Scarborough: The GOP is "incredibly stupid"

Morning TV host Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman from Florida, is incensed by Todd Akin's "ligitimate rape" comments and complained that he's weary  of his party being called "incredibly stupid."

Lay off, Joe.  That's my line, all the way down to the county level.

But thanks for trying.

Newt has so much to tell us

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.

Two Ohio schools hear from anti-Obama ranters

THE DOOMSDAY rant of the unwashed opponents of President Obama's planned TV speech to schools across the country has echoed through two Central Ohio school districts. The Dublin district will ban the speech in its schools in a scandalous assault on what, after all, is nothing more than a presidential pep talk on achieving higher goals in education. The Hilliard school district first banned the speech, then changed its mind after what Superintendent Dale McVey described as a "divided community outcry."

The anti-Obama network has laid down a new challenge to Republicans with a tad of respect for the difference between right and wrong. TV host Joe Scarborough, a Republican, has called on others in his party to stand up and be counted against this right-wing outrage. I'll do the same: If there are any Republicans reading this who feels a twinge of guilt about this latest spectacle, there is a little box at the bottom to add your comment. Unfortunately, I doubt it will happen. Too socially risky. As Rousseau once said: "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains."

To those who are accusing Obama of trying to brainwash students (Reagan et all had the same classroom opportunities and nobody screamed!) I would say it takes a brainflooded Republican to remain silent in these times of increasing madness on the right.

Operators are standing by. I dare you.

UPDATE: Saturday's newspapers are reporting that the ban on Obama's speech is spreading rapidly in our distressed Bogeyman State of Ohio. Among the latest schools to opt in favor of the aginners are Medina , even though superintendent Randy Stepp said the calls reaching him are "evenly split". That's the rule of Las Vegas blackjack, where a tie means you lose. Other school districts reporting bans are Parma and Brecksville-Broadview Heights. There will be more. as parents with no recollection of history, overlook similar speeches from Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. This is a disgrace as tails keep controlling the dogs.

Morning Joe in mourning

I AM COMPELLED to elevate Morning Joe Scarborough (or is it  Mourning Joe?) of MSNBC as the winner of the Republican Obama-hating Panic Patrol button.  Scarborough's credentials as host of the daybreak program is that he is a  former Florida congressman and a rather superficial observer of the world scene.  But he got my attention when he accused President Obama of having never received a paycheck from a profit-making private company.  Hear him out:

"We have a president who never received a paycheck.  This  guy - think about it - he's running Detroit, he's running Wall street, he's gonna run other sectors of our economy ...he's never received a paycheck from a profit-making business in his entire life.  Not one check.  Think about the radicalism in that."

Well, I have thought about it, Joe, and with help of others' research, I have learned that he worked for  4 or 5 firms that paid him in American currency.  And think about it, Joe.  Even the fat checks he got for his books arrived from book publishers, the private profit-making kind.  

True, thanks to the mess left behind by Obama's predecessor, everybody knows these days that not many people are drawing checks from profitable companies.  As deadpan George Gobel once reminded Johnnie Carson about World War II, "It was in all of the papers."

As additional fodder for the Panic Patrol, Scarborough later gushed over South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's highly visible resistance to stimulus funds to his state,  praising him and urging him to run for president.  Joe, the governor already is running for president.  It's been in all of the papers.