The lame post-Scalia hacks.

Did you ever think there were so many hacks and quacks among us from still-breathing Republican politicians to, say, Plain Dealer columnist Kevin O'Brien, who want to prevent President Obama from replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia?

Claiming constitutional insights that escape many of us, they insist that a lame-duck president should not do what the U.S. Constitution requires him to do.  It's their tiresome assault on Obama from the first day he stepped into office 7.5 years ago.

Never mind.  It's a big leap  from  lame-duck Obama to the lame-brains on the right.  But a democracy guarantees rightists safe, if silly,  passage for it.

Giuliani:Even cranks can only stoop so low

Allow me, dear reader, this moment of harsh criticism of Rudy Giuliani before I  dismiss him forever to the dead file of babbling cranks.

Ever since the ex-New York City mayor enjoyed his moment of glory in the debris of 9/11, he's been trying to regain relevance without much success.  When he ran for president in 2008. his campaign spent $40 million and won him a single delegate. He's also the guy who, as a married man, paraded his mistress around City Hall.  And
who in the annals of criminality can forget that he appointed his friend Bernard Kerik as police commissioner, the fellow who was later convicted  of corruption  and went to prison? The Los Angeles Times noted the case was a good fit for a Sopranos episode.

And now, he has reemerged, to the delight of Fox News, as the deranged fringe biographer of President Obama's alleged enmity toward  America.  At a right-wing fundraiser for Wisconsin  governor  Scott Walker in New York City, Giuliani  frothed  that Obama hates America, adding:

"He doesn't love you.  And he doesn't love me.  He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up  through love of America."  Yuckety yuck.yuck.

When the ca-ca hit the fan, he was off to an honored  perch at Fox News to say,  Hey, nothing personal. "I didn't question the President's patriotism." Nor did he think  his screed was  an example of racism because, as he told the New York Times,  Obama learned it all  from white folks.

The president was "brought up by a white mother, a white grandfather, went to white schools and most of this he learned from white people".

Was this ex-mayor the same person who was called America's Mayor  and who was Time's "person of the year" in 2001?

In the wake of  his startling eruption of incendiary remarks, I would advise Rudy to quit when you are  behind. We heard you the first time. You don't need the money nor merit badges from the extreme right.

Scott Walker,the probable Republican presidential candidate du jour,  sat near the podium and found nothing amiss in Giuliani's words.  He felt only mildly uncomfortable with Rudy's  inelegance of expression, explaining,"Maybe he should have chosen a different phraseology for his remarks."

But it offered an opportunity to Walker to get in a plug for himself afterward for his own red-white-and-blueness, saying only that Rudy "speaks for himself...I'll tell you, I love America."   With that much now settled, governor, onward with the campaign!

Roll in the U-Haul for these GOP crocks

You needed a U-Haul to deliver all of the crocks that  Republicans have exported to the public to slander President Obama for one reason or another, especially after his immigration rollout.  Both Lords of the Fleas - McConnell and Boehner - were at the top of the batting order in swinging wildly at Obama's decision to rescue millions of illegal  immigrants from non-personhood.   As if they hadn't already  done enough to cripple the government that pays their salaries anyway.

The anti-Obama Republicans in Congress have already filed costly suits savaging Obamacare.  Rep. Steve King of Iowa wants to impeach Obama. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama proposes to jail the president for five years, vaguely referring to authority in a federal statute that he can't cite.  Joe Arpaio , the nototorius Arizona sheriff , sued the president before Friday sunrise.

Etc.etc.  Folks, these guys are so much smaller than their shadows. It's awful  to realize that the dumbed-down version of the Laurel and Hardy hijinks, McConnell and Boehner, will plague us for two more years.
 
Although I seldom find much reason to agree with John McCain, I do think of his snarky assessment of Republicans that was reported in Game Change, the virtual diary of the 2006 presidential  campaign by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

In one of his darker moments on the trail, McCain blurted:

"Why would I want to be the leader of a party of such assholes?"

GOP: Remembrances of things that never happened

The latest Smithsonian magazine tells us of the ongoing research into the implanting in your brain  memories of things that never happened.  At MIT,  a pair of neuroscientists prompted a fearful reaction by a terrorized mouse to a false memory of electrical shock. The key to this was the manipulation of the brain to cause the poor rodent to wrongly remember the pain of a similar event that never happened.

Hmmmm...

With all due respect to  MIT and another laboratories working on these experiments,  the past election proved that it's possible to manipulate the voters in the same way. The Republicans made you believe that President Obama was the villain who prevented unemployment from dropping to zero.  Keen practitioners of Plato's noble lie, they made up a lot of traumatic things that  led the voters to blame the president for inspiring President Bush to cause a serious recession.

Candidate Mitt Romney said it very well when he contended that the economy was improving but Obama made it worse. Even if it weren't true, never happened, it sank into the  voter's memory lanes so that a worker  at a plant gate could fume that he would have had a job today  if Obama hadn't single-handedly bailed out the auto industry.

And when Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, an out-of-the-starting-gate critic of the Affordable Care Act predicted that it would soon bloat health care costs by 41 pct.,   it had a worse than chilling  effect on many voters.

There is even existing today  a False Memory Syndrome Foundation in Philadelphia that tries to be helpful in these matters, telling its online readers that "the professional organizations agree: the only ways to distinguish between true and false memories is by external corroboration."

We think a remedy lies well beyond that.  As  John Hay,  Teddy Roosevelt's secretary of state. once glumly advised his boss:  "Dealing with people to whom mendacity is a science is no easy thing."

When these pols prove to be dumb and dumber

The following squawk probably won't go down well with some of my Republican acquaintances but, by golly,  I know my First Amendment rights! So you can quote me as saying that ...

Many Republican politicians are either  intellectually corrupt - or dumb. Or maybe even both.  

Two late entries for your consideration arrive from GOPers with homes on the range.

Of particularly density is Rep. Jason Chaffetz, of Utah.  He  raised hell because President Obama didn't, as he put it, choose the surgeon general to serve as ebola czar instead of Ron Klain, who had gained respect in managing the stimulas.  Pure hackery, Republicans declared.  But David Gergen, a Republican analyst, described him as "strong and very tough".

In his meltdown, Chaffetz overlooked an undeniable fact.  There is no surgeon general.   Republicans have blocked Obama's nominee, Dr. Vivek Murthy, since February because the NRA objected to Murthy's support of  expanding background checks.   Hey, Jason.  Pay attention.

The other late entry is Republican Sen. John Barrasso, of Wyoming, who assailed Obama for discussing  ebola with the World Health Organization and not doing enough on our own  to protect Americans from the virus. Are you aware that Ebola is solely an American calamity that spares the rest of the planet?

Yep.  Intellectually corrupt and ignorant. Or both.

The worldly pursuit of the tan suit

In the soaring atmospherics of my keen preparation of Grumpy Abe, I have only  occasionally slipped out of the noose of commenting on the darkest side of politics.  So when I happened to see President Obama in a tan suit instead of funereal black, I gave it no more attention than any tan suit should have, even one worn by the leader of the free world..

Little did i know at that critical moment that it would become  the biggest sartorial story of  our day that would surpass the wardrobe malfunctions of Biblical proportions that   exposed nipples to TV audiences.

 There were reports of an explosion of twitters around the world that even created a "suitgate"  (not my word!) for anybody who needed one more thing to blame on the president.  It was a modern reversal of Hans Christian Andersen's wonderful tale of  the Emperor's  New Clothes - actually skin colored and not tan.  

One of the leading critics of Obama's attire was Rep. Peter King, the New York Republican who can always find something to bitch about.

He was outraged that Obama wore a light summer  suit to talk about the economy and the revision of the second quarter numbers when there are so many weightier matters on his plate.  In the scheme of talking points, King downgraded the  economy as though it were a trivial pursuit.  You get that way when you are a well-fed, well-paid congressman from a safe district.  Shouldn't these  guys simply enjoy their ample public troughs  and shut up?  

Tan suit or black suit or no suit or Reagan's plaid sport jacket or  LBJ's "Open Road Stetson" or George W. Bush playing cowboy.  Congressman, the person who is out of work has only one concern: a paycheck to get the family through the day.  Why don't you know that?

Cheney raging at Obama from his Cluck Dynasty

Dick Cheney has emerged from his Cluck Dynasty on Fox News  to condemn President Obama for taking a vacation while the planet is still spinning.  Although it's true that no president ever takes a real vacation from  troubles (got that, Maureen Dowd?),   Cheney is outraged that Obama wanted to get in a round of golf.

To Sean Hannity's everlasting delight, Cheney, a helpless liar, hissed that there's new evidence every day that Obama prefers to play golf rather than  deal with weighty  problems.

Here's the rest of the story from National Memo:

To date, President Obama has spent 150 days on vacation since taking office in 2008.  But George W. Bush, Cheney's designer  boss, spent 1,020 days at his Crawford,Tx. ranch and 43 at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Me.

There's a difference in context , too.  During Bush's term, the world was serenely at peace and America's economy was booming.  And even though Osama bin Laden was still lurking somewhere, Dubya dispatched concern by saying he didn't know where the guy was and couldn't care less.

As for  Cheney, you you must understand that one of a cluck's liabilities is they can't do the math.  Nor do they want to.

Post- election stuff from the other side of the universe

 POST-ELECTION DEBRIS:

In an interview with WKSU's M.L. Schultze,  Republican Don Robart, who was defeated as Cuyahoga Falls mayor in  Tuesday's election,  seemed quite puzzled why some of us placed him in  the Tea Party's grasp, saying:

"I think they're (sic)  calling me the darling of the Tea Party was quite an exaggeration.  For the most part I don't even hardly know those people..."

For someone who doesn't hardly know ''those people", it does seem fair to ask how he could have excitedly praised the Tea Party throng  at their rally in his city as  the "moral, fiscal and social conscience of America?"  Who knew?

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Are we witnessing the end of days?  I sensed that the human race may be preparing to cash it all in after reading Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's learned explanation in the Beacon Journal of why voters were in a mood to throw out a lot of incumbents.  "I think they're (voters) fed up with politicians," the combative Republican county boss opined. "They don't see an end to the bickering and the fighting."  Based on local experiences, I think I might know how we can begin to turn that around,  Alex.  But why bicker?

* * * * *

Throughout election night, NBC's Chuck Todd continued to remind the viewers that President Obama's approval ratings had fallen to a new low without once noting that  Obama is barred by law from seeking a third term.  So for any  non-candidate, such ratings are little more than table talk.  Iconic Ronald Reagan's disapproval rating (Gallup)  rose to 56 pct.  in January 1983 - one point higher than Obama's 55 pct. in August 2011.   We won't even mention that George W.Bush's highest  disapproval rating led all other presidents with 71 pct. in October, 2008. So to Chuck Todd, I ask:  What's the point?

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Finally, the Ohio Republican Party was out the morning-after with stunningly breaking (and overcooked) news.  Blared State GOP chairman Matt Borges:  Obamacare was a disaster and Democrats "will be held accountable in 2014."  Ummmmm....Careful, Matt,  that you don't peak too soon under that barn-and-silo logo  on your party's official media releases.

Boehner may need a Plan B on scandals

I can't imagine the kind of weekend the anti-Obama goon squad must have spent  bouncing around in the afterlife of the Republican Party. For days, the national media -  print and talking heads - have been sounding off about the president's approaching end of days in the wake of a scandalized administration. The only question, House Speaker John Boehner scowled, was who would "got to jail".  I'm not sure which scandal's smoking gun would merit time in the pokey. Still, jail is jail and Boehner has yet to give us a  clue to whether he would dispense with  trials.

Maybe I'm being too harsh with Boehner,  a forever grim-faced guy who claims to be obsessed with Benghazi. But in his search for political gold, he needs to know that 40 pct. of his shrunken Republican base can't even tell you where Benghazi is.  It wouldn't surprise me if that same percentage applied to his unruly House caucus.

More trouble arrived for the speaker in the polls showing that Obama hasn't lost a point in his public approval rating, which is around 53 pct.  That's about 52 points higher than the public's  attitude toward Congress these days.

Assuming there's a Plan B if those scandals fizzle short of satisfying the goons talking impeachment these days, what is left in the arsenal of hate for a black man who has twice denied his opponents the cigar on election night?

I will share with you a leak from a taxi driver on Capitol Hill who overheard a  high-level conversation about Plan B.

Here are some of the replacement scandals - Boehner squawking points, really - being discussed to deny the president a night's sleep:

A revival of the Chicago Black Sox scandal: Chicago.  Get it?

A Christmas card turned up in Obama's private collection from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

An Al Capone mood ring passed down to Obama.  Chicago. Get it?

A Saul Alinsky organzation manual warmly inscribed to Obama.

Finally a report that former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley gave Obama a box seat ticket to a White Sox game.   (Sox lost that one, too.)

Meantime, may I add the mini-scandal of Boehner handing out tobacco company money (bribes) to his colleagues on the House floor just before a key vote affecting the tobacco industry?  It's a start!

With revisionists, Dubya was the anti-terrorist hero

Now that all of the celebrated dignitaries  were on their best behavior at the feel-good dedication of the George W. Bush library (somehow I don't associate libraries with Dubya), it was left to the revisionist gallery to slam President Obama for security breakdowns that his predecessor would never have experienced.

For example, Rep. Tom Cotton, a right-wing Arkansas Republican, screeched that "in the seven years after 9/11 how many terrorists reached the United States? NONE!"  Trouble is, on that deadly day 2,977 persons died at the hands of terrorists  and when I went back to check record, turns out that it happened on Bush's watch. Oh, I probably should mention that the young terrorists who staged the Marathon attacks were said to have been living in the U.S. for more than 10 years.  That would mean they arrived on our soil during the Bush years.

Then we encountered  columnist Charles Krauthammer's spin, in which he crowed about his man Bush.  "He did not just keep us safe, he created the entire antiterror infrastructure that continues to keep us safe."  Still, he couldn't resist blaming Obama fore letting it all "fall apart".

Folks, this is textbook revisionism.  You can find post 9/11 reports that said warnings of a possible attack from the air were largely ignored. You can access videos in which Bush later said he didn't know the whereabouts of bin Laden and didn't think it was all that important anyway.

But as it's often been said, Why let the details ruin a good story  - or in this case, awfully distorted history.

Marathon: Best of times, worst of times

As I spent  hours pinned to the TV coverage of the horrific Marathon event, I  recalled Dickens' "best of times, worst of times'' description of his day.  (Also, "it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness." Also, appropriate!)

On one hand two young men  set out to kill and maim a mass of human beings,  the sort of dehumanized acts that have been  recorded in even greater numbers throughout history.  On the other hand, as the investigation  progressed with an army of law enforcement people risking their lives, it reflected the strength - and wisdom - of a nation with the profound ability to get it right.

A somber President Obama provided the defiant narrative when he said that we would finish the race.

Not everyone will be pleased, particularly those whose  anti-government fervor will  never be staunched.  Unimportant small minds that wanted to convert bloodshed  into their own off-humor;  senators who voted against the background checks supported by law enforcement agencies across the land.  Some of these officers were on the streets of Watertown for several nights trying to insure public safety.

Then, too, there were the politicians with their own personal elitest goals,  who immediately exploited the event to demonstrate the perils of immigration reforms.  No thanks to you in the post-Marathon benedictions,  Sen.  Grassley, as you and some of your colleagues look for a new ideological cave for your thoughts.

On the other hand we salute Adolphus Busch IV, the giant-distillery man who resigned  from the NRA board with a verbal firearm to the NRA:

"I am simply unable to comprehend how assault weapons and large capacity magazines have a role in your vision," he said.  "The NRA I see today has undermined the values upon which it was established.  Your current strategic focus places priority on the needs of gun and ammunition manufacturers, while disregarding the opinion of your 4 million individual  members." 

As for another heinous clue to the worst of times there was Arkansas State Rep. Nate Bell, a Republican, who tweeted: "I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering  in their homes wishing they had a AR-15 with a  hi-capacity magazine."

Cowering? As in some of  the NRA-bleached folks on Capitol Hill, Nate?

OSU speaker not a Dispatch favorite

The announcement that President Obama will be Ohio State University's commencement speaker on   May 5 could hardly  have uplifted the editors of the Columbus Dispatch to a state of chest-pounding hometown pride.  No paper in Ohio worked harder to defeat Obama in last November's election with its editorial endorsement of Mitt Romney, a candidate it credited with  possessing "real-world experience to lead nation out of economic malaise".

As for Obama, the paper complained that he had traveled in the "left  lane" all of his life, had no real-world experience and was an absolute failure in correcting the national economy's dismal course during his first term.   The president's health care plan, it declared, was nothing more than a " ham-fisted power play".  When it comes to attacking Democrats, the paper always adds a lot of etc. etc. etc's.

Well, as history will show, the paper's home county of Franklin was hardly persuaded by the Dispatch's  eternal struggle against Democrats and voted for Obama anyway.

So now, with the kindly attention of OSU President Gordon Gee, who invited him, Obama will arrive as the national five million vote victor over the wealthy what's-his name opponent in the last campaign.

I don't mean to be churlish or anything about the Dispatch, but I did want to point out that the Obama visit will present itself more as a Mayday for the paper's deep thinkers.
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Israel honors Obama, but not from under a bus!

Although Mitt Romney is somewhere off in California looking after his investments, including the car elevator at his  homestead, he's still suffering some blows to  his futile campaign rhetoric.   We can all remember that he and his allies  accused President Obama of being "disrespectful" to Israel  - and in his words "threw Israel under the bus".  ("The beginning of  the end, as we know it for the Jewish state," huffed then-Rep. Allen West, of Florida, who later  lost in November, too.)

Alas, among the many who didn't  take Mitt seriously was Israel.  Israeli  President Shimon Peres announced that Obama will   be honored with the "Presidential Medal of Distinction'"  when he visits in March  for his "unique and significant contribution to strengthening the State of Israel and the Security of its citizens."

The medal compares with France's Legion of Honor.  Better that you stick to car elevators, Mitt, things that you know about.

GOP: Obama socialist, communist, Hitler,Stalin, or what?

There's nothing more effective in advancing the  Republicans toxic mental breakdown than a speech  by President Obama.  An occasion such as the annual  State of the Union address, first administered by Obama in 2009,  has been  the party's proven emetic ever since, although the response  seems to have gotten  even worse this week.  Struggling to find something imaginative to say, Fox News' iconic analysts even questioned the news value of a 102-year-old woman's efforts to vote in Florida.

You sense a pall of desperation over the GOP brood as they resort to their familiar assault weapons as a means of replacing serious policy with quackery.  Even before the speech, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina referred to Hillary Clinton as a murderer and threatened more nastiness on the Benghazi issue.  We should probably excuse this sorrowfully whining  guy because it is being widely reported that he could face a stiff challenge in the Republican primary  from a Ron Paul libertarian loyalist.

Some other expletives  from the Right:

"Dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Obama" (Limbaugh).

"A Castro-like-speech" (Conservative author Mark Levin on Fox)

Obama's gun-control efforts a "disaster":  (Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe)

Obama nominee Chuck Hagel may be on  the payroll of overseas radicals (Texas Sen. Ted Cruz)

Obama is against free enterprise (read: dictator) obsessed with raising taxes (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio)

But none of this rises to a higher intellectual level than Fox News Psychiatrist (honest!) Dr. Keith Ablow,  who unpleasantly accused Obama of being "psychologically predictable".

"He does not surprise." Ablow   opined.  "Having been abandoned as a boy by his father and then his mother, only to then learn that his grandmother feared people of his race, he seems inherently to distrust initiative and intention and to place his trust only in the collective."

Sounds a lot like a reference to a socialist or communist to me.   I wonder how much they pay Ablow to give Fox News such a much-needed soaring sense of panache.  I also wonder whether they'll get around to having him do the 50-minute hour on the  couch for Limbaugh.

Dick Cheney: From chicken hawk to military expert

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, he of the robotic heart,  had some bizarre things to say the other night about President Obama's choice of cabinet members.  Speaking to a friendly audience  of about 300 Republicans in Wyoming, Cheney asserted that Obama has appointed "second-rate people" who can be expected to degrade the U.S. military.

The timing of his cheap shot  left no doubt that he was referring to John Kerry, the new secretary of state, and Chuck Hagel, who is awaiting confirmation as the secretary of defense. Huh?

As the record will show, both of his targets are war veterans who served well while Cheney preferred to comfortably sit out the battlefield with several deferments.  And as a strong infuence in guiding the U.S. into an invasion of Iraq, he demonstrated his profound understanding of warfare by assuring us the conflict might not last for more than several weeks. I needn't tell you  the rest of the story.

Today's GOP: a group of leaderless old white guys

The Obama Inaugural festivities are now over and the reviews are in.  While many national pundits  parse every sentence in the president's rousing speech, one thing is certain:  For the grim Republicans and their fellow-snivelers, there is no joy in Mudville.  The Grand Old Party  is neither grand nor a party.  It is rather a chaotic collection of old white guys in vain search of a leader.    Twice defeated by an African-American Democrat  - the latest by  5 million votes! - who has deftly connected with a new generation of voters,  woebegone Republicans have only a beleaguered John Boehner to try to put his House in order in a cave teeming with Tea Partyers.  

Still, there is no evidence that Obama's opponents have learned anything  as they whimper that the "foxy"  Obama  must come out of the chicken coop to meet them halfway in solving the nation's problems.  Of all things, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is demanding compromise - a word that collides with his notorious  earlier mission for his routed party after Obama's first victory:

"The single most important  thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president"

The quote even made page 190 of the Mann-Ornstein best- seller, It's Even Worse than It Looks.  And that was published before  the 2012 election. Can anyone now guess what Mitch's second most important thing is?

Their  post-inaugural chorus was filled out by many of the usual tattered suspects complaining about the usual irritants that guaranteed them a shot at the usual TV cameras.  Sens. McCain and Graham, a couple of tiresome cronies  from past debacles, expressed their displeasure, to name a few.  And Wayne LaPierre, the NRA megaphone, pathetic as he is, isn't going to let anybody forget that tyrannical government is at the doorstep and you can only be saved by even arming department store mannequins.   Fox News, Rush Limbaugh  and the Tea Partyers were heaped among the vanquished.

These folks will never change.   Their work is too profitable. And as  Tennessee Ernie Ford used to sing: They owe their soul to the company store.

They could only deal in playground dares as Obama reeled off his agenda that was immediately described as liberal but dealt with ideas and programs that a majority of Americans support. It's now OK to mention liberalism in polite circles. And about time! 

There was another aspect of the Inaugural that was lost in the excitement:  Mitt Romney's absence from the historic  event.  Few people asked, and most couldn't care less.  Where  was he? We learned that he was at home in California.

Watching the parade as a broadly-grinning Obama waved and Joe Biden sprinted here and there,  I tried to imagine what the scene would have been if Romney and Paul Ryan had won.  It would have been a dreadful setback for a nation whose people would have been  so well ahead of its new team: a presidential  candidate of whom his son asserted never wanted  the job anyway, and a vice president who is a disciple of Ayn Rand. Neither Mitt nor his Tonto had much to say about the dramatic change underway in America because they didn't recognize it.

 To the vanquished go the snivels. And why not?  It's the only thing that seems to make the losers happy these days.

Terhar's Tea Party Links Overlooked in Media

The media reports I've seen  have overlooked an essential asterisk to Bebe Terhar's denial that she intended her reference to Adolf Hitler to point to President Obama in  her Facebook rant against gun control.  As you probably know by now Ohio Democratic Party leaders have called on Gov. Kasich to fire the president of the Ohio Board of Education.

In the wake of a Columbus Dispatch news story regarding her Facebook post, Terhar denied  that she was comparing Obama to Hitler. Still , as I mentioned in an earlier post, Terhar  has boasted of membership in  several Tea Party groups in southwestern Ohio.  Attacks on Obama with swastikas on placards have been common at Tea Party gatherings.  Could that be where she got the ugly idea that she now dismisses?

What's that? Obama wants another crisis?

The always-amusing Kevin O'Brien, the Plain Dealer's way-over-on-the-right deputy editorial page editor, today joined  those who are bashing President Obama's initiative on the gun issue.  Ignoring the NRA's blitzkrieg  against Obama,   O'Brien's quaint spin is that the president "doing his best to create a crisis" and unsurpsingly for Kevin,  worked in something about Obama's support of abortion.

That's as far as I got before turning to the comic pages to justify my cost of the day's paper. A fair question:  Do you want to believe O'Brien,  or do you want to believe the folks on the other side, including Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Rupert Murdoch,  Colin Powell and all of those law-enforcement agencies?

NOTE:  My column on the Ohio political races has been posted on Plunderbund

Life on Capitol Hill: Fibber McGee's closet

Considering  the great number of people in Washington who are unhappy these days, you have to wonder if somebody didn't open up Fibber McGee's bulging closet to let them all pour out in a messy heap.

When was the last time that you heard a Republican congressman from New York (Peter King) denounce his GOP colleagues for delaying a vote on Federal funds for his Sandy-stricken constituents?  He even wants to deny them campaign money when they come to New York  to pass the hat.

When was the last time a New Jersey Republican governor (Chris Christie) described the Republican House delay as "inexcusable"?

On the other side of the aisle, President Obama has been loudly assailed from both reaches of the political spectrum - liberal and conservative - for the deal that drew the nation back from the fiscal cliff. (I used to hear politicians say that when you have become the  target of both sides, you must be doing something right.)

President Truman had the clearest insight into Capitol Hill free-for-alls:

"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."   

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Note: My column about the forlorn news publishing industry has been posted on Plunderbund