The latest GOP voter spin: From Photo ID to Photo 3D?

With a court test under way to determine whether Pennsylvania's restrictive new voter ID law violates civil liberties, there's word that   Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus, has proposed a remedy to settle things down on the electoral front.  Priebus, which sort of rhymes with genius, is said to be calling for a Photo 3D law that profiles every voter in much greater depth and in color.  Priebus argues that voter fraud has reached such extraordinary numbers that the only way to sustain our  democracy is to examine every facet of the voter's face as closely as possible.   "The stakes are too high to maintain   the system with the haphazard process we now have that gives Democrats  such an unfair  advantage at the polls," Priebus reportedly said.   (He supposedly expressed fear to an RNC associate that the faces of blacks and Latinos can be photo-shopped into albinos to beat the system.)

Jindal Bells:Taking sides in the GOP stupidity crises

Bobby Jindal, a potential Republican presidential  candidate in 2016, thinks his party should stop being stupid. That's what  he told the slamfest of the Republican Natiional Committee meeting in Charlotte. "We've got to stop being the stupid party,"  is what he asserted to his stupid audience as the keynote speaker.

His words so stupified some of the stupid committeemen that a couple of them met later over  pitchers  of empowering Gatorade and declared Jindal as being stupid for calling them stupid in his stupid  version of Jindal Bells.

Indeed, one of the members' wives, who tagged along to carry her stupid husband's luggage, even thought it was inappropriate for the stupid Louisiana governor to ruin a nice break from the routine to take some stupid tours of Charlotte - all underwritten by the host city.

One delegate even confronted Jindal, eyeball to eyeball, and blurted:  "You're stupid!'

To which Jindal replied, "No, sir, you're stupid!"

"No,  you're stupid, governor!"

That playground exchange lasted a good 20 minutes  before they thought it would help if they took a break from the hostilities to  slip over to the Gatorade bar for a stupid nightcap. (Real men actually need Gatorade as a cheap high for their testosterone.)

Frankly, we don't know what the fuss is all about.  Two of the party's deepest thinkers tried to rally them with good news.  George Will , who is best remembered for his stupid TV prediction that Romney would win in a landslide, assured stupid Republicans that President Obama's inaugural speech was nothing more than stupid "rhetorical cotton candy - sugary and mostly air''. Conservatism, he argued,. is alive and well - no matter the polls that show Obama and Americans aligned on major issues.

Paul Ryan, the stupid vice presidential loser, was once again upbeat, scrubbing pots and pans that had already been scrubbed, and  declaring that if given half a chance, stupid Republicans will show they can govern despite the stupid outcome of the November election.

When last seen, all of the stupid  committeemen went out and cracked open another keg of Gatorade.

Even Mitt Romney stupidly declared elsewhere that he will be back.

Moral:  Stupid is as stupid does.  Did we really need   Bobby Jindal to tell us that?



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The new man at RNC a headache for spellers

ISN'T IT JUST like those Republicans to elect a new national chairman with a name that figures to be their revenge against us slow-witted writers who can never remember such things as whether the "i" goes before the "e" or vice versa. Now we will have to overcome a sort of double jeopardy inasmuch as the new RNC boss, Reince Priebus, will have us Googling his name to decide whether "i" goes before the "e" in his surname rather than in the given name.

In school, we learned that it's always "i" before the "e" except after "c". It was not until my second year in college that I spelled seize and siege correctly without help from a "c", only to forget it later. Weird and wield were just as troublesome and often led me to the dictionary. But Reince Priebus ( I think I got it right) is not in the dictionary. I'll try to get it right from now on, but if I don't, I doubt that there are many people outside of RP's immediate family who will notice it. Michael Steele made life so much simpler.

Steele: Republicans win, Americans lose

Just as we were lost in the swirl of instant analyses of the true meaning - really true consequential meaning spun with the silken voices of big-league TV - of the health care reform vote, it remained for Michael Steele, the voluble philosopher who heads the Republican National Committee, to cut through the ear-splitting gibberish, to explain the current state of the Republic. Declareth Mr. Michael Steele:

"There is no downside for Republicans. Only for Americans."

In relegating his party to a station breeds apart from Americans, Steele leaves me no option but to award him the coveted Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) Award for this day. It wasn't even close.

RNC in the "Census" business

CLEVER BUNCH, THOSE operators at the Republican National Committee. They've sent out a notice described as "2010 Congressional District Census" that was handed to me by a friend who was not fooled by its official bearing even though it was dressed up with a Census tracking code of #A10PD302 and looked quite authentic. . Fully profiled by now by the RNC, I didn't get one. Some of the questions were as you might expect from the non-partisan RNC.

Here's No. 7: Do you worry that the Obama Administration is committed to greatly expanding the government's role in your Life? Or No. 11: Do you think that all Americans should be required to have some form of health insurance even if it requires the federal government to underwrite the costs? Or how about this one on national defense: Do you believe the Obama administration is right in dramatically scaling back our nation's military?

There are others suggesting, in a questioning sort of way, whether Obama is a weakling on international policy.

I now own the document and plan to respond with my friend's copy with one answer. It will be for the one asking me whether I am a Conservative Republican, Moderate Republican, etc.etc. etc. I will answer BONOBO. I hope I'm not too late for today's mail.

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Colin Powell gave President Obama passing marks in his talk to a capacity audience (2,955) in E.J. Thomas Auditorium, while suggesting that Obama should have been less ambitious in his major goals the first year. However, Powell, who said he meets with the President regularly, said there was no time to delay the economic ballouts and stimulus plans when Obama arrived in office because the economy was heading into a Depression. The former Secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also again expressed his own resiliency in his support of ending the military's "don't ask, don't change" policy for gays and lesbians, which became law in 1993. "Attitudes change," he said. His appearance was sponsored by the Dorothy Garrett Martin Memorial Delta Gamma Lectureship on Values and Ethics and the Honors College at the University of Akron. It also reflected the rising cost of attracting speakers with star- power: $125,000, a ceiling-crashing six-figure fee that was set by Rudy Giuliani ($100,000) when he spoke to a full house in Thomas Hall shortly after 9/11. Earlier in the week, Newt Gingrich was much less successful in drawing a crowd of fewer than 300 in the same hall. His speech was sponsored by the Northeastern Ohio Health Underwriters Assn., which simply translates into health insurers.

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Have you heard about the latest fringe group? They're called "The Oath Keepers" and their founder, Stewart Rhodes, says the military need not obey the president if he is engaged in unconstitutional (illegal and immoral)acts. Rhodes even put off Bill O"Reilly by his defense of military rebellion in the U.S. Rhodes believes that the use of the military to enforce stability after Katrina was unconstitutional.

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Shouldn't one of John McCain's close friends quietly taken him aside and tell him, "John you've had a hard life. Why don't you take a year off from politics and smell the roses?" That seems so necessary as he continues to invent the history of his presidential campaign, only to be corrected immediately. It's happening quite often these days. Not funny any more.

Steele's GOP renaissance

Michael Steele, the gabby chairman of the Republican National Committee, never fails to amuse. One could fill pages of his deepest jaunty insights into President Obama's shortcomings,  and his own party's return to credible parity with the Democrats on the nation's problems.   We look for his words each day to brighten the otherwise  sustained gloom of  political discourse.  For that reason, I can't overlook another opportunity to give him the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award for his optimistic outlook for the GOP, declaring:        

"Our renaissance has begun."

 Funny.  He was contradicted by the latest Pew Research Center poll that now gives Democrats a 53-36 advantage over Republicans in voter preferences.  Seven years ago it was 43-43. Renaissance?  Michaelangelo rolled over in his grave.