Must read: New Yorker Magazine report on ISIS

Today's recommended reading:

Dexter Filkins' long and revealing report on ISIS in the Sept. 29th New Yorker.  In the end, you might conclude that there is no bumper sticker answer to the threat, that it is a nasty condition that won't go away soon and will still be around for the next president or two to confront.  This is an enemy active around the world, with even strong ties in Australia. Don't look for simple answers.  There are none.    Some of our friends are our enemies, and some of our enemies are our friends but unfriendly to others.

House Republicans programmed as the Army of the Potomac.

Have you heard about the latest Republican plan to warn grieving Americans and happy morticians that their government is dead?  Some observers are calling it a "Hate Washington" campaign when the well-fed Army of the Potomac, notably House GOP members,  come home during the August recess for a bleak assessment of the gridlock that they are largely responsible for creating in the first place. It's all contained in a House Republican Conference planning kit,  that, if you're still with me, is  loaded with Death Valley talking points.

A more accurate title is a "Hate, Obama" campaign ", a churlish commitment by that president's  enemies that was  reported on the first day he entered office in 2009. Look it up.

The army has been armed not with muskets but a long list of jeremiads as it  fans out across the nation in a sort of tea-formation offensive  to alert unsuspecting citizens that the worst is yet to come.  They are even aiming at drive-time  declarations on how to cut waste or as it has been called,  "An Obamacare Media Tour." By now we already know about the GOP's obsession with vaporizing Obamacare, don't we?  That particular chapter of Obama's sinful behavior has long dwelled on  how these lavishly-insured congressmen are driven to rid America of health-care  coverage for those who can't afford it.

Their tactics  deserve little more than the words in a New Yorker movie review of  "Pacific Rim", which largely deals with monsters.  The unimpressed critic, Anthony Lane, wrote:

"So what if the script is feeble, the plot is perforated, and the characters are so flimsy that you wouldn't risk blowing your nose on them."

Frankly, there won't be a new thought advanced that hasn't been around for the entire  Obama era.  But it will be an opportunity for each member of the traveling circus to boast in a later essay about  "What I did last summer."

You'd think that with a Congress wallowing with a desperate majority of Republican  lunatics in the House, we would all feel a lot safer if the sheriff met them at the district line.  Otherwise, their time could be better spent walking their dogs, lovable  creatures that have a way of brightening one's outlook.

GOP's Ted Cruz, a Joe McCarthy rising star

Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz's  odyssey toward an even more debased  GOP  dropped him off on a stage in Independence, Oh., this week  for the Cuyahoga County Republican Party's annual  in-name-only dinner toast to  Abe Lincoln.  For the evening Cruz received a share of partisan  huzzahs for his cockeyed  mythology and the published reports didn't hesitate to refer to him as a "rising star" in national politics.  That destined-to-be ephemeral title seems to be catching on at least with his bug-eyed gang, which tells you how easy it is today to be an acclaimed  star if you traffic in saying a lot of crazy things.

In Cruz's  case, the freshman Texas senator has slandered  Chuck Hagel by questioning whether the decorated war veteran and nominee for Secretary of Defense was on the payroll (maybe $200,000!) of  America's worst  enemies, say, Iran and North Korea.  He couldn't prove it, but that's part of Cruz's mystical  M.O.  It would have made more sense if he had accused Hagel of spilling spaghetti sauce on his new necktie or not lowering  the toilet seat.

Cruz also tossed in his world-view that Iran praised the Hagel nomination - which it didn't.

The rising star - `Whoops, now I'm saying it -   is drawing a lot of attention for being a reincarnation of Red-baiter Joe McCarthy for his questioning of his targets' patriotism.  Writing  on the New Yorker's blog, Jane Mayer recalled that Cruz,  a Harvard law school man as was Obama,   once  declared in a speech that Obama would have made a "perfect president of  Harvard Law School"  because there were  a dozen Marxists on the faculty.

Well, the GOP has had a series of rising stars that immediately come to mind. Sarah Palin.  Tim Pawlenty. Bobby Jindal.  And the party ended up with the likes of John McCain and Mitt Romney at the top of the tickets.

So I'll stick with the big Thermador kitchen appliance ad in Smithsonian magazine that says:  "Some stars burn brighter than others". It's also true that, conversely,  some stars are not very bright at all.

Hey, Mitt: The Olds died in 2004!

WHEN I HEAR MITT ROMNEY, in a campaign stop in Michigan, lament the demise of the Oldsmobile - the OLDSMOBILE, for God's sake! - in the context of criticizing President Obama'a  bailout of the auto industry, I  can ony recall something that  the New Yorker's late film critic Pauline Kael once said of the sniffy tone of her magazine."They were so superior to the subject that they never dealt with it," the esteemed Ms. Kael  wrote.

Romney, who is tossing around muddled ideas like so many Edsels,  often leaves me to wonder whether he is so above the crowd that he lives in a world of abstractions.  In this instance, he  was either unaware or intentionally deceptive in telling us about the Oldsmobile  that GM phased  out in 2004.  If you do the simple math you will quickly discover that  it predates Obama's election by four years, inconveniently for Republicans that a fellow named George Bush was president at the time.

Don't go away.  Mitt also claimed credit for today's auto industry's success with an obscure explanation   that I won't try to repeat.  He once did say, however,  that the Obama folks should have let the industry go bankrupt.