That's one way to explain no GOP council seats

In our continuing effort to alert you to the crackling insights shaping today's political dialogue, we refer you to a comment by Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff to the Beacon Journal to explain  the absence of a single member of his party on Akron City Council.  Asked why the GOP hasn't elected a Republican to a ward seat  for 15 years - nor an at-large seat for 46 years -  the chairman for many of those shutout years told reporter Stephanie Warsmith that it's largely about demographics.

"It is very difficult for us even to compete in the African-American sections of the city," he said.  (Does this refer to the more upscale Ward 8?)

The problem  is  the ongoing effort by the party's deep thinkers in Ohio and other states  to circumvent  or shrink the African-American vote with various ploys that haven't worked.  Years ago Arshinkoff talked about how the party was making an effort to expand its base to include minorities.  Didn't happen.  Not even close.  Think the word didn't reach  the aforementioned sections of town that  black voters aren't on the party's A-list?

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Heavens!  Sarah's back. Hasn't lost a syllable in her chirping indignation that she isn't provided her very own limo to important Republican events.  So there she was, so full of her Palinesque Tea Party self on Fox, repeating the charges against the Obama administration, including a rehashed reference to Benghazi.  She's now expanded her oratorical ramble to include Republican Mitch McConnell.  She wants to turn him into a loser   in next year's election.  That much, she knows something about , having lost in 2008  despite accompanying a war hero  at the top of the ticket.  Somebody ought to talk to her about also being available for weddings and wakes to liven up things.

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Finally, speaking of absurdities,you can always find something bizarre about the Sean Hannity Show.  In his armored panzer assaults on Obamacare, he brought in  a panel to tug at your heartstrings over what each guest must suffer from health care reforms.  Turns out to be sort of a stunt, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Salon reporter Eric Stern decided to contact the guests  and found a lack of awareness in each.  One worried guest told him that he had to cut back his staff to four because of new costs.  You'd think  Hannity would have intervened  with a touch of reality by noting Obamacare does not apply to employers with fewer than 50  workers.  Others noted  that the new insurance rates would cost them much more.  But Stern checked each and learned that it simply wasn't true.

Stern concluded: "I don't doubt that these six individuals believe that Obamacare is a disaster; but none of them had even visited an insurance exchange."

But, of course, we're talking about a la-la Hannity event, aren't we?  .

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That is a small portion of the week that was - and will be again this week. 

As a matter of fact, Sean Hannity isn't

Fox News host Sean Hannity plays with facts the way that TV ads for Viagra guarantee a lifetime of sexual bliss for erectile-dysfunctional men. His latest conspiracy theory on Hillary Clinton's testimony at the Senate committee hearing on Benghazi went something like this:  Her brief emotional  burst was hardly spontaneous but rather it was a staged moment that had been devised long before the session to win sympathy for her.  Who knew?  And how did Hannity know?

Well, let me tell you:  Sean didn't know, but he is paid well for not knowing a lot of things.  A limp mind is a terrible thing, too.

Note: My column on Gov. Kasich's  reach to give his State of the State speech in Lima has been posted on Plunderbund.   

GOP pol: God is the sole arbiter on gun issue

The NRA's farmhands are leaving nothing to chance.  They have mounted the ramparts with Fox News'  Sean Hannity, whose special training session for rookies blazed  with a special TV episode at an NRA firing range to demonstrate the array of weapons that included the A-15 assault rifle.  There also are reports of conspiracy theorists spreading the word that the massacre at Newtown was actually conceived by the Obama Administration to advance the president's support of gun restrictions.

But let's keep it simple.  Let's turn to Tom Donnelly, the California Republican assemblyman who commented to a Christian radio show that guns are an expression of God's will .

Guns, he asserted, are "used to defend our property and our families and our faith and our freedom, and they are absolutely essential to living the way God intended for us to live."

Time to revive the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award.    The competition is getting stronger every day, but Donnelly earned this one. (What would he say to Pope Benedict, who has endorsed Obama's plan for gun restrictions?)

Dittoheads, pinheads and scorned women

"The climax of all evils is when a man rooted in some false opinion grows fatally persuaded that his course is right." - Petrarch

How prescient of the great 14th Century Italian poet and humanist to define someone we all know today, say, Rush Limbaugh. Or Bill O'Reilly? Or Sean Hannity? Limbaugh is not inclined to rise for a moment from his spasmotic derangement. He's been at it again slamming two women journalists with glee for no other reason than to convince his dittoheads that he's da Man. It has reached the point of monstrous random slander, which is his only strong point that is apparent to me.

Meanwhile the Republican leadership(?) and first-row candidates are still cowering in their bubble to escape any mention of Rushbo. On another front,however, they are baring their chests to annihilate Iran. Romney, Gingrich and Santorum all have been on the stump mindlessly huffing and puffling about Iran while characterizing President Obama as the weenie in the room. (Are we having any fun over their war games yet?)

Unsurprisingly, their hawkishness belies their own interest in military service. None has worn a uniform, thanks to various deferments in times of need. That takes us back to a previous administration when George Bush and Dick Cheney found a way to dodge the draft while serving as the biggest bullies in their playground. (In fairness, Bush did land on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit.) In fact, Romney explained four years ago why none of his five sons had been in the military: They were needed in his 2008 campaign. This fellow never gets it.

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Ohio State Rep. Nina Turner's remedy for vaginally fixated lawmakers has widely resonated with other women and could produce a growth industry in helping overreaching males in the controversy over birth control. In Illinois and Virginia women legislators are playfully hastening to help the guys subjected to medical or psychological assistance since their health might be at risk by taking sexual stimulants. One proposed law calls for rectal examinations; another mandate seeks treatment for "persistant erections". My opposite-sex spouse likes the idea of "sperm limits". It's never been truer about the fury ignited in scorned women than by the current Dark Age (Plutarch's term) male wannabe gynecologists.

McCain is for and against the Tea Party

BOY, DID JOHN MCCAIN fool us. I, for one, had been preparing to say something nice about his gritty attack on the Tea Party and its ilk in Congress. Next thing I know is, there is our hero on hands and knees on the Sean Hannity show praising the Tea Party. As Tea Party apologist Hannity bore in relentlessly on the teetering senator, McCain responded ever so defensively, purring:

"I admire, respect and appreciate the Tea Party, and they're the ones that gave us a majority in the House of Representatives so that we can get something done."

With that, the white flag went up in the face of a stern inquisition by Hannity and the Tea Partyers who had expressed anger at the senator from Arizona.

You never know about McCain anymore. He took some shots from Hannity with a Mona Lisa smile on his face, hoping to salvage the moment. Meantime, I would ask the senator to head up to MSNBC to explain what "something'' will be done by the TPers on Capitol Hill. Aside from creating havoc, of course.

Coulter's remedy for deadly mob scenes

NOT TO BE OUTDONE by Sen. Shelby's inane attack on a Nobel Laureate, hyperactive Ann Coulter has shoveled a deeper hole for madness by telling Fox News host Sean Hannity that she wasn't at all embarassed by the fatal outcome of the 1970 Kent State protest because "that's what you do with a mob." We're fortunate that visiting hours to her padded room are limited mostly to the pundits at Fox News.

John Kasich: A moment of radio silence with NPR

Another GrumpyFirst:

WHEN JOHN KASICH says he's running for governor, we can tell you that he's really running - away from anything resembling an unscripted open Q&A. In one of the more bizarre moments of his panicky campaign down the stretch, he canceled an appearance on a NPR call-in show(shared by Gov. Strickland) just before it was to be broadcast Monday.

NPR responded to my email with this account of his disappearing act:

"With about 15 minutes before we went on the air, Kasich canceled; his campaign said they did not want to field questions, but from the beginning the Talk of the Nation staff made it clear that there would be questions from listeners. The segment was only Strickland."

Shall we now revise that old saying that you can run but can't hide? Sure you can hide. Apparently the only people that the normally voluble Kasich is talking to these days are his contributors, as well as Sean Hannity and Alex Arshinkoff."

Wonder why they gave NPR so much time to revise the format!

Sean Hannity: Let's hear it for Kasich!!!

DID YOU SEE that the guy who wants to be your governor has no problem with having Fox News stage a not-so-subtle fund-raiser for him on the Sean Hannity show. Yep, in what was his 9th visit to Hannity's children's hour, John Kasich was exchanging mutual admiration for Hannity's breathless appeals to his audience to support the Kasich campaign back here in Ohio.

Has there ever been anything more blatant than for a so-called news network to pass the plate for one of its own? The blog ThinkProgress caught some of the conversation:

HANNITY: John Kasich, we're watching Ohio really really closely. We appreciate you being with us and thanks for taking time out of your busy day and we wish you the best. This is a very important election, I think, for the country. And we'll be watching in the next 14 days , and on election night, we'll be watching very closely.

(At his point, Kasich makes his pitch to viewers to visit his website. Even spelling his name for those who can't spell. He concludes his appeal with:

KASICH: We need all the help you can give us, Sean. They love you out here."

The kinship is overwhelming. Like Hannity, Kasich is a dedicated right-winger with Tea Party tendencies who is not easy to love, particularly when his ideas desert the reservation for fringe solutions. Even the mighty Plain Dealer, which endorsed him, expressed concern about him. It's scary to think that Kasich would try to govern in the embrace of Fox News, where he has appeared as a paid commentator. But it is a fair preview of what life in Ohio would be like with Kasich at the governor's mansion and Fox in the rooting section.

Swine flu and other mess-clearing events

IN A WORLD with so much gloom and doom it is sometimes too easy to overlook those who are still going to work every day to make it a better life for all of us. That is the story of the Italian inventor who, according to reports, has found a way to "avoid sacrificing your soul for your health." To demonstrate that the creativity of Leonardo DeVinci didn't die with his model flying machines, this fellow invented an automatic holy water dispenser that will lessen the threat of flu germs in Milan. The idea won't rank with Brunelleschi's dome or gelato, but it does demonstrate that with a great Italian cathedral, there is always a way to provide safe passage through the flu season, if not the berserk drivers on Italy's congested streets.

ONCE WE HAVE recovered from the shock, we can all be happily thankful for Sean Hannity's mea culpa about cooking the video on the latest Tea Parties in Washington. In Fox's laboratory of fiction, the video of an earlier and much larger protest was used to highlight a much smaller Tea Party crowd. And once again, it was Jon Stewart - not the national media - who nailed the Hannity program with the profound observation that, Hey, folks!, the trees were still pre-autumnal green in the video of the larger event whose turnout was much more persuasive for Hannity's tale. But Hannity, with no room at all to wiggle, did apologize to Stewart, thusly:

"He was correct. We screwed up. We aired some video of a rally in September, along with video from the actual event. It was an inadvertent mistake. But a mistake nonetheless."

Right, inadvertent until a late-night comedian-amateur botanist began wondering about the color of autumn leaves.

THE FUN AND PAGEANTRY of Mardi Gras is arriving earlier than usual way down yonder in New Orleans as Louisiana Sen. David Vitter is being challenged by a hot porn star, Stormy Daniels, who claims that unlike Vitter, she has nothing to hide. Vitter is one of Capitol Hill's holier-than- holy morality activists who found a place of honor on a D.C. madam's telephone list. He also was a prominant member of the birthers' demands that Obama's birthplace be verified again and again. But give him credit for accepting a little shame for his sexual misdeeds. He apologized and said he would never do it again.

FINALLY, WHAT was it I said in a recent blog about the scoop-happy national media? Now comes another example, this one regarding an ABC report by the network's Brian Ross that Maj. Nidal Hasan was in league with al-Qaeda, sending terrorist chills across the land. Not true, says the FBI, on the Crooks and Liars blog. The Feds said this:

The FBI determined that the e-mails [to an American-Islamic radical cleric] did not warrant an investigation...Investigators said Hasan's e-mails were consistent with the topic of his academic research and involved some social chatter and religious discourse.

Wiggled Ross in defending his shattered scoop: "That was how it was initially described to me." At this rate, ABC will get around to finally determining that according to its sources the Phillies won the World Series.

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The only thing we have to fear is...Boehner

Happy Halloween! Run out and buy a fright mask to join the dark revelry of Rep. John Boehner and his like-minded moon prancers who market fear as their moronic way of challenging President Obama, health-care reform or any other obstacle to their claim of honorable public service.

They've cast their latest evil eye on what they insist is a government attempt to kill off old people. Yep. Grandpa is just a government bill away from being sent to the nearest morgue. It's somewhere , they insist, in a health care reform proposal. And like most of the dead fish that guys like Boehner or Fred Thompson (remember him?) are throwing around, it can be easily disputed, which is all anyone should have to say about such nonsense.

One might excuse the malignant chatter of talk show hosts like Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck, neither of whom impress me as having much brain gloss. They are paid to make fools of themselves. As one Fox News executive noted , the network only hires people who can improve ratings. I would have never guessed.

But when an always grim fellow like Boehner, the House Minority Leader who speaks regularly for Republicans , and Fred Thompson, who tried feebly to run for president, come at us with trash talk for the sake of terrifying an already confused mass, we ought to start worrying about the consequences, don't you think?

Republicans are no longer the loyal opposition; most of them sit around twisting their handkerchiefs while Boehner sets the pathetic cultural tone for their party. If they aren't embarrassed, I'll step into the vacuum. Watching fools pretending to be serious thinkers does embarrass those of us who hang on to the belief that political discourse should be better than that. A zillion times better!

The White House Poetry Jam

HOW NICE!  Nice to read the reports on the White House Poetry Jam after eight years of a lackluster  response to the arts as cold as the Eve of St. Agnes. The "jam" brought together the President, Michelle, some national artists and students from nearby universities for poetry readings and music.  The event, Obama said, was to "celebrate power of words and music to  help appreciate beauty and also to understand pain."

Sooner or later we may expect to hear from Limbaugh and Hannity with some hissing disgust that a president would be fooling around with the arts when he should be giving bonuses to CEOs and bombing Kabul.   Will they refer to the president  not as a socialist but rather as a Marred Bard?  Will they accuse him of inviting a jazz musician to the session to mislead the public into thinking he was an upbeat leader?   Will they accuse him of ignoring  America's greeting card poets  whose jobs are vanishing with the rise of e-mail?

OK, so I'm having a little fun today.  But that should not distract us from acknowledging a president who is putting in a good word for the arts.  Bill Clinton's saxophone notswithstanding, we can go all the way back to President Kennedy  to find such a commitment.  It also reminds us of a world where very little rhymes today.  

Don't wait for the Morrison trial, et al...

WEEKEND LEFTOVERS:  Take a deep breath but don't hold it.  Once again the pretrial  (May 11, today) hearing and trial date (May 26) for Atty.  Jack Morrison Jr. have been been delayed on motions by  Morrison's lawyer, Paul Adamson.  New dates were not set at this writing.  Morrison, a University of Akron Trustee and advisor to the Summit County Republican Party, was indicted on seven misdemeanor charges arising from his son's purchase and profitable sale of a house on University property that was designated for use in the area that was being cleared for a new football stadium. The case is five months old.   Morrison has ignored calls for him to step down from the Board of Trustees, including one from Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut and the Beacon Journal.  Watch for an update around  Christmas.....

Dick Cheney has made it official:  He prefers Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell as the inspiration for the Republican Party.   Have you noticed that Cheney is much more visible today as the GOP's spiritual leader on talk shows than he was as a  shadowy veep who spent some of his time in a real cave?  He's an old non-soldier who won't fade away...But something else appears to have faded away:  the aggressive PR effort to rehab George Bush's image has fallen silent.  One practical explanation:  It wasn't working.... 

Let's hope that the recall election for Mayor Plusquellic is set for the earliest possible date so that the city can get on with the important business at hand.  The effort by Warner Mendenhall and his pickup army to throw out the mayor will be one of the darker moments in the city's history, Warner's defense of "democracy in action" notwithstanding.  win or lose (he will lose this one) he will have gained some strategic information on the city's demographics should he decide to run for mayor himself.  But at what price to the city itself?

It is amusing to hear the right-wing "profiling" of an imaginary Supreme Court nominee that President Obama has yet to select.  I'm waiting to see protesting GOP  billboards rise with fill-in-the-blank nominees to be named later. 

Finally, does anybody besides Sean Hannity and  his ding-a-ling disciples care that Obama ordered a hamburger with  "elitist" mustard  instead of catsup?  There are days when I wish I could be president for eight hours.  I would  give Hannity an eternity of eyebrow raisers with my exotic Middle Eastern  palate.