Shouldn't GOP draft Cheney as its candidate?

For the herd of Republican presidential candidates who are desperately looking for a way to throttle Donald Trump, we have a proposal:  oil up Dick Cheney's mechanical heart and draft him as a candidate. It would instantly draw the national media into a new Twilight Zone because, like Trump, Cheney has never been at a loss for dumb things to say. Besides, unlike Trump, who grabs your attention with  theatrical rants, Cheney is Mr. Cool  in projecting his wildest lies. The Republican herd badly needs coolness these days.

It probably wouldn't be a hard sell to recruit Cheney.  He and his daughter Liz have just written a book  titled "Exceptional"  that he could autograph like baseballs along the circuit.   (You'll be hearing more about it on the more exciting TV news talk shows, I'm sure.)

I've only read the excerpts and there's apparently nothing new in it that would cause me to spoil the ending.  For a man who enjoyed five draft deferments because he said he had "other priorities,"  Cheney remains on the top tier of hawks who drove us into the bloody failed invasion of Iraq.  At the time, he insisted that the enemy was in "the last throes" of the insurgency; that the conflict would go "relatively quickly, weeks rather than months";  and  in the end we will be "greeted as liberators". Don't know whether any of that is in the book.

Speaking of liberators, he writes about  the brave Americans who fought in our military battles,  and defends our use of atomic bombs as an example of this country's "fundamental decency."

But he saved his biggest fantasies  for his assaults on President Obama, literally accusing him for ushering in ISIS and everything else  that has gone wrong in the Middle East for centuries.  He frets that in books, tests and classroom instruction   "our children are too often being told that the legacy they have inherited is shameful".

That is partly true, if you consider that the shameful legacy of Iraq only refers to a draft dodger and worse, Dick Cheney.

Yep,  with Trump on the loose the  Republican also-runners could satisfy their own core values with a  freshly laundered   fantasy from Cheney, who is not a fundamentally decent man.

(Reposted from Plunderbund)

Dick Cheney for president? Will lunacy triumph?

Re-posted from Plunderbund


Like Mack the Knife, Dick Cheney is back in town.  He and his daughter Liz have announced a new non-profit group called Alliance for a Strong America to shame Barack  Obama's presidency.   And if your thing is the Theater of the Absurd then you have to believe that every rich Obama hater in the land with some loose change will drop a few coins  in his cup.

And if anything is deserving of a Saturday Night Live schtick, you could spread the rumor that Cheney, so full of sound and fury,  is again stirring up media coverage because he's actually running for president to restore our unique position as the global sheriff. Sounds silly, I know.  But with  the former veep who always operates beyond the limits of reality, silliness has no meaning.  We  can even envision a scenario in which he attaches Liz to his ticket as his running-daughter. It would dispel the notion among anyone who shudders at his name that he is a cold-blooded lunatic.  Instead, he would come across as a tender loving family guy who merely wants to see his daughter get ahead.

Karl Rove  would immediately predict a landslide victory for Cheney.  And Donald Trump would be thrilled that we finally had a white guy in the Oval Office who was born in America.

 And in swing-state Ohio. the projected turnout  for our new hero on Election Day would be so large in even the smallest counties  that Secretary of State Jon Husted would alert all of the local election boards to remain open around the clock by Labor Day for early voting.

If I all of this sounds too crazy for words, you can't say I didn't warn you.  Did I mention that a lunatic is on the loose again?

Add another to the GOP list of rising stars

As I continue to explore the bright Republican firmament for "rising stars",  I am happy to report still another one as identified by McClatchy newspapers  in its coverage of the big conservative shindig in Maryland,  a.k.a. Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention.  It is Sen.Tim Scott of South Carolina, who was appointed recently to fill the seat of Jim DeMint, who departed to head the Heritage Foundation.

Scott made it to the not-so-exclusive  Rising Star column as the party's first black senator since Reconstruction.  He thus joins other media-designated alleged upwardly mobile luminaries as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, John Kasich and Jeb Bush's son, George Prescott Bush. (I hope I got G.P.'s name right.  There are so many Bushes demanding our attention that I get mixed up at times.)

Missing from the list is  ex-Sen. Scott Brown, who lost in November and is now a lobbyist.  A senator with an ex in front his title is immediately banished from the GOP's distinguished wish list.  Also missing is Tim Tebow, whose stardom was rising until he was flattened a few times with the New York Jets.  Now, he is afforded the backup possibility of a "window of opportunity" by the sports media inasmuch as  the team's starting quarterback is also a falling star.

You can forget Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, too. They have both worked hard at being rising stars and neither ever really  got off the ground. I'll keep you posted,

Lieberman vacates a role as most boring person

With the departure of  Joe Lieberman   from Congress,   I've been poking around the honored rolls to settle on someone to replace him as Capitol Hill's most boring person.  The field is so crowded that the choice didn't come quickly.

 I was leaning toward Newt Gingrich until I remembered that during his bid for the Republican presidential nomination I had already tagged him as Crazy Guggenheim, a title that seemed close enough when he promised to fire all  school janitors and replace them with the students.  (He also promised to put a permanent base on the moon during  his second  term in the Oval Office,  but I couldn't convince myself that there would even be a first term for Newtie.)

Then, there was Jon Husted, Ohio's secretary of state, who droned on and on that his voter restrictions were meant to purify the whole system.  Few believed him, but he droned on and on, defending the indefensible.   We haven't heard that much from him  since his class lost, so no need to drag out the story.

You may be surprised, but my choice for the most boring  politician in our midst is Lindsey Graham, the forever whining South Carolina Republican who was usually seen at Joe Lieberman's side as they traipsed through the trouble spots of the world. He's been back on TV a number of times as his party's  Paul Revere to warn us over and over and over that America is  being consumed by the libs. Unfortunately, he remains in denial about the outcome of the November election.  Even in the few seconds that it takes me to change the channel, I feel a headache coming on.

And I didn't even mention Donald Trump, who at least  is always good for a laugh.




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The anti-Obama crowd: poor post-election losers

If we've learned anything in the post-election days, it's that Republicans are poor losers.  Mitt Romney accuses the president of bribing voters.   John McCain pathetically  fumes that  there is a cover-up  in the investigation of Benghazi, and the worst incompetence  he has ever-ever  seen,  another botched Watergate.    A gun shop owner in Arizona says he will not do business with anybody who voted for Obama.  A Republican county party treasurer  in Texas refers to the Obama voters as "maggots". A Tea Partyer,  he is readying his friends to secede from the Union.  Bill O'Reilly sours that Obama won because people want, of all things, "stuff". We know who he's talking about, don't we?

About the secessionists:  They, too, are soreheads.  Tens of thousands across the land with nothing better to do with their time have signed petitions to secede.  Can whole states self-deport from America?
Quacks like Sean Hannity seem to be enjoying the secessionist uprising.  They're his people. This is the gift that will keep on giving for Fox News.  It's their Obama-caused Pompeii.

Their only problem is that Obama's victory shocked the hell out of Mitt's army, which had planned a major motorcade to his campaign headquarters on election night, a huge fireworks display and good ol' boys  conviviality for the 40 or so  wealthy friends - Donald Trump and that spooky billionaire Sheldon Adelson among them with overflowing piggy banks -- who flew into Boston in their private jets.

That's the awful news.  The good news is that Obama did, in fact, win,  because if he had lost,  Mitt and the Tea Partyers and the miscellaneous billionaires  would have been much more insufferable.



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Is he really Izod Windsock for president?

I've concluded that Willard Mitt Romney  is not the candidate's real name.  He was born Izod Windsock on Rarotonga  in the Cook Islands and showed such brilliance as an infant  that his  parents decided he would someday run for president as Willard Mitt Romney, a serviceable Anglo-
Saxon name inspired by Washington's plush Willard Hotel that Nathanial Hawthorne  referred to as the "center of Washington".  Lincoln liked the place, too,  which couldn't hurt.

It's  also true that Izod Windsock is such an absurd name that it might confuse those who couldn't remember whether Izod was his given name or surname in the heat of a nominating convention when some of the delegates had yet to sober up from the night before.  And it would be nothing less than a blistering talking point for Rush Limbaugh (nee Limbot) who reminded his listeners that Izod was not only a trade name but also the 19th Century  leader of an African terrorist group.

Some historians  today suggest that as Willard  was growing into puberty, he became very protective  of his words against playground bullies who taunted him for repeatedly reversing his place on a seesaw.  But it wasn't  until he ran for class president that  his opponents began questioning the birth certificate provided by his parents , particularly after Donald Trump Sr. had insisted that his probers  had discovered that Mitt's parents were actually named Wendy and  Winston Windsock (of the Rarotonga Windsocks) according to the old Rarotonga media files.

By now I know what you are thinking, that all of the above  is very silly.  I  couldn't agree more.  But you must remember that I am referring to Izod Windsock, the Republican candidate for president.  As candidates go, you can't get much sillier than that, can you?

Fair question for Detroit native son Romney

Yippee!   We can all relax and move on to less important matters.  Mitt Romney has released his birth certificate showing that he was born in Detroit.

Or was he?  Hmmm...

Unlike his good friend Donald Trump, a prominent but  moronic  birther who continues to hound President Obama without stern dissent from Mitt, I will rise above the cursed battle and take the Republican candidate's word for it if he can identify Al Kaline  and Dizzy Trout.

,

Ode to returning birther Donald Trump

Humpty Trumpty
Sat on a wall
Humpty Trumpty
Had a great fall
All of Mitt's horses
And all of Bain's men
Can't put Trumpty together again!

Sun rises, air clears as Ohio primary ends

WE THOUGHT THIS DAY would never arrive. I mean, the Ohio Republican primary. To borrow a recent reference to Californians by our Gov. Kasich, the four wackadoodles who formed the GOP candidate pack will have to turn their attention elsewhere and Ohioans will be able to breathe clean air again.

It was not a campaign of highlights. Even when the wannabes pranced beyond the Buckeye State, the word instantly got back to us in 2o12's technological glare. For example, there was McMitt Romney singing about Davy Crockett in Tennessee in his usual atonality and telling us that. Gosh and Jeepers, there was nothing in America that he didn't love. (His wife Ann lately assured us not to take the family's Midas-like wealth seriously inasmuch as she really didn't consider herself wealthy. Image problem solved.) It made us yearn for the return of Herman Cain, who, if nothing else, had a great on-pitch voice.

Across Ohio, McRick Santorum continued to run as a Manichean seminarian dividing all of humankind between good and evil. Thankfully, I don't think he sang about it.

McNewt Gingrich, who has long come across as Crazy Guggenheim since he chose to shut down the government as House Speaker, tried to soften his scary decrees by describing himself as the "cheerful" new Newt. That avowed conversion lasted for no more than a brief moment before he tore into Romney as a basically dishonest person who is trying to buy his way to the nomination.

Finally, Libertarian Ron Paul went around was just being Libertarian Ron Paul.

I write this without knowing who will win in Ohio. But does it matter? Even conservative icon George Will now tells us it doesn't, which opened the hostilities on another front by minor philsopher Donald Trump. Damning Will's pessimism, Trump erupted in an interview with CNBC morning host Joe Kernan:

"I think George Will is a loser...He actually spoke for me at Mar-a-Lago a long time ago, I was very unimpressed..You take away his little round spectacles and his cute little greasy haircut, and I think he probaby realizes he's not a very smart guy."

We'll save a profound essay on Trumpish haircuts for another day.

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

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.

The Donald-Newt Show, reality it is not

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.

The Iowa return of Donald Trump

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.

Sarah's East Coast Iditarod

AS WE GLANCED at the latest TV report of Sarah Palin's Lower 48 version of the Iditarod up the East Coast, it became clear from the frenzy that we were witnessing the Palin First Law of Centripetal Force. That is,

A falling body decelerates relative to the mass of media energy affecting it.

Folks, not since reporter Nellie Bly infiltrated an asylum for a story and followed up by circling the globe in 80 days have we seen such a determined self-absorbed human spectacle. Donald Trump, with whom she met along the way for a collectible photo-op, could not match it once his birther plot died. The media could not resist Sarah's latest stunt. It's a given factor that she doesn't overlook these days. Will her gravitational pull ever be exhausted? Not until after she topples over Niagara Falls in a barrel?

Prayerful exits and the lure of personal TV security

NEWS FROM THE post-Huckabee/Trump era:

Rick Santorum, the presidential candidate on the Piety Ticket, has praised Huckabee for praying before deciding not to seek the GOP nomination. But as long as he attributes heavenly guidance to Huckabee's decision, could it have also been influenced by prosperity theology, which holds that God believes the faithful should be rewarded with riches. That said, it's only fair to report that Huck stood to lose his $500,000 job on the Fox payroll if he declared his candidacy.

MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell took a deserved bow for nailing the exact date that The Donald would drop out of speculated contention. It was the day that NBC would announce its new program lineup, which included Trump's fanciful show. O'Donnell had seen how Trump was gaming the process for months as a pretender to the throne in order to create still more interest in his TV program. Not that everyone of the national pundits caught on to the travesty. Among those who predicted a Trump candidacy were Charles Krauthammer, Time Magazine's Mark Halperin and some other ga-gas on the right.

UNDETERRED BY a few miscues, the national pundits push on to more undiscovered land, raising questions to fill air time and newsprint with ill-authorittive guesses on the likely beneficiaries of the Huckabee/Trump exodus. Michelle Bachmann? Tim Pawlenty? Rick Santorum? Newt Gingrich? Stay tuned - for another year and a half!

GOP presidential: Three on base, two out

THE REPUBLICAN presidential field? Let me guess. The number running: 3. The number running away: 2. The number of mentionables: roughly 6. The number of unmentionables: How many bananas are there in a bunch?

So far, it hasn't been a good year for the political pundits trying to tout a mock draft. Two of the potential candidates have now explained their departures in biological terms. Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor, said he just didn't have fire in his belly. And now Mike Huckabee says it was his heart who told him not to run. In his heart he also knew he would have to give up his Fox TV show.

All this b0dy talk has become the new X-factor for the politicos trying to figure out one party's presidential race in which people are gasping, None of the Above. Will Sunday morning panelists begin to take a more serious look at Donald Trump's hair, not as a helicopter pad, but as a much more decisive element in his final decision? Peoria wants to know.

The official GOP field as we speak includes Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania who was routed in this bid for reelection; Newt Gingrich, who said he has overcome his past sins with help from God; and Rep. Ron Paul, who has just likened Medicare and Social Security to slavery. Should we remind them that they might find their next line of work on craigslist?

Among the unmentionables that leaves us with Michelle Bachmann, who is already said to benefit from Huckabee's heart-felt decision since both are the sort of conservatives who function out of the same shell; Mitt Romney, who was boasting about his health care reforms as Governor of Massachusetts when it was still socially acceptable for Republicans to say so; Sarah Palin, who appears to have peaked in 2008; Tim Pawlenty, who doesn't make a shadow on the sunniest day, and Gov. Mitch Daniels, former director of George Bush's Office of Management and Budget.

Oh, and Herman Cain, too. He's the founder of Godfather's Pizza who will soon make his candidacy official. . There are others, but why bother? I think I'll just hang around until the helicopter lands safely on Trump's unique coiffure.

UPDATE: Saying that his business was his greatest passion in life, Trump today declared his un-candidacy. Fortunately he didn't mention his hair as a factor in his decision. That leaves three who are running and three who are running away.

Obama/Meyers vs. Trump: A Saturday night massacre

IF YOU MISSED THE annual White House Correspondents Assn. dinner Saturday night (C-Span, full coverage), you didn't see the classic putdowns of Donald Trump by both President Obama and Seth Meyers, the Saturday Night Live writer who was the standup comedian for the event. Obama's dart included a cartoon that imagined how Trump would bring change as president. The place would become a hotel/casino with cocktail servers wiggling around in bikinis. The Prex also opined amid rounds of laughter that his release of his birth certificate would allow Trump to show his leadership on such other weighty matters as whether the moon landing was faked.

Meyers, who followed Obama, didn't let up, telling the audience that although Trump figured to be running as a Republican, he was really running as a joke.

The Donald, who was the guest of the Washington Post for reasons that only the paper can explain, witnessed the assault from his table with his third wife seated aside him. He forced a few painful grins, then his inner cave man surfaced with that familiar bullish fright mask. He quickly left the scene with the same demeanor as the cameras followed him through the crowd of 3,000, some of whom who were still handing around when the event ended.

But the day wasn't totally a washout for the nasty billionaire. Earlier, at a luncheon, Sarah Palin (Remember her? She hopes so!) defended him, chirping words that went:

"We appreciate and respect Donald Trump. He's our buddy."

That's one, Mr. Trump. That's one.

Can't ignore Obama's spiked advice to Michele Bachmann, another of his loopy adversaries on the right. He reported that she was born in Canada. And tersely explained how the system allows such nonsense:

"Yes, Michele," he said of his fanciful one-liner, "this is how it starts."

Note to Donald Trump: You're fired!

JUST AS THE national media were preparing to spend the morning dealing with such less compelling issues as tornadoes, Libya and possibly jobs, President Obama released his birth certificate to put an end to all of the silliness that is the fringe's stock-in-trade. It was the only juicy story of the day. Not that the birthers will give up so easily over Obama's big Gotcha Moment. For Donald Trump, the self-appointed Grand Odd Peacock (GOP) of the Republican Party, it was an occasion for him to hold another press conference and take credit for forcing the president's hand.

Trump is nothing if he is not parading his alleged political virtues in states that he may seek out in a presidential campaign. One never expects humility from the puffy guy and he lived up to his narcissistic billing by telling reporters, "Today I'm very prond of myself, because I've accomplished something that no one else has been able to accomplish." But before he entirely closes the case, he says he wants to first look at the document.

Meantime, he's on to Chapter Two in his pursuit of Oval Office scandal. He wants to see the transcripts of Obama's college records. Since half of the gullible Republicans still believes that Obama is not an American, it won't take much for Trump to sell the idea that Obama may have even flunked out of elementary school on his fast track to Harvard. Shouldn't the Republican front office, whatever and wherever it is these days, take The Donald aside and tell him:

"Trump, you're fired!!!"

Birthers: Presidential politics (minus) 101

When the new media sensation Donald Trump, straining to be a presidential player, and the other birthers continue to make jackasses of themselves with the whole world watching, we can only respond:

Is that all you got?

Let's have a moment of silence for poor Iowa

WHAT MUST LIFE be like in Iowa to wake up each morning, turn on the radio and be told that Michele is back in town. Michele Bachmann, that is, the Minnesota congresswoman who is doing her part to move the Hawkeye state closer to a theocracy that she defines as freedom and liberty and such. Most recently, she again took on Planned Parenthood, now effortlessly describing it as the "LensCrafters of big abortions."

We can't be sure how that will go over with the execs at LensCrafters and whether they would rather that Michele drop her metaphors on a rival company. You can fairly ask why she chose an eyeglass company over, say, the "General Motors of big abortions" or the New York Yankees. Now we're beginning to make a little sense. Besides, what are big abortions, anyway?'

Poor Iowa, where there are some very nice people who don't need all of this silliness for the many months leading to the Republican presidential caucuses. They already have Rep. Steve King, whose dumb utterances arrive daily like the bong-bong of a grandfather clock. He will be remembered many decades from now as the fellow who said that if the government had followed his advice to abolish the IRS, one of its buildings wouldn't have been standing in February 2010 to tempt a crazed pilot to crash into it.

Nothing to be gained by mentioning that Mike Huckabee is working on another tent revival to carry him through the caucuses now that he has explained that he was misunderstood when he cast president Obama as a Mau Mau. Wanna bet that there won't be flyers tucked under automobile wipers on caucus day repeating Huckabee's original idea?

And it has to get worse before it has any hope of getting better. Donald Trump is scheduled to speak to a Republican Lincoln (!) Day dinner in Iowa in June. Will the thrice-married developer be inclined to speak on family values? Or will he still not have exhausted his mad crusade to expose Obama as, what? A darkly tanned Siberian?

Again, poor Iowa. The state deserves something better - and there's no chance that it will get it.

Congress: The ugly week that still is

WELL, IT'S BEEN AN ugly week for America that will live in infamy for the Republican Party. A government shutdown, which may be hours away as I write this, will further divide the nation to the raw between the Tea Party/social conservatives and everybody else. And if that hasn't been enough for those hoping that something good may yet occur, the country's biggest egotist, Donald Trump, once again noted that there are many things about the Teabaggers that he likes. He also assured us that if he should decide to run for president he would doubtless be the best candidate for the job and the best president America has ever had . Toto , we're not in Kansas anymore.

Nothing is ever what it seems to be these days. Some observers have noted that Trump's reckless showboating about President Obama's birthplace is merely his way to boost the ratings of his TV show. As one who has fallen into bankruptcy four times,Trump has made a fanciful entry into the birther ranks that represents a fifth bankruptcy, this one a mental collapse into lunacy.

As far as the fight over the Federal budget is concerned, it appears to boil down to an attack on Planned Parenthood and women's health programs, including the end of cancer screening. That seems to be a preposterous way to bring a nation to its knees. But all of those comfortably fed GOP white guys stepping before the cameras to assure gullible Americans that they merely want us to rise triumphantly from deficit are not only lying but also showing little courage to resist the mindless conservative goons who have stripped the House of Representatives from Speaker John Boehner. They are hopeful of pleasing their masters (including the Koch brothers) with servility and dedication to a plantation society.

The Martians have landed on Capitol Hill and we're quickly learning that they are a ruthless bunch of otherworld creatures for which we have found no means as yet to return them to their original planet. They are loaded with cash and insist that God is on their side. At least, for now.

Last night, I withdrew from their scandalous world to listen to the late Luciano Pavarotti on YouTube. He was a remarkable artist whose restorative gifts will be around long after the Capitol Hill mob moves on. It's a reminder that unlike those Martians up on Hill, not all human beings are our enemies