947, Pisces: Zero in on a problem by observing instead of asking questions. You could be surprised by what you find out. Also, note what is not being said. Your sunny manner can help take the edge off for now...

Rick Santorum, May 10, 1958, Taurus: All the possibilities that surround a project might overwhelm you. A new beginning becomes possible professionally, if you worry a little less. Keep smiling. Your insights are appreciated...

Newt Gingrich, June 17, 1943, Gemini: Reach out for someone at a distance. Your ability to zero in on an issue might not be as sharp as you would like. You could find that a relationship becomes far more touchy in the next few weeks...

Ron Paul, Aug. 20, 1935, Leo: Use caution with finances in the next few months. You easily could make an an error. Others seek you out, but they also want to have more control.. Let them have their way, and they will better understand the complexity of your responsibilities.

Sorry, Walter, but they're closing Rex's

2012-01-23T10:33:00.011-05:00

A necessary report to my dear friend, the late Walter Mirapaul:

I'm sorry to have to tell you the awful news, Walter, that they're closing your old hunting grounds. Yep. Rex's Salvage will be history by mid-March. That's the word from Rex's owner, Recovery Management Corporation. What a loss! I know you would agree.

But RMC says it had no choice. You know, the economy. And something about the new ways of the trucking industry, of which I know little.

As a careful student of the wares that were available at Rex's, you might not be surprised by the news. In the past several months, you said more than once that the inventory was slipping. In your words, "It isn't as good as it used to be." (I assumed that was the reason that you drove me to Big Lots to buy a desk lamp.)

So we must be satisfied with the memories of the shopping visits over the years that could kill a couple of hours as you rooted through every bin at Rex's for truffles while insisting that a sport jacket at $10 was a fraction of its value. Or that the shampoo was a steal. Only someone who had memorized thousands of prices in stores around town could identify a steal from a mere bargain.

So I will cherish all the more the items that I bought for no particular reason when I tagged along to Rex's with you to honor your skills as a comparison shopper: Clocks, picture frames, DVD's, paper clips, the lonely bric-a-brac of truck salvage.

By the way, remember when I had cautioned you against buying an oriental rug at Rex's when you called my office. "How big is it," I asked. "BIG!" you said.

"What is its condition?" "It's rolled up. I can't tell."

I told you it would be wise to look at the whole rug before buying it.

You did, and I do remember what you said when you called back. "It had a hole in it. No deal."

But you did have a closet filled with the deals that ended up as multiple gifts at your annual Christmas Party. For that, we were all thankful. Particularly to Louise, who gave up so much of her time wrapping dozens of your hand-picked presents. Those were the days.

P.S. Another update: They never did reopen the Blue Fig restaurant where the gang met as your guests for your regular Saturday breakfasts. I noticed that it has been converted into a martial arts operation. So hard to imagine, I know. Does anything ever stay the same?

Take care....Abe

Newt serves his own enchanted island

2012-01-22T12:20:00.011-05:00

DURING THE COUNTDOWN OF the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday, we spent the entire afternoon at the Regal Theater in Montrose fully charmed by The Enchanted Island, transmitted live from the Met. The new opera is a fantasy that deftly combines the music of great Baroque composers - say, Vivaldi and Handel - with Shakespearean plot elements. It could have been a hi-tech mishmash of wafting mermaids and monstrously masked choristers intersecting the action of magical characters. Instead, it was a seamless aural and visual production with superlative voices that overcame any notion of cheap theatrical pageantry. What a day for this escapist!

With the island fantasy in mind, we checked into the Carolina vote at 7 to learn that, as forecast, Newt Gingrich, the slick-talking rabble-rouser, had carried the day without glorious asssistance from Vivaldi and Handel. We can hope that this, too, is a fantasy. No other presidential candidate from either party since the days of George Wallace is more of a threat to reasonably civilized political discourse. In fact, Gingrich is much better at his cleverly conceived game than the in-your-face racism of Wallace.

Gingrich, arrogantly - actually, snobbishly - lectures us with his prescription for a return to America's greatness reinforced by deep religious conviction - unlike secular Europe - with stops along the way to weave food stamps and unemployed ghetto kids into his dark libretto. Some of this may be shaped by his Deep South (Georgia) background. And it is effective with certain audiences. Two-thirds of the Republicans who went to the polls were Tea Partiers; 60 pct, born-again - and, my own figures, 100 pct. Obama-haters.

That raises a question: To those purists who cheer when Gingrich complains of an anti-religious bias in America, how can they apply their own Christian values to his tattered past? The man was forced out of the House of Representatives and paid a $300,0o0 fine for ethics violations; his exploits with wives are well-known, including the latest revelation by his second wife that he had asked for an open marriage. As an anti-governnment model, how can he justify raking in $1.6 million from Freddie Mac, a major government-insured culprit in the mortgage meltdown? And how could this hypocrite rise in the House to call for President Clinton's impeachment when he was engaged in his own cuddly affair?

The rap sheet is sordid. OK. It ain't a crime for a candidate to sound deranged at times.

Republicans, you have a problem.

Meet the New Newt: the explosive front-runner

2012-01-19T22:31:00.012-05:00

WELL. the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode onto the stage for their final reunion Thursday night before the South Carolina primary. There were signs of battle fatigue and short tempers that didn't even consider a moment of silence for their newly fallen shock troop, Rick Perry, who decided life would be much more accommodating deep in the heart of Texas.

Still, performing before their Palmetto gallery in Charleston (close by Ft. Sumter, for what it's worth) Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, seemed to agree on most things while making it appear that they didn't. Only Newt, my vision of Crazy Guggenheim, angrily exhumed an old enemy to enrapture the audience in the opening seconds: the media.

Of course, attacks on the mythical "liberal" media are nothing new. They are particularly effective when you have Gingrich's home-field advantage down south, where you can get away with posturing and pandering as the state's early celebrity pol, John C. Calhoun. Newt exploded with indignation at CNN moderator John King, accusing him and the network of despicable trash-talking by quoting Newt's ex-wife that he had asked for an open marriage. He steamed that the story was false. And the audience roared with approval. Great theater for the new South Carolina front-runner, according to the latest poll. But what can we really believe from a guy who wants to replace school janitors with kids and calls child labor laws "stupid."

As he has been doing, Romney found a way to respond to any question about Heaven, earth and the richest among us by insisting that all of the nation's problems can be traced to President Obama. He still didn't like the auto industry bailout, this on the day that the once-desperate General Motors boasted that it is now the leading carmaker. So if you get stuck in the snow this winter, spill your coffee on the carpet or step on your dog's tail, you know where the fault lies. Ready choir: Obama is the greatest impediment to progressive democracy.

You expect Obama's opponents to attack him as essential to the process. But for this gang of circuit riders, which relies on mythology by the minute, you have to wonder about the depth of their desperation. (Santorum: "Science is immoral".) I'll wait for the movie. It will be a riot. George Clooney as Mitt? Jack Nicholson as Newt?

Also... no...I can't go on. I just can't...

Part Two: A fun House divided

2012-01-19T13:28:00.006-05:00

THEY'RE BACK FOR A NEW SEASON OF FUN-FILLED DEMOCRACY! (By the way, which one is Stephen Colbert?)

By any other name $374,327.62 is a lot

2012-01-18T21:39:00.011-05:00

MANY LINGUISTS agree that language is continually evolving, which is a relief. We'd sound silly walking around talking like Robert Burns' poetic ode to a mouse ("wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie").

The speed of modern communication has left us breathless in learning the evolved language of presidential politics. It wasn't that long ago the thoughtful pundits measured the candidates by something called "gravitas", which few people really understood other than to guess that if you had it, you were worthy of sitting in the White House. The word hasn't come up in the current mess of candidates, but others have evolved - "food stamp" president to replace "socialist" which replaced "Kenyan fugitive" which - well, you can see where this is going.

The biggest right turn in language evolution has now come from Mitt Romney, who shushes his critics by insisting that $374,327.62 is "Not Very Much". That's the operative figure for what he was paid in a single year for talks to friendly audiences. Besides questioning how sixty two cents were added to his fees, I imagine he belittled his take in contrast to Newt Gingrich, who shrugged off $1.6 million he was paid by Freddie Mac for "consulting". (Newt didn't mind the criticism at all as he headed back to Tiffany's.)

Still, I should warn you that "Not Very Much" only works in certain presidential venues as a substitute for "A Whole Lot". Keep that in mind when you ask for an estimate to repair a strange thlunk in your car's motor.

Barbour's final act of compassion

2012-01-18T11:20:00.008-05:00

WHEN FORMER Mississippi Good 'Ol Boy governor Haley Barbour was asked to defend his pardon of 208 inmates before leaving office last week, he described his decision as an act of compassion to give the felons a "second chance."

"The pardons," the guv said, "were intended to allow them to find gainful employment or acquire professional licenses as well as hunt and vote." HUNT?

Barbour, once inserted on the A-list of possible Republican presidential candidates and a powerful force in the party, didn't anticipate the backlash from releasing eight inmates on the staff of the governor's mansion who were lifers for murder. The state's attorney general, Jim Hood, is considering a nationwide manhunt to retrieve the second-chance inmates who have vanished. Despite Barbour's best wishes, that may be the only hunting that will take place for awhile.

Sullivan: Blistering Obama's critics

2012-01-17T21:23:00.011-05:00

ANDREW SULLIVAN, the widely published author/blogger (Daily Beast), has opened a new front in this yakety political year by damning both ends of the ideological spectrum for failing to credit the successes of the Obama presidency. In a long cover story in the current Newsweek, Sullivan ventures deeply into the record of Obama'a first term, accusing his critics of being "simply - empirically - wrong."

That is not likely to win him a single style point from the folks - particularly Fox News and outraged right-wing blogs - who have been demonizing Obama since Adam and Eve. Nor will it earn him a prominent seat on the dais when he says,

"But given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb."

Sullivan, a self-described "conservative-minded independent," clearly believes Obama deserves a second term while at the same time conceding there have been days when the president ended up in Sullivan's doghouse. There have been moments when liberals like me (You didn't know?) shared the pain of seeing the White House stray from the page of what a progressive president ought to be doing.

It was, indeed, painful to see the Obama economic recovery plan include large loans to Wall Street, and bailout money to the auto industry which Bush delivered. Yet, as Sullivan asserts, , both initiatives succeeded, with much of the loans now returned to the U.S. Treasury. And where would the auto industry, now looking healthy again, have been without the bailout. Or for that matter, the hundreds of thousands workers up and down the line who would be unemployed today.

Sullivan notes that Obama's foreign policy has enjoyed the kinds of success that appeared out of reach - from Libya to the removal of Osama bin Laden - the latter of which Bush had earlier blithely written off as a bad debt.

At home, there was progress in recognizing the validity of gays in the military and other advances in equal rights.

Sullivan is happy to stress that "Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact in American life."

The new health care reform law isn't everything that Obama wanted , but as Sullivan writes, the heavily assailed measure "crosses the Rubicon of universal access to private health care," noting that "making 44 million current free-riders pay into the system is not fiscally reckless; it is fiscally prudent. It is, dare I say it, conservative."

I long ago concluded that Obama, though exasperating at times, was a master chess player who had properly sized up his challenge by the vengeful Republican stonewallers and chose to take a more cautious and certainly more patient view of meeting his goals.

Perhaps Sullivan's most defining statement about the president is that to "understand Obama, you have to take the long view. Because he does."

The piece is timely, intruding on the series of Republican debates that have been geared for sausage lovers. Unless the GOP's level of discourse somehow rises from babbling inanities, the voter may reasonably ask: "Good grief! Is that all you've got?"

Operation outreach for Latinos - not

2012-01-16T15:37:00.005-05:00

WELL, THE Republicans are up to their old war dance around the campfire by declaring they are seriously "reaching out" to Hispanics to help their man wallop President Obama in November.

The idea has been around for dcades in the GOP as they reached out to blacks and women to expand their base. It was common talk by local Republican leaders desperate to win an election here and there. And now I am reading that party's gurus (if here are any authentic ones left) are trying to cope with the towering problem of appealing to Latino immigrants while telling them all to go home - and take their undocumented kids with them. .

The conflict is so rigidly locked in the party's history that even some GOP dandies are saying that the assault on immigrants ought to be toned down. An AP report described the concern of New Mexico Republican Governor Susana Martinez, who wants her peers to "'watch their tongues" if they have any hope on luring Latino voters. At this stage of the harsh attacks on undocumented workers by these presidential candidates, she might just as well have suggested that they replace their genes.

Case in point: On the day the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King was being honored, Mitt Romney was hyperventilating on the campaign trail with his latest supporter, a guy named Kris Kobach. And why is that important to note? Kobach is known for his authorship of the Draconian anti-immigrant laws in Alabama and Arizona. Rising to his podium on Fox News, Kobach credited Romney for being much farther to the right on illegal immigrants than the other candidates.

As ThinkProgress notes, Kobach has a history of dumping on immigrants and was accused by his opponents in his losing campaign for congress in 2004 of "having ties with white supremacists."

It may be one more issue that Romney would prefer to discuss in a quiet room somewhere down the rabbit hole.

Gordon Gee and the Polish joke

2012-01-14T13:28:00.008-05:00

YOU WOULD THINK that the highest paid public university president in America would know better than to crack a Polish joke before a live audience. But then, you don't know Gordon Gee, the Ohio State University president who is enriched by about $1.3 million annually to gracefully tend to the campus and not crack Polish jokes.

But as reported by the Associated Press, Gee told a Columbus audience that running a mega-university isn't as easy as you might think, even for a guy with his soaring skills. Let him explain:

"When we had these 18 colleges all kind of floating around [OSU], they were kind of like PT Boats, they were shooting each other. It was kind of like the Polish army or something. I have no idea what it was."

Sensing that he might have stepped into it, Gee breezily blew off his remark, saying: "Oh, never mind, who did I embarrass now....I'll have to raise money for Poland now."

He later apologized (always the escape hatch for an untoward moment). But it might be better if he spent a few minutes considering the cemetery at Monte Cassino, the burial site of more than a thousand Polish troops whose corps had bravely stormed the German army holdouts in the monastery atop Monte Cassino. It tells a different story.

Newt to Mitt: Cut the French, Monsieur!

2012-01-13T12:06:00.009-05:00

WE SHOULD ALL BE GRATEFUL to Newt Gingrich for reminding us that Mitt Romney speaks French. Until now, we've been having some difficulty translating many of Romney's robust remarks on the campaign trail. But with a snotty reference to Romney's Francophilia in a TV ad (titled: The French Connection) running in South Carolina, Newt has contributed a major vein to be tapped in the days leading to that state's primary.

Aside from my late Aunt Della, who wrongly insisted that our family was French, I've never met many folks who had anything good to say about those people. It's a sort of reverse snobbery practiced by low-brows who can never explain why they hate the French - all Frenchmen! So Newt, who is playing the nasty Penguin to Romney's Batman, has decided to plow up whatever bad will that exists in the Palmetto State with his sniffing attacks.

Even in Catherine the Great's day, French was fashionable and she was quite fond of saying things like Mon Dieu and Bonjour to her Russian subjects when she wasn't purring other things to her many lovers. But an anti-French mood in America took a major plunge when France refused to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. (Was its opposition so wrong?)

Led by right-wing megaphones (Rupert Murdoch among them), simpleton politicians decried all things French (fries, bread, kisses, Brigitte Bardot et al). Some of that dissipated under the weight of its own ignorance. Until now.

But there is a learning moment for Mitt in this: If he somehow learned to frame his answers in plain English, nobody would care a whit about the assault from the Penguin.

Senate Bill 5: When Romney chose to pivot

2012-01-12T15:23:00.006-05:00

THE HERD OF Republican elephants hasn't even taken out visas for the South Carolina and Florida campaigns when the experts are already casting Ohio as a "swing state".

It is the eternal role of experts to be ahead of the curve and if they are fascinated by the swing in Ohio, who can argue? We will be reminded more than once that the Buckeyes have produced more presidents than anyone can remember mostly because a majority of them are not memorable.

So get ready for it. Your state is crucial, pivotal, a battleground state, a point of no return for the loser.

Now that we have designated Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee, we hope that he is listening to all of the talk about how suddenly important Ohio is to America's future. But pivotally speaking, he may face some troublesome moments when he starts making the rounds here. It's called Senate Bill 5, Gov. Kasich's ill-advised attempt to sweep public union workers off their feet because he was the governor and they were nothing more than public union workers.

The last time that Romney addressed the issue, he treated it as a multiple choice question. Back on Oct. 25, he visited a phone bank near Cincinnati where a Republican phone crew was

urging voters to vote against repealing the restrictive union law. Bad choice. So when he was asked about it, he said he really wasn't speaking against any ballot issue, with which he said he wasn't "terribly familiar." When he drew fire from both parties for waffling, he corrected himself the next day and declared in full body armor, "I am 110 percent behind Gov. Kasich and in support of that question." (The repeal was upheld by the voters by monstrous numbers.)

Wanna bet a lot of this will show up in the months ahead? On this and so many other issues, shouldn't Romney's managers insist that he stop being so pivotal?

The Holy War on to South Carolina

2012-01-11T14:06:00.004-05:00

WITH NEW HAMPSHIRE A mere blip in political history , they've all packed up their scripts and headed south to begin a new Holy Year in South Carolina. That's hardly an exaggeration, folks. Wasn't it Newt Gingrich who targeted Mitt Romney during a debate to cut the "pious baloney"?

Yes. The same Newt Gingrich, in an overcompensating search for a personal spiritual recovery plan, invoked the word "Catholic" several times to remind the listener that the Obama Administration had brutally choked Catholic Charities in an unyielding conflict over adoptions by same-sex couples.

Meantime, there was Rick Santorum playing Jesus and saying a lot of monstrous things that Jesus would never have said. In a effort to catch up with the pack, Santorum ran to the right of the New Testament.

Libertarian Ron Paul stuck fiercely to his freedom-and-liberty them, which made economical use of two words that always drew cheers.

We hadn't seen much of Jon Huntsman's output until he gave his post-election "victory" speech

that made his 17 pct. of the vote appear to be a landslide. I had never heard that many cliches in a single gushing monologue as he chose "greatest" to describe everything in America except, of course, President Obama.

But New Hampshire was actually a case of the Survival of the Mittest - Bibles, flags, patriots and all. Made no difference for Romney.

Also, shouldn't dismiss a requiem for Rick Perry. He got the one percent that we've been hearing so much about.

Pious news from New Hampshire

2012-01-10T21:46:00.006-05:00

A POME FROM THE BARD OF AKRON:

Along came candidate Santorum,

Who saddled up Jesus for his forum.

But when the votes were counted

Jesus had long dismounted

And Rick didn't even have a quorum.

Preacher Santorum's vain bonfires

2012-01-07T10:33:00.009-05:00

ONCE UPON A TIME, a 15th century monk named Girolamo Savonarola, driven by his own fiery vision of sin, sent his helpers door to door in Florence to collect books, artworks, knick-knacks, whatever, to purge society of evil. They made a huge pile in the piazza and torched it.

In those days, such spectacles were called 'bonfires of the vanities". Alas, in the end, not even the Dominican monk was spared the flames by his opponents.

And then we have Rick Santorum. He's now moved his pulpit into New Hampshire, where he unapologetically says we need a "Jesus candidate," and who better than Rick to fill that role.

That, of course, is not what non-Christians (and many Christians) have in mind for a president. Despite his over-the-top pro-Israel offerings, Santorum was even rapped by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman huffed that Santorum's remarks were "unacceptable" and "un-American." I would add: crazy.

Maybe the time has come to ignore the hyper-righteous crusader on the stump. Wasn't it Santorum who once said the government ought to stop issuing food stamps because poor people were already too fat. So there!

* * * * *

Scam artists! Those are the beasts that Sen. Sherrod Brown says will have the most to fear from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In his talk to the Akron Press Club Friday, Brown praised President Obama's appointment of Richard Cordray to head the agency that congressional Republicans have stonewalled as an intrusion into the financial industry's privately operated free enterprise system.

Unless you are a scam artist yourself, who can argue with the appointment that will activate the oversight of the CFP watchdog? Well, the jittery GOP praetorian guard that looks out for Big Money's best interests, that's who. And if you're still in doubt about the cause of the home mortgage mess, may I recommend Gretchen Morgenson's book, Reckless Endangerment/How outsized greed, and corruption led to economic Armadgeddon.

Brown's appearance filled the room at the Martin Center with about 200 guests, who gave him a standing ovation. (His Republican challenger, State Treasurer Josh Mandel has yet to accept an invitation to appear at the same Press Club podium. He has already turned down an offer on grounds that he was "too busy". ) Josh, for God's sake, is that any way to demonstrate your interest in serving the people?

* * * * *

To all of the naysayers who suggest the unemployed aren't trying hard enough to find work, I'll refer you to some photos in the current Atlantic magazine. One shows a line as long as the Chinese wall that turned up for a job fair in Atlanta, Ga. Another shows a lineup of Trenton, N. J. (isn't that Chris Christie's state capital?) police officers who were among the more than 100 cops laid off. The caption says they are offering their "final salute" with their empty boots resting on the sidewalk in front on them.

Landslide Romney on the march!

2012-01-04T21:45:00.016-05:00

ONE OF THE things we've noticed in Landslide Romney's response to issues is that he seldom thinks before he talks. It's sort of a daring frontier quick-draw style that shoots first and asks questions later. So it was on Mitt's post-Iowa blast at President Obama's announcement in Shaker Heights that he had appointed Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - a hitherto leaderless government watchdog that dyspeptic Republican lawmakers have likened to Willie Sutton inside Wall Street's bulging vaults.

Upon hearing of the appointment of the former Ohio Attorney General, Romney erupted that the move was "Chicago-style politics at its worst". Having spent some time in Chicagoland and reporting on dead bodies of hoodlums exported from Gary, Ind., it's obvious to me that Romney knows very little about Chicago-style politics - a city that runs very well. Very little. Besides Obama's many opponents four years ago were using the same insults and nothing came of it.

On many other questions hurled at the president, Romney has a nanosecond response: "He's failed!" But he never really defines failure other than resorting to it as a form of verbal gadgetry so spare of moving parts that nothing more need be said.

As for GOP complaints that Obama was guilty of abusing recess appointments,

ThinkProgress provided some curious information. During his presidency, Reagan

Augustus made 240, contrasted to Obama's 28 during his first term in office. Reagan raised taxes in seven of his eight years and...well, let's not get into that right now,

P.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican from Romney's home state, has congratulated Obama for the appointment. But as everybody knows, Brown is trailing Democrat Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who withdrew from consideration for the consumers' job after Republicans stonewalled her for being too antagonistic to the one percenters.

Disney World moves to New Hampshire

2012-01-04T13:32:00.007-05:00

EVERYBODY... TAKE A DEEP BREATH as the wobbly Republican caravan hauls its version of Disney World from Iowa to New Hampshire. Is this the first bogus election that nobody won? Or should we heed Mitt Romney's aides who have been declaring, "a win is a win"?

Poor Michele. She said she had wanted to witness a miracle, but dropped out in a rout, losing any claim to sainthood. But she has promised that she will not be lacking in vigor to prove that President Obama is a socialist.

We first learned of the Romney 8-vote thing sometime after midnight, after dozing during the time-killing rehashing of the night's events by the TV news panels because there were long stretches when there was nothing new to report. (I tried to sleep, but my many years of actually getting paid to report on this stuff kept my eyes sort of open.)

The rightwing Christian groups - eh, social conservatives, to be perfectly respectful about it - have found nothing to be joyful about in Iowa's wake. Such "movement" groups as Focus on the Family and American Family Assn. are planning a meeting in Texas to coalesce around a single purist who can stop Romney and his 8-vote bragging right. The internal dynamics of the GOP race will become uglier as the party stages a dreadful contest between theocracy (think Santorum ) and hypocrisy (Yep, Romney).

There is growing evidence that the holier-than-thous will be plowing up more soil in a class war against America's minorities. So when Santorum says the Feds should stop trying to assist blacks with other people's (whites') money, that is from a page in sordid George Wallace history. Or the sophistry of Gingrich's attacks on ghetto kids for having no adult models who work for a living. All this while the Repubicans are seriously suppressing voting with shouts of fraud - which, like a lot of their other shrieks, has never been proven. There are probably more pink-cheeked Wall Streeters who find ways to cheat on their income taxes.

So crank up the ferris wheel and merry-go-round in the Granite State. They're sending in the clowns. You have to ask, though, what any state has done to deserve this.

They're all tied

2012-01-03T20:19:00.001-05:00

It woud be great if it finished this way!

Iowa Caucus Results »

8:17 PM ET 0:44

Size of Lead

County Leaders

CANDIDATE	VOTES	PCT.
Bachmann	0	0.0%
Gingrich	0	0.0
Paul	0	0.0
Perry	0	0.0
Romney	0	0.0
Santorum	0	0.0

The bizarre dance to the mountaintop

2012-01-03T16:42:00.011-05:00

AS THE IOWA CAMPAIGN mercifully crashed down on caucusing GOP conservatives, it seemed as though we were witnessing the final act of a bizarre Walpurgis Night, when witches climbed to the mountaintop to convene with their gods. OK, so all but one was a warlock - but you get the point.

There was no end to the savagery, as Newt went on Fox TV to call Mitt a liar, and Rick, as in

Santorum, described Ron Paul as "disgusting." Playing Mr. Cool without gravitas, Romney remained on cruise control and described Newt as a "good guy". Paul fired off the cheapest shot of all by calling Romney a "liberal". In another day or so, they all would have been challenging each other to produce birth certificates.

Meantime, I've been trying to catch up with everything else of less consequence that was going on in the world. I finally learned who Kim Kardashin is. But, damn it, I've already forgotten.

Looking to the future, the papers said the Cleveland Browns were quite upbeat about next season, which you might expect after a 4-12 season and a yet to be decided fill-in for quarterback.

Jenny McCarthy (you remember her, don't you?) kissed a cop in Times Square on New Year's Eve for a photo-op.

The Los Vegas Hlton changed its name to the Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.

And, Samoa lost a day by going past the International Dateline - a feat that I'll never understand.

Almost forgot: Pat Robertson told his 700 Club audience that God had confided to him who will win the presidency this year. Robertson was coy about it, saying he could not break God's confidence by revealing the winner. But the reverend, who is a past victor in the Iowa caucuses, said God wasn't at all pleased with Obama. With those odds against him, and coupled with the Koch Brothers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, you have to wonder why Obama would even run.

On to New Hampshire - from what?

2012-01-02T11:07:00.006-05:00

AS THE SURVIVORS of the forever-surging waves of the Iowa campaign prepare for landfall in New Hampshire, there are now dismissive reports that America's Team was hardly what GOP voters had in mind. The mood seemed to be captured by an evangelical pastor, Jeff Mullin, quoted in Monday's New York Times:

"There's no perfect candidate. The question is what flaws can you put up with."

Such idealism suffers as a defining element in the noisy bid to win the minds, if not the hearts, of conservative Iowans. For too many weeks , they have been subjected to the most abject level of Manichean politics in which all issues are resolved within the eternal struggle between good and evil. There are limits to how far that can take a candidate, particularly when all are piously saying the same thing.

Despite the $6 million spent on TV ads to fetch the true believers to the polls, the turnout is projected to be something less than the crowd for an OSU-Michigan football game.

At least the fans in the stands arrive with their minds firmly set on separating the good from the evil on the field.

The less- than-enthusiastic audience has been asked to distinguish the undistinguishable - true conservative vs. unflinching conservative; original conservative vs. Reagan conservative; defender of freedom and faith vs. defender of unburdened freedom and more ardent faith. It's easy to see, if one thought seriously about it, why there were flaws everywhere.

Even the national pollsters have had some trouble tracking the less-flawed and the more-flawed. Take the word of Gallup, which has seen front-runners rise like jumping beans, only to be overtaken the next day by another bean:

"Historical comparisons can be problematic given differences in the number of candidates and the number of polls conducted each election. It still seems clear that this phase of 2012 Republican nomination process has been the most volatile for the GOP in the advent of polling."

Whoever wins Tuesday night - there has to be a winner, folks - the real question will be, what does it all mean? At the top of the heap will be candidate chosen by a relatively small group of voters in a turnout that is expected to be no more than 20 percent of the registered Republican voters in Iowa. As the candidates, their entourages and the media army pack up for the next stop in the Granite State, there will doubtless be many others who go to bed that night saying: "Good riddance."

Mitt's jobs program for young people

2011-12-30T17:17:00.008-05:00

WILDEST PROMISE BY any candidate in the race to oblivion called the Iowa Republican Caucuses:

Mitt Romney's reassuring words to a group of college students that their future would be so much brighter if he were elected. It went this way:

"What I can promise you is this --when you get out of college, if I'm president you'll have a job. If President Obama is reelected, you will not be able to get a job."

That earns Mitt the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award. If college students fall for this line, they need to go back to school for a refresher course on political hyperbole.

Yes, Dad was a a first-class Republican

2011-12-29T15:11:00.008-05:00

I'M SURE THAT my late father would have been among the folks who have created so many front-runners in the Iowa Republican marathon. Depending on the day of the week and what he might have heard on the 6 o'clock news, he would have felt comfortable supporting whoever was "surging" in the polls at the moment.

Yes, Dad was a Republican like so many others in our extended family - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. You know the kind. But for this glimpse of the political loyalities of the clan, I would caution you that I can only guess why Dad was a Republican. (Mom was different: She could never give me a clear answer on how she voted, and didn't think it was all that important anyway. She had things to do in the kitchen.)

For Dad, it was doubtless class consciousness, even though he never belonged to a country club, nor would he, a modest car salesman and grease monkey, have been invited to join one. For him, Republicans represented a better class of people, certainly better than Democrats. He believed that telling people that you were a Republican was the first step in approaching wider public approval. There was no point in trying to change his mind. He knew Republicans in our hometown and they all seemed to be doing a lot better than those fellows who trudged home from the coal mines each day.

He hated the Kennedys, which seemed to be a conversation gambit when a noisy quorum met in our living room. It was Kennedy this and Kennedy that, and the press coverup of Chappaquiddick.(He read every report in the local papers.) Meanwhile, Some of the family elders complained that they didn't make the long journey from the Old Country to be victimized by Washington's wasteful tax-hungry Democrats .

Fortunately, when another tall pot of coffee was being brewed, they would summon me to play the piano so that they could sing away their blues. On some evenings, they assembled in Uncle Alec's kitchen and with little prodding, he would leap from his chair, click his fingers and dance with a knee-bending motion through several rooms. I admired his energy, doubtless fortified by a half-dozen cups of strong coffee. This particular Uncle Alec - there were three in the family - had been a free-spirited steel worker and cared little about politics. There were also four Georges, each with a different surname. And three Abes! It could get confusing and led to some other issues. But that's another story.

My father's political convictions led to tense moments with his only son. He had seen some of my liberal writings in a magazine and could not believe how far I had strayed.. By then he had locked in as a Reaganite and somehow blamed Democrats for trying to abolish his Medicare.

There's a lot of this happening on the path to the Iowa caucuses. If he were alive today, Dad quite likely would be rooting for all of the candidates to win on Tuesday (Maybe not Romney!) It was time to defeat Barack Obama before he ended Medicare and Social Security. Not that the liberal media would ever tell you that.

From gun control to a "gay" reference

2011-12-29T10:37:00.005-05:00

THERE ARE CHEAP shots. And there are cheap shots. And unless somebody can offer some pro0f to the contrary, I'd have to conclude that Christopher Evans' puzzling attempt at satire on the Plain Dealer's op-ed page is, um, a cheap shot. First, I should tell you that Evans is an associate editor of the PD's editorial page, which would lead you to think that he should know better.

But in his most recent column dissecting a move in the Ohio legislature to make life more miserable for gun sellers, Evans gratuitously notes that a co-sponsor of the bill is "openly gay".

(He does add "not that there's anything wrong with that" - the old Seinfeld routine.

So I must wonder how he went from gun control to slipping in a reference to the lawmaker's personal sexual preference. If I am wrong about this, then I would have to settle on calling the feathery column a horrible attempt at humor.

The GOP is playing politics and poker

2011-12-28T11:12:00.006-05:00

ONE OF MY FAVORITE old Broadway musicals is Fiorello!, the lively comedy inspired by the political life of the former New York City mayor. He was an exuberant Republican who openly condemned Prohibition, read the funnies on the radio to children during a newspaper strike and did what he could to challenge the corruption of Tammany Hall.

At one point in the show, the forlorn Republicans assemble to choose a "victim" to run for Congress against the powerful Democratic machine.

Given the GOP's current comedy in trying to determine a nominee, it's worth repeating some of the stanzas from Fiorello! as the gang meets at the card table to sort out a candidate in a segment called "Politics and Poker".

How about Dave Zimmerman?
Davie's too bright
What about Walt Gustafson?
Walt died last night!

How about Frank Monahan?
What about George Gale?
Frank ain't a citizen
and George is in jail.

We could run Al Wollenstein
He's only twenty-three
What about Ed Peterson
You idiot, that's me.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

PD PolitiFact: Two Ohio lawmakers slammed

2011-12-27T19:05:00.005-05:00

ON TWO CONSECUTIVE DAYS, the Plain Dealer nailed the top two Ohio Republican lawmakers for lies. On Monday, Aaron Marshall, in the PD's PolitiFact column, cited House Speaker William Batchelder for a hokey story about a Canadian provincial prime minister who sought medical aid in Ohio because his treatment in Canada was so slow that it would have endangered his life. After an intensive investigation of Bacthelder's claim, PolitiFact rated it "Pants on Fire." There is obvious method to Batchelder's madness inasmuch as Ohio's Republican leaders, from Gov. Kasich down, have made the new health care reform law a primary target for their attacks on President Obama in 2012.

Today, PolitiFact looked into the charge by Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus that Senate Bill 5's protestors deficated in the Statehouse.

The PD's Reginald Fields writes:

"As Senate President, Niehaus is one of the most influential people in the state government and when he speaks people listen. Yet his claim is beyond inaccurate. It's a ridiculous assertion that is unsupported by people who actually take care of the Statehouse."

Fields' rates Niehaus's claim: "Pants on Fire."

Oh, my! With all of the crap already flying around the legislature these days, you'd think that Niehaus would have found a different image to make his imagined point.

Memo to Kasich: an ailing Sears closing stores

2011-12-27T13:52:00.004-05:00

WE RECENTLY NOTED in this space that there could be a positive side to Sears' rejection of a $400 million tax break offered by Gov. Kasich to lure the ailing company away from Illinois. We wouldn't end up with a lemon.

The report of the company's growing distress in today's Wall Street Journal confirmed the point: Sears plans to close upward of 120 stores and make other changes to cut its losses. Its stock has plunged 46 pct. the past year.

The WSJ quotes Credit Suisse retail analyst Gary Balter predicting the problems will only get worse:

"It begins and , some would argue, ends with Sears' reluctance to invest in stores and service, effectively asking customers to pay for a poorer shopping environment than available at competitors and on line. We do not see how that will turn around."

Much of the Sears story has been known in the retail world for a long time - as well as in the Ohio governor's office. So shouldn't we also assume that Kasich's feathery $400 million offer was hardly more than grandstanding? It is, after all, the Kasich brand.

Yes, Virginia, there are no Newt and Rick

2011-12-24T11:55:00.006-05:00

HAS THE WINNOWING process begun for two of the Republican Supernovas seeking the presidency? The word from Virginia would lead you to think so. Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have failed to file enough signatures to qualify them for the state's March 6 primary ballot.

That will deny each of them a chance to compete in an important delegate state (where Professor Gingrich was ahead in the polls before he flubbed the qualifying petitions.) We now await his version that election laws, like child labor laws, are stupid.

Is it possible that Mitt Romney, a man for all reasons, will win the GOP nomination by default? (I can't believe I just wrote that!) But with these dismal choices, in the party of the blind, the one-eyed man could be King.

John Boehner, caveman

2011-12-22T22:33:00.003-05:00

Well, at least he didn't cry!

Notes from the other world...

2011-12-22T15:41:00.012-05:00

AS A DEDICATED chronicler of survival news for your civics classes, I am offering an updated memo on the current crop of patriots who want to lead our country. You will note that there is nothing of significance that escapes their vigilence and incisive reflection .

So let the wisdom flow:

Michele Bachmann: She warns that, according to a Tampa mother, her infant daughter suffered mental retardation after receiving HPV, the vaccine against cervical cancer.

Newt Gingrich: Child labor laws are stupid, and judges who hand down politically incorrect decisions should be arrested.

Ron Paul: A Libertarian, he would prefer to have all government eliminated. He also believes the Civil War was unnecessary because Lincoln could have avoided it by buying all of the slaves.

Mitt Romney: We mustn't be too specific here. Whatever he says today could be obsolete tomorrow.

Rick Perry: He supports gun control by advising gun owners to use both hands.

Rick Santorum: C0nsensual gay sex in the home is the same as bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. He explains: "That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing."

Sarah Palin: She's critical of the White House's "odd" Christmas card that has a seasonal setting of poinsettia and the Obama's dog, Bo, who is is reclining in front a fireplace framed by garlands. She complained that the card lacks the traditional values of "family, faith and freedom." (Should she be reminded that President Reagan's 1984 card pictured a snowy White House driveway with a dog's footprints?) Jeez!

Donald Trump: We saved the best for last. Always the player, he says he would be a formidable third party candidate because of his popularity among blacks , Hispanics and labor

unions. (Not to mention his face in the mirror!)

Well, I tried.

Arshinkoff: I'm not a candidate

2011-12-21T19:10:00.004-05:00

Update: Got a call from Alex Arshinkoff today, the first in several years. He said someone had read to him

my post noting some reports that he

wanted to succeed Kevin DeWine as Ohio Republican chairman. No way, he said. Not true. He then quoted General Sherman's famous line on the presidency: "If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected I will not serve." OK. It's not for me to challenge

General Sherman.

As the Tea Party goes, so goes (down) Boehner

2011-12-21T14:16:00.011-05:00

OH FOR Santa's sake! Let's stop picking on John Boehner, the cipher who is otherwise known as the House Speaker. It isn't enough that he's lost control of the Tea Party- controlled House Republicans. Or that he has to contend with the persistent Cheshire cat smile of Eric Cantor, who figures to replace him. Or that he is being accused of being the grinch that stole Christmas from the middle class by bucking the two-month tax cut extension that most of the Republican senators supported. Or that he sobs a lot .

No. We now see the conservative Wall Street Journal accusing the House Republicans of "thoroughly botched politics" while fiendishly noting that President Obama is in a "stronger re-election position today than he was a year ago." As Seinfeld's Kramer would shudder, "Whoa,Mama". (Even John McCain said he fully agreed with WSJ)

Obviously it is taking a toll on Boehner. When Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer tried to forced an up-or-down voted on the tax cut extention, the C-SPAN live TV coverage was cut off, an obvious move by Boehner, who has control over the House TV cameras. The message: Boehner has not only lost control of the House, he's lost control of himself.

Walter Mirapaul, 89

2011-12-20T21:54:00.008-05:00

SHORTLY AFTER I began this blog more than three years ago with the alias of Grumpy Abe, I discovered that a close friend was emailing it to his army of recipients. When I called him to suggest that it might not be a wise thing to do inasmuch as some of his contacts were probably conservative Republicans, Walter Mirapaul dismissed the question. "So what," he said. "If they don't like it, I couldn't care less."

That was vintage Walter M. He didn't care a wit about what people might have said about him. A self-made millionaire who rose from abject poverty, he enjoyed the prosperity derived from his enormously successful fruit juice company (Ohio Pure Foods) by living out his 89 years his - and only his - way. He was full of good humor, eccentric, impossible, thoughtful, generous, and a source for the smartest buys at supermarkets, discount stores and birdseed shelves while being a determined regular at Rex's salvage.

In the more than 40 years that I knew him as a friend among friends, I witnessed - exasperatingly so, at times - his pursuit of beating the system. Our home is filled with items that he bought God knows where - a shaving mug and electric razor to a porcelain teapot and magnifying glass. He would shop the year-round for gifts for a group of friends at his Christmas parties with three or four carefully wrapped items for each. We chose them from a pile by lot. His dear friend Louise was exhausted by all of the preliminaries and gift-wrapping for the annual event.

On those occasions, he was sort of the earth father enjoying his role as a Jewish Santa who wanted to send everyone home happy.

Despite our family-style relationship there was always one more surprise from him. As Nancy and I sat at a dining table at the Cascade Club, Walter headed toward us, forcing his way past a number of tables in the crowded room. He cradled in his arms a heavy plaster camel as his latest gift to us. The neck had been repaired, which indicated late modern Rex's salvage. Walter ignored the people who were staring at him. He proudly announced that the big camel would have a proper home with us.

He called on one of the hottest summer afternoons to ask about my ailing ankle. I said I really couldn't leave the porch for any reason. Minutes later he arrived with balloons, insisted that I get into his car with his help and took Nancy and me to get a Strickland's ice cream cone. "That will make you feel better," he said. He absolutely knew that would work.

At Severance Hall for the Cleveland Orchestra concerts, he always handed the parking garage booth attendant candy, which had become a ritual. Wherever we dined, he drew sketches of the servers to refresh his early student days in art classes. A fully committed

patron of the arts, he provided tuition for string players at the University of Akron and made sure that WKSU fund drives met their quotas. His grants went to other arts organizations without fanfare; Summa, where he was a board member, and to friends in need. He shopped at Mark's for unbeatable prices.

Finally he was a liberal one per center who grew more scornful each day of the Tea Party crowd and the Republican presidential candidates, accusing them of utter stupidity and greed. A wealthy man himself, he distrusted wealth. On the other hand, great art and music, some patient friends who put up with his playful antics, and a big office desk cluttered with cookies and candy boxes - these surpassed whatever wealth meant to others.

A few days before he entered City Hospital to stay, I drove him to his barber and on to a South Side deli (Primo's) where we ate superb corned beef sandwiches. I asked him whether he had eaten corned beef sandwiches at the Carnegie Deli in New York and Wolfie's in Miami - both of which were memorable. Indeed, he said he had. 'Their sandwiches were very good" he said. "But this one is better."

I learned long ago I could never top Walter on quality and price. On his word alone, this would be the greatest corned beef sandwich in the world. Even in his absence , I won't dare deny it.

Arshinkoff for State GOP chairman??????

2011-12-20T13:41:00.008-05:00

CALL IT far-fetched, but politics has always been sympathetic to far-fetched ideas. So now I'm hearing about a subplot in Gov Kasich's well-organized scheme to drive out Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine. It rests on the March 6 primary election in which the state Republican Central Committeemen will be elected. Now that it is common knowledge that the Kasich family is trying to take control of the central committee as liftoff for a vote against DeWine, it naturally leads to speculation on his replacement if the governor succeeds.

In my Northern Ohio neighborhood, there's talk that Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff would be on the A-list to succeed DeWine. In this line of speculation, it has all of the signs leading to Arshinkoff. He has sought the job for decades, only to be rebuffed by

GOP marquee stars like George Voinovich. What's more, nobody has tried harder to serve the governor than Arshinkoff, for which he has lucratively added lobbying clients, including the University of Akron. So, yes, the name comes to mind.

Still, as one state Republican activist told me, "It will never happen." So it may be time for a political writer to take his ball and bat and go home. That won't stop Arshinkoff from trying to achieve the Ohio Republican dream. As I started to say, as far-fetched as it seems, on rare occasions far-fetched happens.

Boehner and Cantor: Good for a laugh!

2011-12-19T22:45:00.004-05:00

Ho, Ho, Ho....Ha, Ha, Ha....Why are these two guys laughing, you ask? Well, they are in some way celebrating their succcess in blocking a two-month extension of a tax cut for you and me. Funny, huh? A real hoot? These Republicans are too much . And as Adlai Stevenson once said, "It hurts too much to laugh and I'm too old to cry." But as John Boehner and Eric Cantor tell it...Ha, Ha, Ha, Ho, Ho, Ho......... And Hee, Hee, Hee....

Ohio GOP: Elephants in the china shop

2011-12-19T15:23:00.008-05:00

'TIS NOT THE season of good cheer for the Ohio Republican Party. Hostilities continue to erupt in the internecine battle of GOP Titans. In one corner is Gov. Kasich; in the other, state party chief Kevin DeWine. When it comes to clashing egos, this could go all 15 rounds.

The latest word reported by the Columbus Dispatch is that DeWine has accused Kasich's staff of recruiting candidates for the 66-member Republican Central Committee to set the stage for ousting him. According to the Dispatch, Kasich's forces started to plan DeWine's removal the same moment that he and Kasich moved into their respective new offices in January. Folks, such an artful move by the governor recalls his promise on entering office that people who stood in his way would be run over by a bus, train or, for that matter, locusts. Whatever worked. .

DeWine insists this is the ugly way that Kasich is treating central committeemen who "have just simply poured their blood, sweat and tears into helping get this guy elected. And the thanks they get is his staff working to gin up a contest in the re-election to the committee."

You get the feeling that there will be no holiday party in GOP quarters this year, don't you? I mean, "blood, sweat and tears"? Churchill couldn't have said it better. But an historical truth is that you simply can't have two elephants in the china shop at the same time.

********

TODD MCKENNEY, the newly apointed Summit County Probate judge, isn't expanding his earlier comments to the Beacon Journal about his decision not to seek election to the office next year. He told me on the phone today that he has nothing more to say about his odd decision to remove himself from contention a few weeks after the governor appointed him. .

When he spoke to the Beacon Journal upon his appointment, McKenney, a former state representative and ordained pastor, said his work as a probate judge would be distracted by a political campaign.

However, as I reported earlier, there has been a lot of back-channel talk among lawyers that he had offended Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff by making two appointments to county boards that were not on the chairman's A-list. In turn, Arshinkoff reportedly sent harsh word to McKenney that the county GOP would not support him with any money to run a decent race. McKenney declined to talk about it. But Arshinkoff is well-known for hardball tactics, which are in play again in this instance.

The GOP vendetta against Obama

2011-12-17T10:51:00.011-05:00

IT'S REALLY TOO BAD that the most nonsensical presidential race in modern times isn't a Scrabble game. All of the GOP candidates could be tossed back into the pile and be replaced with a new lineup of tiles. Isn't that what we're hearing from polls showing that 70 pct. of Americans want the marathon to end quickly. Enough already.

That won't happen, of course. As front-runners come and go, there are still a few hanging around for their turns to be given first-class invitations to the TV talk shows.

Frankly, I haven't learned much from the serial debates, other than they continue to be driven by a long-standing, and frequently ugly, singular mission to dump President Obama. It began the moment he entered the office and was clearly expressed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, the party's imaginary Solomon who declared that his major mission was to defeat Obama four years hence. In the meantime, the business of government would have to wait as leading Republicans said the party would now be defined by what it opposed.

Traditional party rivalry has morphed into a vendetta. Think of it: a mere black Democrat defeated a Republican war hero! Obama's humiliated enemies could not process their historic loss. Still can't. Race became a conditioning factor the next three years, although the GOP found other ways to express its hostility that went well beyond the usual boundaries of party differences. So Obama's birthplace was loudly whipped around the news channels. As a likely Kenyan (Read: race) it was argued, he hated white Americans - thank you Rush Limbaugh, Trump et al. The vendetta only increased caustic words on the president's patriotism, honor and legitimacy.

Shameful. But a shameless GOP has lost any pretense of honor.. We're not watching a presidential race. We are watching a non-stop vendetta. Racism, by any other name, is still racism.

P.S. Latest from Mitt Romney: "I would be the ideal Tea Party candidate". (On the Pandering Scale of 10, that would get at least a 9. Not even the Tea Partyers believe him.)

And how about Michele wanting to get rid of 80 pct. of government? On Capitol Hill alone, that would eliminate 80 senate seats and 348 representatives. Maybe we could start in her Minnesota district.

Was Sears really interested in coming to Ohio?

2011-12-16T21:09:00.010-05:00

THIS WAS THE WEEK that afforded Gov. Kasich the oportunity to do the Zorba dance about Sears not moving to Ohio. You may be aware that Zorba had a habit of trying to help folks in distress and when he failed he would burst into a raspy laugh and, when the spirit moved him, dance away his defeat.

So there was Kasich rising to his failed moment of trying to lure Sears with a $400 million tax break and then boasting about the state's effort, although one might assume that Sears never intended to move from Illinois in the first place. But it gave Kasich plenty of room to boast. Besides, he described the effort as "very exciting."

This sort of thing is habit forming and reminds one of his claim to have stopped Bob Evans restaurants from pulling out of the state although there were other published reports that the sausage place had no intention of leaving. From what I've seen from market analysts, Sears has been trending downward while its competitors like Home Depot, Lowe's and Wal-Mart have been moving upward. One analyst, Seeking Alpha, even urged its readers to dump the Sears stock.

If the trend continues, Ohio might have been spared the defeat of hosting a declining company. And the Illinois lawmakers who chose to offer Sears hundreds of millions in incentives will now have to figure out - as some of them are now conceding: What will they do to handle the dozens of other companies that will head to the Springfield capital seeking plum deals?

Did new probate judge fail to please the county chairman?

2011-12-15T18:52:00.006-05:00

WHY WOULD A person accept an appointment by the governor to the top judiciary job in the county then declare within a few weeks that he wouldn't seek a full term in next year's election? Right. It made me wonder, too.

The authorized version from Todd McKenney, who resigned his seat in the Ohio House to succeed retired Summit County Probate Court Judge Bill Spicer, was that he didn't want to be distracted from the court's business by campaigning in "difficult" primary and general elections.

The unauthorized version is that Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff decided that the probate court wasn't big enough for him and McKenney. According to several politically active lawyers - Republicans and Democrats - that I talked to, the split occurred when McKenney made a couple of appointments to the MRDD and Metro Parks boards that conflicted with the chairman's well protected private stock..

It wasn't at all out of character for Arshinkoff to explode and send an emissary to McKenney advising him that he would not be supported by the party (i.e., Alex) in a primary race for the job. And indeed, there would have been a primary as Republican Common Pleas Judge Alison McCarty has declared her candidacy for the Probate bench. (Her opponent will be Democratic Common Pleas Judge Elinore Marsh Stormer.)

Without party money, it would have been so much harder for McKenney to hold on to the seat that has long been a gleam in the Democrats' eye.

SOMETIMES, PHOTOS DO LIE

2011-12-15T16:50:00.002-05:00

What's wrong with this picture!!!!!

Loews, Target just weren't anticipating...

2011-12-14T14:34:00.006-05:00

I AM FOREVER puzzled by the dumb decisions by the front offices of major corporations. The very latest: the Lowe's home improvement giant's surrender to a wacky Florida Christian outfit by pulling its ads from a harmless TV series (The Learning Channel) on the routine lives of American Muslim families.

In a pathetic attempt at damage control, a Lowe's spokesman said the program had become a "lightning rod." If so, it was nothing like the lightning rod that flashed following Lowe's action. There have been buyer boycotts and coast-to-coast criticism by American Muslims, human rights groups and entertainment stars. And it appears it's just getting started.

Lowe's has a perfect right to choose the programs it will nourish with its ads. But for it to appear that it is shocked by the response suggests to me that very little thought and preparation went into the TV ad plan in the first place. Did anybody in the room raise the possibility that a show about Muslim families just might lead to grief these days when so many people can name their favorite enemies of wholesome American soil? The same can be said about the decision to pull the ads.

The so-called lightning rod was produced by a right-wing religious nuisance, the American Family Assn, that claims about 35,000 members - although we can never be certain about the numbers. We do know that it is intensely anti-gay and has stalked various other things that it considers a threat to American "biblical values." The group sponsored Rick Perry's prayer rally, which tells you something about its line of day-and-night jobs.

Last year, Target stores learned the hard way that you have to be careful about the segment of society that could be tarnished by a big company's direct, or indirect, action. In this instance, Target made a hefty contribution to an anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-whatever gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota.). All hell broke loose even though Target could otherwise defend its reputation as having a commendable record on human rights within the company.

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel apologized to his employes saying "our decision affected many of you in a way I did not anticipate, and for that I am genuinely sorry."

The key word, I suppose, is "anticipate." Which is exactly what the brass at Lowe's didn't do, either.

Donald Trump's debate exit: He still won...

2011-12-14T10:40:00.003-05:00

ALTHOUGH THE poor advance reservations for his scheduled TV debate forced him to give up the idea, it would be fair to assume Donald Trump is already planning his next stunt to reinforce his triumphant claim that he is the most magnetic person in the world. And the smartest, too. Oh, and the richest.

Exhibitionists are like that. The less imaginative ones know only to take off their clothes and sprint across baseball diamonds before the TV cameras are turned away. Others always show up for the next pizza-eating contest. Trump is way ahead of them. He dangles an idea like moderating a TV presidential debate before the media and before you know it, it has solidified his image as a smug American original (Including the trademark sweep of his hair). So even if only two of the Republican candidates agreed to a sit-down with him as moderator, no matter that he was left with Beavis and Butt-Head.

A legend in his own mind, Trump came out of all of this in good shape for his next venture. He had again given a national audience a glimpse of his titanic importance to the presidential race as a few even kneeled to his counsel and wizardry. And he teasingly projected himself as a major political player who, if it came down to that, would run for president himself.

Didn't he insist that if the Republican nominee didn't meet with his approval he could become a candidate himself? Imagine that: a major political party fretting over whether The Donald would carry out his threat. Is there room to barter? Might the GOP offer him the keynote speech at the nominating convention? He's like that. Or as he would tell you, his speech would attract the biggest TV audience in history (I think he might have been relieved to cancel himself as the debate moderator, an event that he claimed would draw a record audience. Now we'll never know.)

Whatever. You can count on this much: Donald Trump will return in his role as the

Wizard of Oz. Otherwise he could not go on and on about his unchallenged superiority.

Boehner stations troops in Canton area's remap

2011-12-13T12:08:00.009-05:00

CONSIDERING THE current decline in property values, what would an entire congressional district be worth these days? $25 million? $509 million ? $2 million? Not even close. For John Boehner's real estate reappraisal team, try a skimpy $210,000. That's what the Timken Company has donated to Republican Rep. Jim Renacci, of the 16th Congressional District (Canton area).

According to media reports, Boehner's aides played a leading role to redraw the district from the earlier proposed map in order to include the Timken Company in the new boundaries. The Plain Dealer reported:

"Tom Whatman, executive director for Team Boehner, the Republican speaker's political team, was making key recommendations on how to configure Ohio's new congressional districts out of public view". His mission, of course, was to create the friendliest possible map for Republicans such as Renacci.

Emails recovered by the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, which include the League of Women Voters and a coalition of progressive groups , revealed that the political mapmakers met secretly in a Columbus Hotel to lay out the new maps. The emails contradicted Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder's assurance that the entire process was transparent. And, as we have been told, Batchelder never lies. (But the people who swear to that do lie.)

The smoking gun for this back-room deal came from a Whatman email, in which he thanks the locals for agreeing to the last-minute change in the district's boundaries that now has Timken back in Renacci's district. "Very important to someone very important to us all," he says.

Nothing could be more transparent than those words.

Renacci, former Wadsworth mayor and adminstrator of a group of nursing homes, faces Democratic Rep. Betty Sutton in the new district. A wealthy (millions) conservative, he has become a corporate darling as an enemy of government regulations. With the big investors and the new district map on Renacci's side, Sutton, who has experienced trench warfare in the past, will face another tough race. But I have a feeling that he will, too.

Another GOP debate: O holy night

2011-12-12T09:36:00.016-05:00

HOW GOOD OF THE Republican presidentials to visit us with one more Festival of Lights the other night. As these men and woman of good cheer - they even forced smiles while under assault - laid out their vision of a prosperous Obama-less future in the Oval Office, we were comforted by their compassion for what is left of, um, the American Dream. They were the seven swans a-swimming in pledges to rid us of the evils du jour.

I took a few notes to remind myself that America's oppressed as well as the one percenters will be in good hands after election day. (Have yourself a merry little Christmas...)

Some vignettes that gleamed like tinsel in this seasonally-adjusted stage production:

Newt, who obviously had some problems with marital skills, stepped up forthrightly and confessed that he had made mistakes, but they didn't include the $1.6 million he was paid by Freddie Mac to be an historian and NOT a lobbyist.

Michelle pledged to rid us of the Environmental Protection Agency and reassured us glowingly that she is well suited to be a businesslike president, having worked in the private sector in 50 of her 55 years on earth. I had hoped she would explain those missing five years, but she ran out of time. She did say that she was "unashamed and unapologetic" to declare her fealty to America. (O come, all ye faithful)

Not to be challenged, Mitt offered to bet Rick (Perry) a gentlemanly $10,000 that Perry was wrong about something he said about Mitt, who also said he loved America. In a rare moment of sanity, Rick turned him down. But it did make one wonder about how many people in TVland could have laid up that kind of risk capital on the spur of the moment. ( Jingle $$$ Bells)

Michele persisted in referring to Newt and Mitt as Newt Romney, which didn't have much to do with familial ties. Her cute point was simply that you can't separate their fabricated ideas. On the other hand, when Mitt said he was above the field because he wasn't a career politician, Newt turned up the best line of the evening by countering that the only reason Mitt wasn't a career politician was because he lost a Senate race to Ted Kennedy in 1994. Newt has an exceptional sense of history, don't you think?

Newt defended his recent scourge of "stupid" child labor laws and saw no reason why he should recant his Toynbee grasp of history by accusing Palestinians of being "invented." Mitt wanted everyone to know that Netanyahu was "my friend B.B". In a pandering appeal for Jewish support, several of the contestants insisted that all of the trouble in the Middle East was caused by...Obama. All of that would change when...

In various degrees of scorn, there was little disagreement over the invasion of illegal immigrants although Newt did hold some hope for those who have been in the U.S. 25 years. (Feliz Navidad)

Ron (paul) , the Texas libertarian. continued his assault on U.S. engagement in foreign wars, which was largely ignored by the others. And Rick (Santorum), the Pennsylvanian who lost his bid for reelection in 2006 by 18 points, insisted that he was the GOP's best choice at the top of the ticket because the party needed the Keystone State to win. (Joy to the World)

It was finally time for everybody to go and the stage darkened in peace. Mercifully, Silent Night.

Kasich/DeWine clash: Back to the Middle Ages

2011-12-08T19:14:00.012-05:00

NOW THAT THERE is no post-season bowl hysteria to whip up the Buckeye football fans in Columbus, Republicans have generously - and uncommonly - offered their own blood sport to fill in the void. It's the clash of GOP Titans, namely Gov. Kasich & Co., and Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine. There is a strong medieval flavor to it, as when popes and kings duked it out over who was in charge of the masses.

Clearly, the unlikely power play that violates Republican tradition of never publicly slamming a member of your own party (while blistering each other sotto voce) is an open sore nowadays. A well- connected state Republican conceded on the phone with me the other day: "It's serious. It won't go away soon." Is it ego? I asked. "Exactly," he said, suggesting there were a number of moving parts. It's understandable only if you bring yourself to concede that with Kasich, the top tier of the pecking order is occupied by lobbyists, cronies and old friends.

That's the short version of the party's in-house hostilities that are worrying some of the faithful's bystanders. It will bleed into a busy political year with a presidential election at stake. Indeed, as the Columbus Dispatch's Joe Hallett keenly reported a few days ago, the State GOP's second-in-command has scorched the Kasich forces for splitting the party by openly trying to unseat DeWine. "It's almost become: we have met the enemy, and it is us," said Kay Ayres, state GOP vice chairwoman. Her message to the governor: Lay off this nonsense.

Nice try, but it won't be enough to satisfy the Kasich machine that is driven by lobbyists who are doing quite well with Kasich's aid, thank you. The governor has been joined by his buddy and torpedo, House Speaker Bill Batchelder to wield the axe. Batchelder has accused DeWine of working against the governor's best interests.

Meantime, no less than Kasich claque Alex Arshinkoff, the Summit County GOP chairman, took a strong stand for Batchelder's credentials in the Plain Dealer, offering a brief character sketch of Batchelder. Declaring Batchelder to be a great party leader ( by the way, Arshinkoff never fails to describe his political pals as great) said: "I've never known him to lie." But I digress.

The Columbus political blog Plunderbund offered some insight into the quarrel: "Kasich came into power with a plan: privatize everything in the state and enrich as many of his friends as possible in the process."

That point is hardly debatable. There have been numerous reports the past year of Kasich handing off lucrative contracts through well connected lobbyists to the sort of recipients who would be expected to reciprocate. That's how the governor has done business and continues to do so. On the other hand, DeWine is said to believe that too often state policy is being carried out by the governor's friends.

Lobbyists? Friends? Cronies? Here's one example cited by Plunderbund. Don Thibaut, who was Kasich's chief-0f-staff for two decades when Kasich was in Congress, now operates a lobbying firm, Credo Company with a boast on his "About Us" page "highlighting his very personal and long-term relationship with John Kasich. " So should we be surprised that when the state sold off a prison to a private buyer, the contract went to a Thibaut client?

God knows how much of this is going on. Yet wasn't it John Kasich, upon entering the governor's office, who warned lobbyists that he would not put up with them in the bright new era of progressive governing? Sure he did. And like Batchelder, he never lies.

The Donald-Newt Show, reality it is not

2011-12-08T09:49:00.004-05:00

SMARTING FROM the attacks on his monstrous views on child labor, Newt Gingrich, with plenty of help from Donald Trump, has moved into an audacious level of damage control. "Let me help," Trump tells Gingrich. "I will put 10 good kids on my reality show to let everybody know that you and I want to help kids learn a work ethic to become school janitors."

"That's a good number," Newt purrs. "Even Bo Derek didn't get any higher than 10."

Leave it to The Donald to come up with a solution. And why not? He boasts that he has the most famous reality TV show in the world, with the biggest audience in the world, with the most successful business in the world, with the strongest hold on the tattered remains of the Republican Party. And he is mystically irresistible. "They all want my endorsement," he says of the GOP dead-enders, "and come to see me." He airily threatens. "If they choose somebody that doesn't please me, I will endorse somebody else." That, dear reader, sends shivers across his plantation.

His thing is audience. For the few stalwarts like Gingrich and Michele who have agreed to kneel before him in the Dec. 27 debate, he boasts they will have the biggest audience of any debate. That isn't to say he's not creating that audience for himself. As for his merit as an interrogator, he insists he knows all of the issues and will be eminently prepared to ask the right questions. Why would you ask? .

Meantime, Newt is well into appearance these days. . He says the Occupiers ought to first take baths and then look for a job. To be fair and balanced, Newt should also tell his sponsor Donald to get a decent haircut and go away.

Why is API spending money on this guy?

2011-12-07T11:02:00.005-05:00

KEEP AN eye on Sen. Rob Portman, the so-called Republican "moderate" from Cincinnati, who is swinging hard to the right with the aid of outfits like the American Petroleum Institute, the mega lobbyist for the oil and gas industry. The API has been plugging Portman in TV ads that say he won't raise taxes. Read: He's on API's side on energy issues.

Why would it be spending money being goody-goody to a senator who still has 5 years remaining in his term? Could Portman be API's inside choice for the GOP s national ticket, say, at least as veep. Of course he could. You don' spend a lot of money on a guy who isn't running for reelection for years. In other words, he's a perfect fit for API's interests.

As one high ranking Democrat told me: "Portman wants to be the vice presidential candidate so bad that he can taste it." There is also the Kasich gambit. Gov. Kasich has been trying to position himself for the party's national ticket since the first day he stepped into the governor's office. It put him at serious odds with Portman. But Kasich has seen his fortune diminish as quickly as a candle in a windstorm with his clumsy move to destroy collective bargaining by public workers.

Portman, meanwhile, continuës to reinforce his attachment to the party's right wing, voting down the line with his GOP colleagues. His name is buried in the roll call but his vote is solidly anti-anti-Obama on every issue - this, from a guy who was George W. Bush's budget advisor.

Of late, he's been declaring his opposition to the proposed appointment of Richard Cordray to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - another target of the right. The plan to the GOP convention is unfolding. But let's see no more references to Portman as a "moderate."

Cordray: The GOP threatens a filibuster

2011-12-06T14:06:00.008-05:00

IN THE CURRENT chaotic state of the Republican Party, intelligence is never equated with public office. And so here we are , on the verge of another rejection of Richard Cordray, the former Democratic Ohio attorney general who had the terrible fortune to run for reelection in 2010 when Republicans of all measures waltzed into office, some whose only credentials were that they were the Other Party in bad economic times. Which is why we have a Republican, Mike DeWine, as our attorney general despite the fact that every major newspaper in the state had endorsed Cordray. (When the history of DeWine's term of office is finally written, he will be remembered primarily for having vigorously opposed the healthcare reform law.)

Cordray, exceptionally intelligent (Oxford scholar) , honest and progressive, has since been nominated by President Obama to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a product of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Law. When the confirmation of Cordray comes up in the Senate on Thursday, few Republicans say they will support him. But as everyone except a few Eskimos north of the Arctic Circle must know by now, anything that smacks of consumer protection at the expense of the financial industry is ghoulish. The GOP's price for their support: Across-the-board restrictions on the bureau's regulatory power. It would mean that Cordray would be all dressed up with no place to go.

Ah, the Republicans insist that it has nothing to do with whether it's Cordray or some parish priest. It's the threat of regulating their friends' daily bread.

But the aginners had better be careful about what they filibuster against. Obama's previous choice, Elizabeth Warren, pulled out under heavy attacks on her liberal reputation by the other side. (And we thought it wasn't the person but the agency that worried her opponents!)

She decided to run for the Senate in Massachusetts against Republican Sen. Scott Brown. It could cost the GOP a senate seat. She's running slightly ahead of Brown. Will this be an unintended consequence?

Mandel: Sorry, I'm busy...and other stuff

2011-12-05T11:38:00.013-05:00

NOTES FROM THE WEEK END:

Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel is the little senatorial candidate who isn't there. At least he won't be at the University of Akron Martin Center upon turning down an invitation from the Akron Press Club for a solo appearance. According to David Cohen, a UA political science professor who has been trying to lure Mandel to the lectern for months without success, the Republican will not accept the same invitation that U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (shown in photo) has agreed to. Brown will speak on Jan. 6. The program is co-sponsored by the Press Club, Bliss Institute and League of Women voters.

Cohen, who arranges many of the programs for the Press Club, said this on his blog:

"Despite the fact that I have attempted to schedule Mandel for a separate appearance since May, and despite that fact that his staff indicated in September that he was willing to come in, his political director informed me last week that he is too busy."

Sorry, Josh. I would have used your picture instead of Sen. Brown's, but you gave me no reason to do it.

* * * * * * * *

Rick Santorum, the theocratic Republican presidential candidate who is hardly there, finally has something to crow about. Both Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, two of the trade's deepest thinkers, speak quite approvingly of his quest. Palin effuses that voters looking for "ideological consistency" ought to look at Santorum. Beck goes much farther, declaring: "If there is one guy out there that is the next George Washington, the only guy that I could think of is Rick Santorum. I would ask that you take a look at him."...(OK,Glenn, we did. Any other silly ideas?)

* * * * * * * *

Despite the alleged good-will of the holiday season, the congressional carnivores are getting nastier by the minute. For instance, POLITICO reports that Speaker John Boehner shares Herman Cain's fondness for chicken salad. The blog notes that Boehner huffed that President Obama's proposal of a temporary payroll tax cut was "chicken shit" instead of chicken salad. On the other hand, he chirped that Republicans were doing everything possible to allow "more American families and small businesses to keep more of what they earn." Somehow, Boehner managed to make more sense when he choked up and sobbed on TV.

***********

Gov. Kasich told the Plain Dealer in an interview that people have trouble figuring him out. That's debatable. His problem is that a lot of people have already figured him out during his first year in office, which explains his dismal approval ratings. Still, you get a sense from his recent remarks that after his Issue 2 disaster in the November election he is trying to cast a softer image, particularly as he told the PD: "I don't like when people are always so serious around me." And you have to wonder about his learning curve after so many years in

congress and now in the governor's office when he says: "You know, I haven't made any faux pas in really a long time. Have you noticed? You just learn. I learned that you have to be careful what you say. Everybody is listening. " (He's also learning that political Cialis is not for everyone!)

The Iowa return of Donald Trump

2011-12-04T20:24:00.007-05:00

THE DONALD IS BACK! Donald Trump, birther, BS artist and the only person with a bigger ego than Newt Gingrich, will be the host of still another debate before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus. The Dec. 27 event, which will hype Trump more than the woebegone GOP candidates, will be in Des Moines and sponsored by Newsmax, a very conservative outfit that has puffed up Trump with a number of friendly references to his singular importance to the conservative cause. I think the Newsmax crowd would really like to see him back in the race, for which Trump is especially grateful. It keeps reminding everybody - including him - how really important he is.

Actually, this may be a first for a potential presidential candidate: Interrogating the others who would be his opponents as he does job applicants on his TV show. His ego could reach beyond the point of no return by looking at, say, Michele Bachmann and asserting, "You're fired."

For some reason, I am besieged by e-mails from Newsmax with warnings from a Dr. David Brownstein, often challenging the conventional wisdom of medical science. The latest warning is to avoid flu shots. Something about mercury in the serum. Or, "The one thing you do for your prostate every morning." Other than taking it with you when you go for a long walk, I don't know what Newsmax is proposing. Didn't open up the text.

Each day, scary health tips for someone like me, who was under the wing of two uncles who were very good physicians. But even scarier is the fact that The Donald is sitting in front of a TV camera and measuring the worth of each candidate on stage. Upstaging them, really.

But as the call from the control room softly summons the conductor the moments before the opera:

"Maestro to the pit. Maestro to the pit."

In this Des Moines opera buffa, Trump is handed the baton.

Maybe Cain should have tried ham salad instead....

2011-12-03T18:15:00.010-05:00

THE REPUBLICAN efforts at Scrabble to make a word out of "winner" continue with one big difference: They can't turn in all of their candidates and draw a complete set of new ones.

On Saturday, the field shrank by one. Declaring that "politics is a dirty business,"(Oh?)

Herman Cain, the pizza guy, gave up his hopeless bid for the Oval Office. Cain's reason was not unusual in politics today: something about a female relationship (s). Think, Dem John Edwards. And GOP starlets Mark Sanford and John Ensign.

I, for one, will miss the Hermanator. He had a way with logic. "Listen," he once demanded. "You might just learn something." On another occasion, he soberly declared: "You need chicken to make chicken salad."

And that may explain why Candidate Cain laid an egg.

Newt has so much to tell us

2011-12-01T11:43:00.008-05:00

WHAT ARE WE to do about Newt Gingrich? He would have us believe that he is the reincarnation of King Solomon, with the only difference being that Solomon had 300 wives and Newt a mere three (so far). No longer the underdog in the GOP presidential workouts - not for the moment, at least - he is enjoying his new celebrity by telling people about all of the ways he has played big roles in the best things that have happened in America.

For starters, as a congressman, he led the successful fight against Communism, he told Sean Hannity on Fox in a pattycake interview appropriately staged in Tommy's Country Ham House in Greenville, S.C. (Fox called it, um...a "candid conversation".)

There's more, only because we're talking about Newt and not Solomon here. He wisely helped the Democratic House speaker to balance the budget four times. He sagaciously helped both Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy develop supply-side economics and sagely reformed welfare entitlements. There would be more self-applied merit badges but the interview had to end at a reasonable hour. How disloyal the House, then, to fine him $300,0o0 and reprimand him for ethics violations!

"People want somebody with very substantial big ideas," Newt said modestly, reflecting on his own ascension as America's can-do Professor. He says these things in a matter-of–fact way as if to make you wonder why you didn't already know that.

What? An $1.8 million contract with Freddie Mac, which Newt had criticized for its manipulative mortgage investments? For Heaven's sake, he wasn't lobbying for the outfit, he says, but rather advising it on how to survive from the perspective of a historian.

I have a feeling that he is just getting started on his dreamy history tales, and there's so little time left before the election 11 months away. So in the standard version of a man who comes home to find his wife in bed with the plumber, Gingrich has developed his own escape hatch for his negatives, from a million-dollar credit line at Tiffany's to how he wowed all of his colleagues in Congress. Simple, he says: "I can explain everything."

Even Joe Scarborough, MSNBC talk show host and former Republican congressman himself, isn't quite sure. "He's out of control," Scarborough growled. "Give me a break. His comments are an insult to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush." Others have referred to Newt's "supersized ego" but seldom of his broad expanse of wisdom.

Take it easy guys. I at least want him to get to the place where he invented the forward pass. And how he led the assault on bin Laden. Even Solomon wasn't up to those feats.

Kasich: Read no evil, see no evil

2011-11-30T13:00:00.009-05:00

IT'S A LITTLE EARLY to be Ho-Ho-Ho-ing, I know, but it's the only way I know how to respond to the latest utterance from Gov. Kasich. I refer to his comments in a Columbus speech in which, with straight face, he declared that he never reads newspapers. That's a politician's standard cover-up when things are not going well - no curiosity at all to know how he's doing in the media. The other cover-up for the pols is that they will tell you they never look at the polls. Particularly when they don't favor you. To repeat: Ho-Ho-Ho.

In his rejection of the media, our governor, with straight face, informed us: "You should know that I don't read newspapers in the State of Ohio" because one doesn't need to be "aggravated by what I read in newspapers." This is spoken in a town where the daily newspaper, the Dispatch, helped him get elected by endorsing him, thus aggravating to this day a whole lot of other folks who have a dismal view of him.

He also complained that he doesn't find newspapers to be "uplifting". Uplifting?

Here's one former newspaperman who will tell you that I never once heard that word applied to a newspaper's mission, which is to be "informative". However, sadly I do find that to be less so today. So go ahead, governor, read the papers. You might help somebody in the newsroom save his or her job.

Connie Schultz: A post-PD career

2011-11-30T10:42:00.011-05:00

STUART WARNER'S excellent piece in Cleveland Magazine on Columnist Connie Schultz's resignation from the Plain Dealer deserves your attention as a peek into the ways of modern newsroom culture. It never helps a newspaper to lose a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, but Connie's workaday world was never simple since her husband, Sherrod Brown, was elected to the U. S. Senate in 2006. A brassy liberal with a strong social conscience who independently fashioned her own reporting career, she was immediately branded as a shill for her husband by certain critics on the staff. Warner, her editor and friend at the PD, described the growing tension as "awkward". It reached the point where she decided to leave.

Too bad. God knows, the conservative side of the PD writers is quite visible, beginning with an op-ed columnist/editor whose political assumptions would even make some Tea Partiers blush. (But he doesn't have a spouse in the Senate.)

Actually, Schultz was having a problem with an editor before Brown , a congressman, went to the Senate. She once told me that the only thing that kept her from being fired by the former editor was the announcement that she had won a Pulitzer Prize. That would have been an embarrassment for the paper, but most newspaper editors are not known for their social skills.

The messy situation that Schultz has left behind by choosing to clear out her desk will in no way impede her career as an author and national columnist; that's what grit and talent will do for anybody in this business. Connie has both, with plenty to spare.

Her epilogue to her colleagues and friends said in part:

"In recent weeks, it has become painfully clear that my independence, professionally and personally, is possible only if I'm no longer writing for the newspaper that covers my husband's senate race on a daily basis. It's time for me to move on."

As for her 18-year experience at the PD, she described it in three words: "What a ride".

That's vintage Connie Schultz.

Urban America arrives in Columbus

2011-11-29T14:14:00.006-05:00

Ohio State hires Urban Meyer as the new football genius and so let us begin the new millennium in the Scarlet and Gray's iconic history. We can confidently tell you that is true because the morning papers reported it in headlines that would normally announce a war or a tsunami on Lake Erie. (See above photo in Beacon Journal)

Add this from the front page of the Plain Dealer:

After a difficult season, Buckeyes get their man

For a winner-starved sports crowd in northern Ohio (albeit, the OSU campus is in Central Ohio!) the media's overly-expressive reaction was based on the employment of a coach with a winning record in an earlier life that has now earned him a six-year contract worth more than $25 million. In some respects, Meyer is the new kid on the block to replace LeBron James, another icon who shattered his blessings by the fans in these parts by skipping town to Miami.

And now we come to what some people will call the apples-and-oranges section of this short Urbanized piece:

The Buckeyes hometown Columbus Dispatch declared on Page One: MEYER ERA BEGINS

But there were a couple of other much less prominent items on the same page, one was headed Parks have to wait for improvements, which reported that the Metro Parks could not upgrade their conditions because of state budget cutbacks; and another: Westerville schools eliminate 62 positions., the result of having to strip $23 million from the budget during these, eh...hard times.

I have a problem dealing with the two universes, folks. As a political writer for decades, I realized that - optimistically speaking - based on election day turnouts, no more than 50 pct. of the readers gave a damn about politics. As for readership, that may have been wildly optimistic.

So is it fair to ask whether the Urbanization of a college football team is worth so much notice in view of all of the other realities of the workaday world?

I think not, but I do follow the happenings in the sports world, even on days like today when I can't avoid it with my morning coffee.

Are we again in the midst of Darkest Ohio?

2011-11-28T13:35:00.014-05:00

SOME YEARS AGO, New Republic, then a liberal magazine, ran an editorial that snapped at the right-wing politics of Ohio's capital, Columbus. The headline above the piece was "In Darkest Ohio". As the editor of a small political magazine in Columbus who had written a couple of articles for New Republic, I had provided some of the grist for the editorial. The headline is worth recalling only because it could easily apply to the political culture of the current General

Assembly.

The folly of the Kasich Era should alarm anyone who cares about the Buckeye State's much maligned post-modern image.

The daily mash arriving from the Republican governor and his coterie of theocratic lawmakers is fearsome enough to forget about the legislative days when Democrats and Republicans vigorously argued their viewpoints and then shook hands and moved on to the next issue. (I can recall sitting down to late after-hours dinners near the Statehouse with both parties at the table and not fearing for my life.)

If there is a single word to describe the current political class down there it would have to be overreach - a serious illness, come to think of it - that has infected the ruling powers in the House of Representatives in Congress, too.

But for the time being, let's stick to the overreachers at the Statehouse. Despite the slaughter of Issue 2, the collective bargaining law (Senate Bill 5), there are actually voices in the legislature overreaching for more, insisting that the time has come to make Ohio a right-to-work state. It went to the ballot in 1958 with disastrous results for the proponents. But the anti-labor lawmakers are getting strong signals from an outfit called the Liberty Council (patriotism reigns with these groups that keeping dropping into the news) to add it to the Ohio Constitution.

There are also steps being taken for another constitutional add-on next year, the so-called Personhood Amendment that declares the creation of life at the nanosecond that the human egg is fertilized. It would be the most-restrictive anti-abortion measure in the nation. (Mississippi voters earlier this month overwhelmingly rejected a Personhood Amendment.)

Since things are believed to happen in threes, we've already seen the fatuous emergence of a restriction on the national health care law on this November's ballot and was passed 2-1. It would eliminate the mandate for everyone to buy health insurance. It played to the voters like a silent movie; even its opponents largely ignored it. Why? Because a state law can't override a federal law, that's why. But it will give Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine, who hates that national health care law, something to crow about.

What's going on in Buckeye Land? Unless you are a Tea Partier or right-wing religionist with a stranglehold on the Republicans in Columbus, you'll never be able to fully explain it. Nor will your state representative, who may not represent you at all.

For Gingrich, the good bad news

2011-11-27T17:35:00.007-05:00

THE GOOD NEWS for Newt Gingrich, the new Golden Oldie to capture the media's imagination, is that he was endorsed by the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, the state's biggest newspaper (Sunday circ. 63,991; daily, 48,342). The bad news for Newt Gingrich is that the influential right-wing daily endorsed the nominations of Steve Forbes in the 2000 Republican primary and, for God's sake, Pat Buchanan in the 1992 and 1996 primaries.

The paper's front-page Sunday editorial signed by publisher Joseph W. McQuaid sent waves of breathless reports across the cyberworld, which figured it had some hard news to bestir the saliva of a politically inattentive nation caught up in the frenzy of the National Football League.

According to McQuaid's extrasensory perception, we can count on Gingrich to "improve Washington" just as he did in the 1990s as the Republican House Speaker. You can see where this is all going.

The same, though younger Gingrich, was reprimanded in 1997 by a bipartisan House vote of 395 to 28 and required to pay a $300,000 penalty on ethics violations. The Washington Post reported at the time that"Gingrich admitted that he brought discredit to the House and broke its rules by failing to ensure that financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving the House ethics committee false information.

Added Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican,

"Newt has done some things that have embarrassed House Republicans and embarrassed the House."

No previous House speaker in 208 years had been so disciplined.

How's that for "improving Washington"?

Once again, the Fox Crocks are exposed

2011-11-25T11:07:00.012-05:00

SOMETHING TELLS ME that I shouldn't be too surprised about the latest polls that are not too kind to Fox News. But on the other hand, when was the last time that you learned the downside of the Fox Crocks more or less confirming that "no Fox news is good news"?

Here's what happily inspires me to mention this: According to a Farleigh Dickinson University poll, "people who watch Fox News are 18-p0ints less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew the government" than people who don't watch any news at all. There are more examples of the network's abiding slow learners. It reinforces something that the University of Maryland's research turned up last year. Alas, people who watch the Fox Crocks are more likely to be misinformed. Well, now.

We thought of this as Fox News "legal expert" Megyn Kelly joined Bill O'Reilly in putting a happy face on the pepper sprayers in Oakland. She called it a "food product". But as one commenter dared: Let's see you spray it on your own food.

And another thing: O'Reilly didn't hesitate to slip in the thought that UC Davis, where the horrendous event occurred, is a "fairly liberal" campus.

Never mind. That explains everything.

Blitzer: H-he-e-e-r-r-r-e-s Romney...

2011-11-23T10:52:00.006-05:00

I USUALLY ONLY WATCH the Republican presidential debates (No. 11 last night!) a short time before turning to a more productive moment in my life. The CNN assemblage of mean-spirited candidates was no different, despite host Wolf Blitzer's rallying cries in introducing each participant. Hyped introductions are not the usually staid Blitzer's strongest suit, if indeed he has any at all. But here he was, excitedly shouting the names of each as if they were the Chicago Bulls bounding onto the floor from the dressing room.

By now, the candidates have had plenty of opportunities to craft their comments. This is not to say that they don't sound foolish. (Does anybody take them seriously?) Last night, they were to focus on foreign policy, and in the short time that I followed their remarkable insights, they wanted their audience - in house and on TV - to know that all of the world's terrorists are being ignored by President Obama. "He's a failure," asserted Mitt Romney, his favorite description of the president. Others - excepting Ron Paul - would have us looking for terrorists under every bed, much like the prescription for rooting out communists in the old days. And we all thought that it was a sign of progress if we fetched Osama bin Laden.

Yet, when I hear from Mitt, I am reminded he is the same guy whose handlers have posted TV ads accusing Obama of comments that were actually those of John McCain. It's called a hi-tech lie, and Romney will not call it that. (They've also lashed Obama for saying that Americans are "lazy" when in fact, he was referring to the federal government's efforts to lure foreign corporations to America. You need only to roll the tape to discover that!)

Still, it is Newt Gingrich who has forced me to haul out the Grumpy Abe Linguïstic Lunacy (GALL) award for declaring that school janitors should be replaced by kids. After all, on Planet Gingrich "Child labor laws are stupid."

Long ago, I referred to Newt as Crazy Guggenheim, and his current antics merely confirm that I was right. Only the First Amendment would put up with Newt.

Portman: a garden variety GOP right winger

2011-11-22T11:05:00.008-05:00

Better get used to the happy face in the photo. It's Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. He's been a gleam in the eye of some ranking party planners for the 2012 national ticket ever since his election in 2010. The drumbeat has begun in earnest as the current ensemble of GOP presidential candidates continue to chase their tails in full view of a less than enthusiastic public. Even though the senator's current term doesn't expire until 2016, the American Petroleum Institute, the powerful lobby for the oil and gas industry, is already running TV ads with its blessings for Portman, stressing that he is opposed to raising taxes.(Good grief!) This isn't to suggest that he is yet at the head of he class to lead the GOP ticket. He's merely insurance, and at least the party's logical veep candidate in its effort to carry Ohio.

That's only part of the story. Despite his low profile behavior (read: he is seen as low-key firebrand), he is a rock-ribbed right-wing conservative who votes with his party 97 pct. of the time. The votes on the other 3 pct. really aren't that important.

His ideological report card: Firmly on the side of the social conservatives from don't-ask-don't-tell to pro-life to anti-same-sex marriage His votes on issues affaecting gays are clear to see. On economics, he opposed the stimulus, and supports a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. And the ACLU gives him a a single-digit approval rating . In short, he is sort of like a Rick Santorum without saying too many dumb things in public.

His pre-Senate credentials mark him as one of the top budget advisors to President Bush. And you know where Bush economics got us. He was a member of the failed Supercommittee - which never had a chance from Day One. So now the analysts are wondering whether this will hurt his chances for the national ticket. No problem there, not with the American Petroleum Institute's dollars, probably complemented by the energy investments of the Koch brothers, on your side.

Pumpkins: the GOP treat-or-treaters

2011-11-21T13:38:00.010-05:00

A PHOTO IN Sunday's papers told us more abut the divinely-inspired GOP presidential candidates who are fervently attempting to lead America into the grasp of evangelical

Christians. Seated at a round table were Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich (and doubtless others not shown.) Unfortunately, by the reported tone of the discussion, it hardly measured up to the level of the lively Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s, the daily luncheon group at the Algonquin Hotel that included such nimble minds as Alexander Woollcott and Dorothy Parker.

By all accounts the presidential wannabes that met for a "values" discussion in Iowa each swore allegiance to taking down the liberal miscreants of the modern world to fill in the ranks with people as spiritually pure as they are. It never stops.

Even the table props sent a message of the wholesome family affair. In full view was a pumpkin. How appropriate for the trick-or-treaters seated for the photo-op. Pumpkins? Were the panelists sitting in judgment of the pulpy seasonals as to whether a pumpkin is a blowfish or a vegetable? This isn't as silly as it sounds. There is a precedent on Capitol Hill. Many on the GOP side have already dared us to consider pizza a vegetable to placate their lobbying frozen -pizza friends.

But let's get even more serious: Reports from the values auditions for the Iowa caucuses in January said several of the candidates tearfully(!) described their own trials in life (Example: Michele Bachmann told of becoming a true Christian after the awful divorce of her parents). What is it about sobbing in this party? I thought Boehner had claimed that value for himself.)

I should also report that Rick Perry signed a pledge by Bob Van Der Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, which sponsored the event. Perry vowed never to support same-six marriage.

But when the pledge bullies ask the candidates to put it in writing, do you get the feeling there is a limit to their trust in the pols' informal promises?

Now can we get back to the nation's economy and the haloed candidates' promises to create jobs? Halloween is over.

Footnote: As long as we're on the subject, Republican icon Thomas jefferson, whose name still adorns the menus of the party's dinners, once said this:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

The chief warns of pale face invasion

2011-11-18T18:52:00.006-05:00

TO FOLLOW UP WITH late word on the Buchanan post:

A historian has turned up an old document of turkey skin recording this mid-16th century event in the New World:

Fearful of his tribe's declining fortune, an Indian chief assembled his people with a dire warning about their status as an exceptionalist nation. As they gathered around the fires, the sachem said balefully:

"It is my duty to tell you that we are being threatened on all sides because we have been remiss in dutifully mounting our steeds at the borders of our most honorable Yakohotchee Nation."

"How can that be?" one of the braves, newly arrived from a outpost just west of Atlanta, asked. "We are brave warriors."

"That, we are,." the chief responded approvingly. "We are indeed brave warriors, blessed by the gods that have looked down upon us from our papoose days."

He paused to find the precise words. "This afternoon, however, our exceptional scout, Kemo Sabe, arrived from the distant land of sky blue waters to tell us of many strange things that are happening. Most worrisome, he said, were the visages of the people landing on our shores.

Worrisome?' the braves gasped. 'What could cause such fear in exceptional braves?.

"Their faces," the chief replied. "Their faces were pale, and they spoke in a strange language.

"Pale faces? How can that be. They will mock our exceptional ruddy skin with the deathly pallor that they bring to our hallowed ground!'

"We must act before it is too late,' the chief commanded. "I am asking you, my brave friends, to authorize a moat along the entire valley to prevent them coming any farther".

"A moat? Do you really believe that will stop this invasion of strange pale faces?

" It will," said the chief with self satisfaction, "if we fill it with crocodiles. "We cannot afford to lose a minute, or our noble Yakohotchee nation will perish.

"Why not rattlesnakes, too?"

"Those, too," the chief said. "These are perilous times. We must think of our grandchildren."

Pizzagate: fat waistlines vs. GOP fatheads

2011-11-18T13:34:00.008-05:00

DID YOU SEE that the Republicans in Congress want pizza to be officially declared a vegetable? Yeah, that floored me, too - and I'm a pizza lover. But in doing the people's urgent business, if they can recalibrate the substance of the food we consume, don't be put out if they tell you that pepperoni is a byproduct of lettuce and pork chops pop from cucumbers.

This Capitol Hill gang has been adrift in its own universe and apparently enjoying every minute of its cash flow from lobbyists. In this instance, it responded to word of heartburn by the big frozen pizza lobby to the Department of Agriculture's move to change school menus to less fattening food. But your Republican congressmen seem to care not about the growing epidemic of obesity. Besides in the land of the free, Big Brother shouldn't tell kids what to eat, right?

The only thing worse than the expanding waistlines are the fatheads who blocked the Ag department's initiative. So if you find any anchovies growing from your cabbage in the garden, send them long to your GOP congressman. After all, during the holiday season, it's

really the thought that counts.

Buchanan: White supremacist in a business suit

2011-11-17T14:51:00.007-05:00

I GUESS NO ONE should really be surprised that Pat Buchanan, the MSNBC commentator. author and polemicist, has written another book defining America as a Manichean struggle between pure good and devastating evil, with no pastels in between. (Or as George W. Bush once declared, "I don't do nuance.") I haven't read Buchanan's "Suicide of a Super Power", which others have asserted is so much recycled white supremicist gibberish. But based on his past syndicated columns and commentaries, Mr. B is clearly on the side of the angelic forces defending a declining white America from a takeover by Hispanics, African-Americans and any other invasive non-Caucasian whom he believes has no standing in the Constitution.

That recalls the notorious Dred Scott case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Scott had no rights because he was, after all, a slave. The issue turned on whether having resided with his master for a while in slavery-free Wisconsin he could demand his freedom once he was taken to Missouri, a slave state. The notorious Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled against Scott's freedom, thus drawing the cheers of the South. Not only that, he extended the court's decision to all slaveholders who moved their "property" anywhere in America.

Check these words from a chapter titled "The White Party" in Buchanan's book , included in a list of excerpts provided by Talking Points Memo:

'"And although Howard Dean disparages the Republicans as the 'white party,' why should Republicans be ashamed to represent the progeny of the men who founded, built and defended America since her birth as a nation?"

Do you think it was a mere oversight that Buchanan overlooked all of the African-Americans and Hispanic-Amercans who died in American uniforms in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? Hardly. It's not a neat fit in his rants against too much color.

Anybody know a Generic Republican?

2011-11-16T15:14:00.006-05:00

WE NOW HAVE a rising entry among the presidential candidates. The pollsters are seriously referring to it as "Generic Republican". It's the mysterious name they are using in matchups against President Obama. I've been wondering: Are they referring to Abraham Lincoln?Hardly, he held the Union together instead of dividing it. Oh, then it must be the immortal Ronald Reagan. Except that he presided over 18 debt ceiling increases and didn't do a thing about abortion. He would hardly do. No style points there.

Let's see. George "Read My Lips" Bush. No way. He raised taxes and spent his leisure time in a place strangely known as Kennebunkport (close by Saco Biddeford, which I'm told doesn't appear on any map in Texas, where men are men.) Besides, who can spell Kennebunkport without looking it up, which I just did? Dubya Bush? Whoa there, Tonto. Republicans hardly mention him any more, and for good reason.

So who is this "Generic Republican" running for president - the one who may be among the stand-ins for "None of the Above"? He/she may well be named by a non-elected lobbyist, Grover Norquist. He's the guy who got a majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill to sign a pledge (on a slate tablet?) never to raise taxes. It was sort of a pagan covenant with Norquist, the Republican anti-tax God, and a vindictive one at that against anyone who defies him.

I'll bet all of the voters who sent an army of Republican lawmakers to Capitol Hill really believed their candidates who pledged to serve them, not Grover. At this rate, could he be the Generic Republican? And while I'm at it, what is a Generic Republican these days anyway?

Box not recommended for weak stomachs

2011-11-16T10:57:00.004-05:00

From an alert reader: Cain vision

O'Reilly book: We report, you decide

2011-11-15T22:18:00.004-05:00

UPDATE ON O'Reilly/Lincoln book:

It is now being reported that while the Ford's Theatre Museum in the basement is not carrying the book, the separately operated Ford Theatre Society's gift shop upstairs is selling the book. The Museum is operated by the National Park Service, which was critical of the inaccuracies in the book and banned the O'Reilly version of Lincoln's assassination. However, the Society was not averse to cashing in on the book, which is a best -seller. The Society's director, Paul R. Tetreault, explained: "While we understand the National Park Service's concerns, we decided to let our visitors judge the book themselves." That pathetic concession probably was driven by two things: Conservative rage by O'Reilly's allies, and the Society's interest in making a profit, historical accuracy be damned. It's the world we live in, folks.

Terry, it was great knowing you

2011-11-15T11:19:00.009-05:00

THE PASSING 0f Terry Oblander, a colleague and friend, has opened another hole in the ranks of enthusiastic newspapermen who considered it a privilege to show up at the office every day. His disheveled presence at his desk, whether he was trying to fill in a few more blanks for a feature story or grinding out hard news, was usually a sight for the journalistically correct reporters and editors in his midst. One moment he would be bellowing, the next he would erupt in violent laughter. His gestures were broad; his personality, for better or worse, never suppressed. The world, for "The Dutchman" was never a neat place where the spoons and forks were properly placed at the sides of the plate.

He wasn't crazy, folks, Just a very good - and honorable - reporter who was happily dedicated in his work. It was serious fun, richly expressed.

He was doubtless the last demonstrative vestige of the shrinking hometown business in which newsrooms have been quieted by vanishing staffs, energized voices and clicking typewriters. Today a lot of people communicate with lowered voices, hopeful, among other things, of keeping their jobs before retirement in a few years, months or weeks.

For many years, Terry, stricken by heart failure at 64, gallantly hung on to the end despite the loss of his wife and the need for care for his kids as an everyday workingman. But his bad luck seemed to follow him in his post-Beacon Journal days at the Plain Dealer. He worked in the PD's once-flashy bureau in Montrose, joined the subsequent move to the paper's windowless office in a basement on the Medina Square that could have passed for submarine quarters and continued his odyssey to various other points that wound up in Cleveland - all with a family home in Medina. He was one of the victims of the paper's confusion over what it wanted to be if it ever sank some roots south of Cuyahoga County.

I had worked part-time(!) for the PD and witnessed the upheaval before deciding there could be a decent life as a writer free of newspapers. During the later years, Terry called from time to time, beginning with "How's it going?" (He was the sort of person who really wanted to know, instead of the usual conversation gambit.)

I began to sense that the vitality in his voice was absent. Cynicism had crept in to his gung-ho love of a reporter's life. I wish I could have told him that things were bound to improve, but that would have been a lie to one of most conscientiously honest human beings that I had ever met in the business - or anywhere else, for that matter.

So I listened. We talked. After the newspaper talk, he would tell me about his kids' love of sports, and the memorabilia of the passion. Finally, he would say, "Well, I gotta go. Let's have lunch sometime". Just like that.

I' m sorry I took so long to share another beer and shelled peanuts with him. Too soon, his heart, as well as his business, let him down.

For O'Reilly, an oval office isn't an oval office

2011-11-14T13:38:00.006-05:00

To all of you conservative literati who accuse liberals of being unkind to Bill O'Reilly's unique form of, eh,... sloppy work habits, I am passing along the latest word on the topic from Ford's Theatre in D.C. (The place where Abe Lincoln was fatally shot). The Theatre bookstore has removed Billo's new book,"Killing Lincoln, " from its shelves. Seems there were an inexcusable number of factual errors in his work that stands at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. Not that this makes any difference to O'Reilly , who already has cashed in on his pseudo historical authority. One reported example - one of many - his many references to Lincoln in the Oval Office, which legitimate historians will tell you wasn't built until long after his death. I know. It's the thought that counts with these guys. But those who ignore historical truths are destined to repeatedly skew them for their audiences.

Is that Millard knocking on the door?

2011-11-12T14:09:00.017-05:00

WEEKEND ORTS:

Just as the pundits were trying to convince America that the Republican presidential campaign was a two-man race, the latest alert from Planet Gingrich is that it is now a three-man race with Mitt Romney and a third from Texas whose name will come to me any moment now. (It should be noted that not long ago it was a 9- or 10-candidate race. There are so many moving parts these days!). It is worrisome to think of a time in history when the Republic had to put up with three guys like Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. So is there any joy wondering whether one of the current serial debaters will eventually be nominated?

********

Pat Boone keeps coming back like a Lucky Strike Extra, right seniors? We've gotten a couple of his robocalls about the new health care reform law that he claims will strip seniors of the "coverage they deserve". That's a new one on me. He urged us to call Sen. Sherrod Brown to register our complaints about the law that Brown strongly supports. Boone is a conservative political activist for an outfit called 60 Plus, which claims to be non-partisan. Actually, it is supported by the pharmaceutical industry, which will target Brown - who just happens to be running for reelection next year. So Boone, who also does walk-in bathtub commercials, will be busier than usual next year trying to convince seniors that President Obama wants them to die in their tracks.

*******

I found it odd that State Sen. Frank LaRose's high-sounding Veteran's Day op-ed paean in the Beacon Journal to Iraqi veterans didn't contain a word about their shabby treatment when they returned to find they were without jobs, houses and other basic amenities due the troops. LaRose continues to place himself above the political fray, but in the end you have to remind yourself that he is a garden variety Republican and that's how he votes down in the legislature.

********

It never ends: Michele Bachmann insisted the U.S. would be a lot better off if we emulated Communist China's economic system. One of her talking points: China doesn't give food stamps. Right. And China doesn't permit a lot of stupid talk by anybody who wants to dislodge its leader.

Here we go again, from abortion to RTW

2011-11-11T10:42:00.012-05:00

AS THE SULLEN SUPPORTERS of the anti-union Senate Bill 5 continue to reach for noble platitudes to launder their loss in the spin cycle, we learn that 2012 will bring us further mischief from the political and religious Right. Oh, my.

Shall we begin with a fellow named Patrick Johnston, a Tea Partying Ohio doctor with strong pulpiteering tendencies? He's leading a movement to put his version of the anti-abortion Personhood amendment on the Ohio ballot next year. He says he's not concerned in the least that Mississippi voters convincingly rejected it in Tuesday's election. Undismayed - zealots always are - Johnston says: "We have science and divine law on our side. With God's help we will win through."

(Historical note: the early Romans also believed that "no enterprise could be undertaken without divine sanction", and look what's happening to Italy today. )

Let's move on. There's the right-to-work thing. It is called the "Workplace Freedom Amendment" that would be added to the Ohio Constitution if approved by the voters next year. You wouldn't be shocked to learn that it is operating as the Liberty Council (!), a Tea Party Affiliate. One of the movement's organizers is Bryan Williams, one of Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's favorites from the party's practice squad who was vanquished by Mayor Plusquellic several elections ago. Williams, a lobbyist for builders and contractors, was quoted in the Beacon Journal as saying the RTW amendment would "unleash an economic engine".

Or, on the other hand, the same union juggernaut that crushed Senate Bill 5 as it did RTW in 1958. Not only RTW but, as the late Ray Bliss had warned his party at the time, the statewide Republican ticket. I wonder if Arshinkoff, Bliss's alleged apostle, has reminded Williams of the scary odds against the GOP in 2012 with the avatar of RTW hanging around. No one , however, would appreciate another arousal of the Democratic/Labor folks more than President Obama.

I was working for the old Columbus Citizen when the right-to-workers went to the ballot in 1958 and were thrashed. The Scripps-Howard newspapers had strongly endorsed it. You should have seen the editors' faces the morning after. The first order of damage control from the editor: Start looking for positive feature stories about the city's labor leaders.

Jeez. The more I see of the GOP's political tactics, the less I understand, and it looks like we're going to have another awful year to figure them out.

The GOP road show gets funnier by the minute

2011-11-10T14:27:00.008-05:00

THE NEXT TIME those alleged Republican presidential candidates meet to debate, I would have one question for Rick Perry. Are you a real person or a knockoff of Jon Stewart?

So far we've seen him twisting and fluttering like the last autumn leaf on the tree, or appearing as a sputtering grade schooler caught chewing gum in class. You may have seen the Texas governor laboring to remember the third Federal agency that he had hitherto promised to eliminate. It could be a first in political self-entrapment.

I know this is 2011 when people's minds are distracted by a thousand things at once. But couldn't Perry have at least brought a crib to get him through the Double Jeopardy trick question? Or taken a hint from Sarah Palin's way of writing the answers on the palm of her hand?

After 30 or 40 debates, communication remains a severe problem. And it has some of us desperately searching for the meaning of newly minted terms. Look, folks, Michele Bachmann now wants us to believe that Mitt is a "prudent socialist". I can save you some research time by reporting that the term isn't in my dictionary. Mitt, meantime, came up with "corporations are people". But he has yet to tell us that people are corporations. Not in my house! There are only two of us living in it and I can't remember the third title we would need to incorporate.

Herman Cain referred to Anita Hill as a "princess", which has certain male chauvinist connotations, if you know what I mean., particularly for a guy now being accused of sexual harassment.

It must be something in the air. The former South Carolina Republican Party executive director, Todd Kincannon, has been exposed for tweets referring to Pelosi as a "crooked whore" and "botox bitch." I will only take you so far to repeat his third raunchy insult, that she was a crabby "c--t". (Clue: Cat has only three letters; this one has four.)

If you're among those who insist that you have better things to do than watch this stuff, I would accuse you of lacking a sense of humor. Better yet, the next time you take a Republican pol to lunch, ask him or her to explain it. I'd like to know.

Plusquellic returns when he's needed the most

2011-11-10T11:51:00.009-05:00

THE POST-ELECTION SCENE in the Guy's Party Centre for Mayor Don Plusquellic's victory party had an anticlimactic tone about it. The scattered crowd in the big banquet room milled about in muted reaction to his overwhelming victory for a 7th - and maybe toughest - term. Even some of the party notables were absent, including Democratic immortal Ray Kapper, who was recovering in Florida from a broken ankle. So far as I could tell as I wandered about the hall, that was the only news of the evening.

Plusquellic's overwhelming (70-30) victory over Republican Jennifer Hensal, who appeared to have been drawn from the Summit County GOP's practice squad, was fully expected. She was a nice enough woman who was terribly overmatched. (She would have much preferred to be appointed to a judgeship for her ad hoc usefulness in filling in a ballot blank.) So GOP Chairman Alex Arshinkoff will have to wait another four years to find somebody to accomplish what he hasn't been able to do during Plusquellic's 24 years as mayor.

I'm sure there was no one in the room who expected the outcome to be different. That was settled in the Democratic primary when the mayor defeated councilman Mike Williams. If they had cancelled this week's election, it would have been a meaningless gesture, and doubtless many Republicans would have sighed in relief.

Plusquellic's brief speech thanking his campaign staff gave him one more opportunity to warn the lingering gang of critics led by Akron Atty. Warner Mendenhall who have been finding various, if often mindless, ways to take down the mayor. The mayor, his well-known temper rising, called out Mendenhall with a warning that the latter had "no place to hide."

The past four years have been particularly troubling for the mayor , with his enemies forcing a recall election (which he won, 3-1) and more than surviving two party primaries and two general elections in the space of a single term.

I'd say that Akron is quite fortunate to have a guy with his competence and hometown dedication around for another four years.

Kasich & Co.: overreach, and then some

2011-11-09T15:04:00.010-05:00

THE MORNING AFTER...

The unconditional surrender of Kasich & Co. to the voters on Tuesday was a textbook example of crushed political arrogance. The mismanaged Republican-led assault on public worker unions was DOA at the polls, but its demise has been widely anticipated from the day the opponents of Senate Bill 5 filed more than a million signatures calling for a referendum to repeal it. Even with the support of the state's two biggest newspapers - the Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch, which lamely tried to provide cover for the law - the ill-conceived legislation was destined to land in a pauper's grave with the clearly shaken governor offering a brief TV benediction.

Good! Since his arrival in the governor's office in January , Kasich has shown little patience for rational conversation with his critics as well as the public at large. Stripping public workers of their bargaining rights has been one of his planned fail-safe initiatives in attempting to convince the corporate world that status quo is not a term you would ever find in his dictionary. Yet there he was, no more than your average chastened pol, in the gloom of painful defeat telling us that the voters have spoken and he will now need time to reflect on its meaning. It's not likely his funeral oration will remotely approach Pericles' in content and vision.

Taking a longer-lasting hit was his triumphant exhuberance in gruff political engineering in the coming months. That also will be true of the Republican lawmakers, consumed by their own self-importance, who have left sound logic at the backstage door. Many will be on the ballot in 2112. At the same time, some current øbservers have noted that Kasich had operated on the weird notion that his anti-union handiwork would be so widely applauded that he could end up on the national ticket. Fat chance of that.

Meantime, the demolished Kasich power play has energized a once-musty Democratic labor base that is expected to have long memories. Sometimes it helps if you can depend on your opponents to lend you a hand. The unionists should be among the first to send the governor a thank-you card.

The ex-astronaut vs. the ex-Wall Streeter

2011-11-06T12:21:00.006-05:00

HAVE YOU SEEN the TV repeal-SB 5 (No, Issue 2) by John Glenn? Quite effective, for a former senator to appear in soft voice at the age of 90 to appeal to Ohioans for reason. So the only question left in this instance for Tuesday's election:

Are you going to believe a former astronaut war hero with a Boy Scout's honor, or are you going to believe our governor, Jøhn Kasich, who spent his recent years promoting Wall Street for a company that went bankrupt?

A new name for Cleveland Touchdown Club?

2011-11-05T10:54:00.002-04:00

NOW THAT THE CLEVELAND BROWNs have dismissed six-pointers from their playbooks, I'm hearing rumors that the Cleveland Touchdown Club is changing its name to the Cleveland Field Goal Club. Is that true?

When a history lecture is a political event

2011-11-04T10:39:00.006-04:00

AN OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY alum sends along a notice of a lecture sponsored by OSU's Harvey Goldberg Center in the Department of History. The Nov. 10 event will be in the school's Faculty Club and the guest speaker this year is ....Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder, who will be introduced by OSU President E. Gordon Gee.

The alum included the following note:

"This is bizarre. Harvey Goldberg was my history teacher. He was brilliant, the best teacher I ever had. When I took the course on the French Revolution from him, I felt I was fighting alongside the French. Why would they pick Batchelder? Gordon Gee is the most political president of OSU that can ever remember."

Why, indeed! One could believe that the Goldberg lecture deserved a distinguished historian at the lectern, not a political retread. But there might be some state (taxpayer) dollars to be had.

From this distance, I wonder whether the only other option was Jim Tressel.

But to be fair, the official notice does promise an "engaging lecture".

Brooding Batchelder: you ain't seen nothin' yet

2011-11-03T19:22:00.007-04:00

AS YOU MIGHT NOTICE in this Columbus Dispatch photo, Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder is not having one of his happier moments. Indeed, he is so sore about the failure of the GOP's redistricting plan to survive a required two-thirds House vote to suspend the rules that he has resorted to doing the John Kasich Rumble. If the Democratic lawmakers don't show up on his dance card, he warns, he will deliver an even more bizarre plan for them to swallow. (I'm still predicting that my place in Fairlawn will be linked to Toronto or Gary, Ind.) That will show the D's who is boss in the General Assembly these days! Such threats by the majority party troops have become increasingly common during the Kasich Era, in which the governor once declared that his critics will be run over by the bus. Kasich may be wise to reconsider such threats now that the bus is heading into his own path. Still, he is telling reporters who ask about his plans if Senate Bill 5, the one restricting public unions, is thrown out on Tuesday: "I never think ahead." That goes without saying, Guv.

As for Batchelder, what has happened to the guy who once displayed a great sense of humor with a long history of political service. In his role now as House speaker has it betrayed the nasty and illogical side that has always been muted? Whatever, can we ever take him seriously, even as the neighborhood bully?

And I'm not the only one who remembers the other Batchelder.

Cain's man not alone in blowing smoke

2011-11-02T09:48:00.010-04:00

IN MY MANY years of political reporting, I never thought that it would be nice if Harold Stassen returned to a presidential campaign in spirit long after his death. After all, the ex-governor of Minnesota had run effortlessly for the Oval Office a dozen times without a hint of success.

Still, it would be nice to have him back this year as a civilized counter-balance to the hysterical sideshow the Republicans are offering day after day. Where to begin?

Well, Herman "The Hermanator" Cain has already achieved his immediate goal with his profitable "non-political" book-signing tour. He has slickly made the New York Times' best-seller list which, of course, only reflects sales and not literary excellence. There is even some thought being advanced that his skirmish over sexual harassment charges will benefit him among some male types who grope their secretaries' shoulders. He also operates sin-free thanks to the gang at Fox News that immediately circled the wagons around him for his nightly appearances.

And how about that odd Cain commercial in which his puffing chief of staff, Mark Block, blows cigaret smoke into the screen? That reaffirmed it for me: Block, parroting his boss, is not the only one blowing smoke these days.

Meantime, among the other none-of-the-aboves, there was Rick Perry in a strange melt-down before a conservative audience, mugging with silly grins and wild arm gestures to make a point or two. It was the strangest performance I've ever seen from a presidential candidate. Some of his friends thought he might be reacting to pain-killing medication from back surgery. I don't think so. The man is nuts.

For Mandel, transparency doesn't apply

2011-10-31T10:55:00.005-04:00

YOU CAN SAY THIS much about Ohio treasurer Josh Mandel, the Republican who has chosen to challenge U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in the 2012 election: he has no trouble offering us his own version of "transparency", as in, for goodness sake, the official "Treasurer's Transparency Project".

The topic has come up in the wake of Mandel's decision to post online the salaries of all of Ohio's public workers, a convenience for those potential voters on Issue 2 who should be told that such workers are living in Fat City. Trouble is, embarrassing though it may be for the fellow in charge of safekeeping taxpayer dollars, the list is full of errors. In a way it's understandable. Trying to account for so many people's salaries is a lot more difficult than reporting the exact figures of, say, Bowling for Dollars.

Be patient, says Seth Unger, Mandel's spokesman, we'll get it right in due time.

And while you're doing the transparency thing in hopes of making it a national model, Seth, could you remind your boss that he is a half- year behind in filing his personal financial disclosure report for his senatorial aspirations?

Soon to arrive: the GOP's Great Pumpkin Debate

2011-10-28T10:49:00.005-04:00

IN THESE SCARY DAYS of the Halloween season, we should all be reminded of the words of Linus van Pelt, the wonderful kid in Peanuts that Lucy prefers to call "stark raving stupid." Not so. As Linus tells us: "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people...religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin." So far, the Republican candidates debating the fate of the nation have ignored Linus on two of the three, politics and religion. But, alas, based on what we've heard so far, we can expect their arguments over the Great Pumpkin to arrive momentarily.

Incidental news from the Republican front

2011-10-26T20:40:00.010-04:00

IF GOV. KASICH IS INTENT on creating more jobs in Ohio, he may have to plow ahead without help from Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman. MSNBC is reporting that when Portman joined all other Senate Republicans in killing President Obama's jobs bill, it cost Ohio 40,700 new jobs. Once again, Obama can expect to receive no support from the Republicans on any substantive proposal to help the economy.

* * * * *

I noticed that former State Sen. Kevin Coughlin of Cuyahoga Falls has officially withdrawn from the Republican race for the U.S. Senate in 2012. No surprise. Very few people were aware that he was ever in the race.

* * * * *

You have to admire Mitt Romney's balletic manner in pirouetting from one side of an issue to the other. After declaring he fully supported Kasich on Senate Bill 5 (" I fully stand with John Kasich"), Romney arrived in Ohio to declare to reporters that he doesn't get involved in state ballot issues. But within a matter of hours, he asserted that he is "110 pct. in Kasich's corner on Issue 2, the repeal referendum that is enjoying a 25 pct. margin over the law's supporters in the latest polls. He said he was "sorry if I caused confusion." At least you can say this about Mitt: Most politicians staring at those poll numbers would prefer to say something nice about the Cleveland Browns instead and leave SB 5 to its fate. There is a fine line between courage and stupidity.

* * * * *

WHEN A TV INTERVIEWER REMINDED RICK PERRY THAT HIS FLAT TAX PLAN WOULD BE A BIG BOOST FOR THE WEALTHIEST ONE PERCENT IN AMERICA, HE SAID HE DIDN'T "CARE ABOUT THAT." IMPRESSED BY HIS SENSITIVITY TO ROYALTY, FOX NEWS IS GIVING PERRY AN ENTIRE HOUR TO HIMSELF SUNDAY.

*******

Among the no-shows for the Akron mayoral debate this week was Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff. History tells us that when the boss doesn't show up to give at least moral support to the Republican candidate, you can bet that he's decided that the outcome has been settled in favor of Mayor Plusquellic.

With SB 5, Mudville coming to Ohio

2011-10-26T11:55:00.006-04:00

THERE CAN'T BE much joy in Mudville these days as Gov. Kasich and the Republicans in the legislature face what appears to be insurmountable odds that favor the repeal of Senate Bill 5.

That's the clear message from the Quinnipiac poll released this week showing the new anti-public union law going down to defeat on Nov. 8 by 25 points, 57 pct. to 32 pct. That same poll also shows that Kasich's slight gain in public approval in recent months has reversed, dropping him five points to 35 pct.

The Democrats have only the Republicans to thank for the mulish way the law's allies went after the unions - an astonishingly inept campaign that suggested the Kasich gang conceived of the law as a slam dunk. That's the governor, for you, a humorless, politically righteous fellow who should post on his office wall the words of one of the world's leading philosophers, Pogo.

Said he: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

The governor seems to be taking a more distant approach from manhandling the campaign to defeat the repeal referendum. He has said that he wasn't running the show but thought the managers were doing "fine." Should we mention that Beth Hansen, his chief of staff, is on a leave of absence serving as a media advisor for the anti-repeal campaign?

Was it her idea to pirate some words from a pro-repeal ad featuring an indignant Cincinnati great-grandmother who effectively urged voters to cast a NO vote against retaining the law? Unsurprisingly, when a bit of the film clips showed up in a TV ad that made it appear she favored the law, the sleight-of- handiwork gained wide attention in fetching political shorthand - Grannygate.

Such clumsiness ought to be shown in every political science class in the state as an example of how to be self-destructive in politics.

And these are the same folks who assure Ohioans every day that they damn well know what they are doing.

The headline doesn't tell the whole story

2011-10-25T21:36:00.005-04:00

Some newspaper headlines grab you more than others, as did this one on the front page of USA TODAY:

1 million shot to save on loans

The topper leads me to ask:

Did the victims inquire about the risk in such loans?

In Akron, debating the need for a debate

2011-10-25T10:55:00.008-04:00

THE SECOND AND FINAL (!) debate of the Akron mayoral campaign was a gentle sparring match that left some of us wondering why anybody went to the trouble. Maybe the earlier clash between Mayor Plusquellic and challenger Mike Williams in the Democratic primary convinced most people that the mayor was assured a seventh term when they count the general election ballots on Nov. 8. To the chagrin of Republicans, the mayor is usually decided by the winner of the Democratic primary.

On this occasion Plusquellic is sort of challenged by Republican Jennifer Hensal, an Akron West Sider who practices law in Medina and is said to be hopeful of being appointed to some judgeship when the planets line up for her. In her opening remarks, she advised the Martin Center audience of more than 200 on what a good mayor ought to be doing to lead the city. It was an opening for Plusquellic to respond that his opponent had just described him for what he is already doing.

Later, the mayor accused Hensal of not being a serious candidate while declaring that he is.

Otherwise, the conversation brought up public safety, finances and other matters that came up in the party primary. The real contrast was how both candidates approached the hottest issue on the November ballot: the SB 5 repeal. Plusquellic clearly asserted that he wasn't pleased with the way the anti-public union law was scripted. I wasn't clear on Hensal's response and engaged in one of the shortest post-debate interviews in my years that included too many post-debate interviews.

Q. Inasmuch as SB 5 is a Republican initiative, how do you plan to vote on it?

Hensal: (Without hesitating.) "Oh, I will vote [yes] for it."

Why did I have to ask?

(By the way the event was a nice try - but only a nice try - by the Akron Press Club, the League of Women Voters and the Bliss Institute to promote democracy in action. But it's true that after all of the nonsense spurting from the Republican presidential debates in the candidates' long year's journey into night, the respectful Akron mayoral thing was a much-needed relief.)

SB 5: Vote no on what?

2011-10-23T12:03:00.006-04:00

IMAGINE MY shock and awe when I turned to the Plain Dealer's Forum section this morning and was greeted by a big headline on the cover that urged: Vote no on Issue 2 to repeal SB 5

Had the paper suddenly reversed its earlier support of the issue? Do pigs really fly? Can a cow really jump over the moon?

But the mystery was cleared up when I thumbed to the jump on Page 4 and discovered that the piece was not the work of an editorial writer but rather the top officer of the Northshore AFL-CIO.

I can only assume that the fierce reaction to the PD's endorsement of the new law restricting public unions was so intense that the paper's true believers decided to offer a prominent response by the other side.

Maybe the kitchen is getting too hot for the papers supporting the work of their Golden Boy governor, John Kasich, and the GOP-controlled legislature. (Exclude the

Beacon Journal from this gang. The BJ today called for the repeal of the law!)

So as we approach the election on Nov. 8, the repeal referendum is astonishingly coming down to a great-grandma, widely featured in political ads as supporting the repeal, and those incredibly stupid handlers on the other side who pirated her comments for their own purposes and have lived to regret it. If that's all the anti-repealers have to fool the voters, you can guess which side is more desperate to tighten the noose around school teachers, police and firefighters. Hell, it didn't even fool most people just once.

Useful figures for understanding politics 101

2011-10-21T13:27:00.012-04:00

WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION little more than a year away, I want to be helpful with a numerical approach to America's cloudy situation today. You can clip and save it as a handy wallet-size digest for people on the go. Here is a random sample of the figures that I've assembled from Harper's Index, the Economist magazine and other sources for which you can thank me at your earliest convenience:

9-9-9 - Herman Cain's strident prescription for America's economic health (as well as that of his book sales) which seems to work much better for piercing effect than, say, nueve, nueve nueve, don't you think?

$98,422 - The amount that deficit hawk Rep. Joe Walsh. Illinois Republican, is in arrears on child support despite preaching that he doesn't want to pile "one more dollar on the backs of my kids" with a greater federal deficit.

5 million - The number of new jobs that Republicans insist will be created with its new plan (which has been described as their "golden oldies"), that includes tax cuts, a repeal of the health care law and a balanced budget amendment.

$100 million - The amount that Fannie Mae spent to secure "lawmakers' affections" from 1989 to 2009.

20 percent - The amount of the nation's wealth owned by one percent of its richest families.

$53.8 million - The court-ordered amount that billionaire hedge fund swindler Raj Rajaratnam must forfeit from his piggy bank. (He's also going to prison for 11 years.)

$7 million - The amount the Cleveland Browns paid quarterback Jack Delhomme when they released him last season after a brief stay. (Not political, I know, but interesting anyway now that the front office is having doubts about his successor.)

5 million-plus - The number of eligible voters that the Brennan Justice Center at NYU says will have a "significantly harder" time voting now because of the harsh restrictions enacted by Republicans in their ludicrous claim that they are targeting voter fraud.

1.2 million - The number of jobs that Rick Perry says will be created by weakening environmental laws (particularly those that are abhorrent to his pals at the American Petroleum Institute.)

$4.4 trillion - The deficit in state and local government pension plans.

10 - the number of constituent letters that President Obama reads from the loads that arrive at the White House daily, often hard-luck stories that Obama reportedly may respond to with personal checks to help a person through hard times.

100 pct. - Chance that Joe the Plumber says his new wife will support his candidacy for congress in Ohio.

Zero - Chance that the Republican-controlled legislature in Ohio will correct the flaws in HB 5 if it isn't repealed in November.

98.7 pct. - Chance that Gov. Kasich will call a cop or two idiots if HB 5 is repealed.

453

It's still DeWine vs. Cordray

2011-10-20T11:44:00.010-04:00

OHIO ATTY. GEN. Mike DeWine has official priorities about when to appeal to Congress and when to take a pass. For the purposes of this piece, we are talking about Asian carp and Richard Cordray, the former attorney general whom DeWine managed to defeat - not on relative merit - in 2010 through the essential benefit of a Republican monsoon that swept the state. In that instance it was not an uplifting day for the electorate.

According to Plain Dealer business columnist Sheryl Harris, 37 attorneys general - Republicans and Democrats - strongly recommended the seating of Cordray as the first director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In a letter to Congress from the National Association of Attorneys General, Cordray was described as "both brilliant and balanced." That was hardly a stretch for a person of Cordray's character and talent.

Wanna guess who refused to sign it? Our guy DeWine, of course, who had earlier described Cordray as "highly qualified" and one who would "do an excellent job. As a former U.S. senator, DeWine didn't think he should butt in to tell congressmen how to run their shop. Pure baloney!

I hadn't heard of a excuse like that one for a political no-show. But as he did in his campaign against Cordray in 2010, he will always find a way to rise above the battle, or at least disappear from the radar screen.

As for the Asian carp, Harris reported that DeWine did concede that he made an exception in contacting Congress about the rapacious fish eating their way through Lake Erie.

The only valid story here: The Republicans on Capitol Hill will not seat anybody to the consumers' job unless the consumer protection bureau is gutted. So Cordray will remain a hostage to the roadblock. DeWine is aware of that and will not do anything to discourage his GOP brethren. Maybe somebody will name a carp after him for his service.

Jesus and the GOP candidates

2011-10-19T10:57:00.005-04:00

IN THE LITTER of the New Hampshire tag team match, popularly described as the Republican candidates debate, the party's primary voters are still left with a game-changing decision: Who among those left standing is God's conservative of choice to sit in the Oval Office?

Rick Perry described himself as the "authentic" conservative in the crowd. His wife, Anita, bristling over attacks on her husband prompted by his avowed Christian identity (another pure believer victimized by heathens!) , said earlier that he is a candidate because God had urged him to run among the lions.

On the other hand, Perry dismissed Mitt Romney as a "conservative of convenience,'' which at some point will demand an official response from Mitt that God had also urged him to run. Whatever works!

Rick Santorum, a sworn Christian regularly on the God Network, has heard all of this before and is unconvinced of their sincerity. He has chosen to call himself the "conservative alternative."

Michele Bachman has used up much of her religious capital, which obviously has not worked to her benefit as she plummets in the polls. . And Sarah Palin,, who once said she was waiting to hear from God on what to do, is not running at all, and may we guess why?

To to keep you fully current, here is 999 Cain, himself an unyielding Bible-referencing conservative, setting the context of the heavenly argument in today's unruly world.

Jesus, he tells us, was the ''true conservatisve."

And why is that , Herm?

Let him explain how Jesus got into the current political argument: "He helped the poor without one government program. He healed the sick with a government health care system. He fed the hungry without food stamps. For three years, he was unemployed and never collected an unemployment check."

But historians also tell us that slavery was not uncommon in the Roman era.

Unsurprisingly, PD endorses Issue 2

2011-10-17T15:48:00.014-04:00

Yes on Issue 2 was the headline on the Plain Dealer's Sunday editorial supporting retention of the law embracing Senate Bill 5. And why should any of us be surprised? Here, after all, was the paper that also urged its readers to vote for John Kasich when he ran for governor - the same John Kasich who is out vigorously campaigning for....the issue restricting the power of public unions. When it comes to politics, the paper has seldom cast aside its predictability in defending its puffy noble causes.

In its Kasich endorsement in 2010, it found a number of reasons to caution the electorate about the volatile ex-Wall Streeter ever setting foot in the governor's office. But in the end, it insisted that he would still be a better choice than the incumbent,Ted Strickland, who happened to be a Democrat.

And so the PD couched its support of the GOP- hustled antiunion issue with endless advice about what to do with the flaws in the law - "imperfect though it may be" - if the repeal referendum is denied on Election Day. What the heck, it told us, those flaws can be corrected later. And good luck on that one. Even the PD conceded it won't be easy, noting:

"Yet whatever voters decide, a middle road that enables needed change without trampling on the dignity of public servants will be hard to find once this bitter political fight ends."

It could be fairly argued, of course, that if the law is that questionable in a number of respects, the same search for a middle road could be applied if the law is repealed and those same Republican lawmakers start all over again from scratch to find the beloved middle road that wouldn't trample on dignity. That, too, won't happen with the wrecking crew operating in Columbus these days under the guise of reformers.

The supporters of Senate 5 fumbled from the outset by slamming it at the public unions without concern for the likely backlash. Else they would not have included police and firefighters in the law's grasp. We are not dealing here with a highly intelligent and far-sighted group of lawmakers, folks. The only remaining question is why the corporate media keeps bailing them out of their disfunctional behavior.

The PD also wanders off to the governor's phony attempts to reach a compromise with the law's opponents before it reached the ballot (one of the true non-stories in the issue's history, induced by Kasich's deep concern that the repeal would succeed and not by any notion of valid compromise). It is now asking him to rise above the battle after election day. "When this campaign ends", the paper said, " Kasich has a chance to be healer. He must not pass it up."

Fat chance, that is, from this governor.

Bush's "formula'' for Greece's economic woes

2011-10-16T10:28:00.004-04:00

FOR ALL of the worldly concern over the economic meltdown of Greece, it is comforting to turn to the wise counsel of former president George W. Bush to get us through the mess.

Said GW more than a decade ago:

"Keep good relations with the Grecians."

Don't blame grandma. She didn't flip-flop

2011-10-14T14:30:00.006-04:00

WAS THERE A hint of desperation in the "grandma" TV commercial posted by Building a Better Ohio, the opponents of the Senate Bill 5 repeal amendment on the November ballot (Issue 2).? I mean, if I didn't know better, I would say the other side - We Are Ohio - largely inspired the BBO message that has so embarrassed BBO by having grandma appear both for and against the repeal.

The grandma is Marlene Quinn, who appeared in a pro-repeal WAO ad praising firefighters for rescuing her granddaughter from a house fire. In a tricky bit of editing, BBO showed only part of what she said - Fox News style - and led the viewer to believe she was against the repeal. However, it conveniently cut out the part in which she urged Ohio voters to support the repeal. She, of course, is outraged by the piracy, and TV stations across the state have pulled the commercials because of their blatant dishonesty.

Now I ask you: even though TV commercials tend to wander off into terra incognito at times, you understand that it comes with the territory. In this instance, the ad producers created a big negative for their TV money, giving repeal supporters plenty to point out to the public about what was essentially an amateurish slickster's way of making a point.

Two things can happen: Inspired by anti-repeal Gov. Kasich, the repealers could run a film clip of his calling a cop an idiot, inasmuch as safety forces are among the public employes targeted by the new law that is being challenged; or the anti-repealers could fire the blockhead that produced the ad that has now turned up with unintended consequences - which are the worst kind in political campaigns.

LaRose; the Kasich era is doing just fine

2011-10-13T13:00:00.015-04:00

I USUALLY DON'T spend much time reading newsletters from politicians. By nature, they are far more self-serving than newsy. But in a day when the hometown dailies are giving so little coverage to the area's lawmakers, I may have to change my habit of ignoring the home-grown dispatches from Columbus.

For a blatant example, the latest copy of Ohio Senate News from Akron-area freshman Sen. Frank LaRose is full of feel-good stuff about how well Republicans from Gov. Kasich on down are serving the vital interests of Ohioans by eliminating wealth-tilted estate taxes by Jan 1, 2013 (current tax is on estates of more than $338,333). Another GOP perk for the big dogs.

Public education? Says Rose: "No public school district will receive less state aid than they are currently receiving (excluding federal stimulus spending)..."

Ahem, there , Senator. According to the Ohio Education Association and other sources, the budget provides $2.9 billion less in the next biennium.

But for the purpose of this piece, I want to mention LaRose's defense of so-called GOP election reforms. Such notorious tactics are often used as a defense against mythical voter fraud. Republicans are good at defending their reforms in a way to disguise their intention to block millions of eligible voters from voting. That would include minorities, young people and seniors. (They still haven't found a way to disfranchise garden-variety Democrats, who may be none of the above.)

I shouldn't be picking on LaRose, I guess. He's new at his party's sleight-of word. It wasn't that long ago that local county chairmen were referring quaintly to African-Americans as "the Colored" and they cannot change at this late day, even if their guy Herman Cain accuses his brothers and sisters of being "brainwashed."

We've been down this road so many times and each time voter fraud has been exposed as a souped-up myth. The classic example was in 2009 in Cincinnati when the Hamilton County Prosecutor, Joe Deters, a Republican, subpoenaed the records of about 600 voters on suspicion that they were playing games at the polls. It was enough to serve as the searing legislative catalyst for new and tighter voter restrictions. In the end they turned up one case: a man described as a"half-breed Muslim " had been in Cincinnati from Connecticut to visit his sister and cast a vote. One - from several hundred thousand votes that had been cast. OK, you can never be too careful these days, right?

In the name of electoral honesty, the GOP is advancing it's nefarious campaign across the country with the potential of restricting millions of legitimate voters with the notion of voter fraud like the ohh-soo horrible one in Cincinnati. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, more than 5 million eligible voters will find it much harder to vote because of walls erected by GOP politicians. (Ohio did retreat from a government photo ID requirement, but other issues still stand in the way of the voters.)

If Frank LaRose is proud of this, so be it. The rest of us shouldn't be. I'm not.

Debate vs. baseball playoff: No contest

2011-10-12T11:08:00.012-04:00

I really tried to be a responsible, well-informed citizen by watching that debate at Dartmouth College. But after several minutes, I decided that the playoff game between Detroit and Texas was a more informative way to spend the evening.

What I did see during my debate-viewing minutes was a group of scripted candidates sitting at a round table as modern knights trying to be as correctly normal as you and I with twitters and grins and outright laughter. Even host Charlie Rose broke up from all of the hilarity. This was not an exercise in advanced gravitas.

Only Newt Gingrich, who is always hanging around, tried grimly to be on prosecutorial message, suggesting that a couple of Democrats ought to be imprisoned. He continues to wonder about two other Democrats, President Obama with Jimmy Carter (now there's a name from the past!), accusing both of subversively trying to destroy America. Wouldn't that be a case of blatant sabotage in the Oval Office? Call in the special forces!

On the other hand, Mitt Romney has now switched to cruise control. His posture and demeanor are reassuringly comforting in a field of lunatics: slight smile, hands clasped, above- the- fray presidential material, wouldn't you say? I once knew a board chairman who was like that, and isn't that what conservatives want? Mitt had arrived in New Hampshire to the tune of "Hail to the Chief," thanks to Chris Christie's endorsement. (Can anybody figure out the New Jersey governor other than he is fiercely committed to making Obama a "one-term" president? Clip and save.)

When Herman Cain fulsomely praised Alan Greenspan as the kind of guy who ought to sit atop the Federal Reserve, that prompted a laugh from Ron Paul, who snarled that Greenspan was "a gangster."

All the while in another hall miles away, the lemming-like Senate Republicans, now in full custody by Grover Norquist, were successfully blocking debate on Obama's jobs bill. Not the final bill, but floor debate, and they were unanimous about it. All of them doubtless were star pupils at the Brave New World's Central Hatchery and Conditioning Center.

Who was it, Newt, who wants to destroy America?

(Did I mention that the baseball game was interesting?)

Do the math: Thousands don't go into a handful

2011-10-11T20:41:00.005-04:00

BAD SIGNS OF THE TIMES:

Two geezers at a restaurant counter in Fairlawn shouting at a young waitress that the reason people don't have jobs today is that they don't want to work. She valiantly disagreed with them, to no avail.

I wonder if these guys would include the thousands of unemployed who stand in line for a handful of jobs offered by a company.

Probably. And that's too bad.