Jordanites accuse Boehner Republicans of cannibalism

Republicans  who will be laying down $50 or more for the Summit County party's annual Lincoln (!) Day dinner Saturday night will be treated to an upfront look at the guy who has dedicated himself to tearing the national party into oblivion.  I refer,  of course, to the local event's prized speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana, a fringe conservative who  has  been leading a poisonous  assault on Speaker John Boehner  & Co. through Jordan's House Freedom Caucus - one of those wacko far right outfits that lean more toward anarchy than to whatever might be left of Republican centrism.

Anyone attempting to digest dinner at Quaker Station won't hear any of the negatives that night because the way Chairman Alex Arshinkoff has put it in the  invitation, his guest is a national recognized conservative and "second to none watchdog of President Obama's failed...(fill in the many blanks) policies."

As has been evidenced many times in the past, The Boss can get absolutely hysterical when he starts damning the people he doesn't like.  But does Jordan represent the new norm for the county   party's more sober days under the late Ray Bliss, who never encouraged a raised voice against any other Republican?

On the other hand, Jordan has close ties with Rep. Steve King of Iowa,  who seldom lets a week go by without saying something stupid, and enjoys doing so from his outpost somewhere out in Iowa.

Jordan and King were among those  maddening congressmen who condemned Boehner for not  agreeing to shut down  the Homeland Security Department in the fracas over Obama's immigration policies.   Their scandalous motives have so enraged the Boehner side of  wealthy influential Republicans that the latter staged a $300,000 advertising campaign  accusing Jordan and a couple of his congressional buddies on national TV , including Fox News, of  placing America's "security at risk."

That peeved King, who described the ads as party "cannibalism," or as King went on to explain:

"It looks like cannibalism by leadership to me.   I mean when you go after your own people, what else would you call it?"

Well, I would say it's a lot like what the anti-Boehner crowd  in the party has been doing to the Speaker.    (Trust me: I do not speak as an ally of Boehner, either.)

So, isn't it fair to ask whether the Summit gang under Arshinkoff has stooped to a shameful new norm in a party that once was known for centrism and quiet reflection by Ray Bliss?

Keep that in mind, Republicans, when Alex lights the fuse after dinner to introduce Jordan with a flood of compliments.  When you stop to think about what the chairman won't tell you -  as I just did -  you'll know what I'm talking about. And it didn't cost me fifty bucks.

P.S. Jordan sent out a release thanking Benjamin Netanyahu for speaking to Congress as a man who wants  to secure Israel from its enemies.  Homeland Security for Americans?    Apparently he'll think about it.

Note to Speaker Boehner: Steve King's YOUR problem.

 Rep. Steve King, the Iowa  Republican, had no sooner likened the kids of undocumented immigrants to  "drug mules" with bulging calves the size of "cantaloupes," than some of his GOP colleagues shuddered  at his metaphor.  Doesn't the maniacal  Iowan realize that some Republicans are doing their damnedest to convince Latinos that they are all  brothers and sisters of wholesome Americans? Apparently not, which is why Speaker John Boehner, departing briefly from his sky-is-falling rants against President Obama,  promptly described the remarks as "hateful and ignorant".

Worse yet, Rep. Raul Labrador, Idaho Republican, blamed the media for reporting King's comments.  Ah, but there's a problem here.  The last time I looked, Steve King's House roll call vote on any issue counted as much as Boehner's or Labrador's.  I'd say King, who is among those who have jolted the party's derangement still farther to the Right, is the GOP's problem, not the media's, which doesn't have a vote.

Romney is 2 for 2 with loonies

Although Mitt Romney has been down a quart or two since the conventions, my unofficial poll  shows him to be strong among dogfight promoters and anti-Communist theorists. He assured himself of their unyielding support by offering his endorsements  to two widely suspected Republican loonies like Steve King and Allen West, a couple of congressmen who operate in another universe.

King, whose Iowa district may have more cows than people,  has long favored dogfighting and  has gone so far as to compare imimigrants to dogs.   He even latched on to the "legitimate rape" issue,   saying he was unaware that pregnancy from rape was that widespread. But that's old news on the right by now.

Never mind.  When  Mitt showed up to endorse King for another congressional term, he declared:  "I'm looking here at Steve King.  He needs to be your congressman again.  I want him as my partner in Washington."  King returned the favor by assuring his constitutents that Mitt was a true patriot with "love for Jesus Christ our savior".

Let us turn now to Florida Tea Party  congressman Allen West, who has declared that there are 80 or so Communists in Congress and recently asserted that "forward" - a word that appears in Obama's campaign slogan -  is an "old Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist theme" (Aside to Allen: It also appears in Paul Ryan's home state of Wisconsin motto.) It didn't take  long for Lou Dobbs, of Fox News, to remind us that "forward has a a very long history with Marxists and  and socialists" .  Dobbs never has been that original  with his rightwing talking points.

Back to Romney, where today's post began: He happily appointed West as  the co-chairman of his campaign's new Black Leadership Council.

But you can't fault Mitt for trying to win at least one African-American vote, can you?  

A how-to guide for a kaput computer

The past three days have not been particularly friendly to a computer-bound writer whose impossible achievement will be to construct a complete sentence without a typo. Actually there were hints of antisocial behavior by my computer more than a week ago. Strange looking lines danced across the screen. Know what I mean? If you have a computer, of course you know. If not now, then later.

Two days ago, home computer No.4 in a series died. I called the emergency squad in the person or our son Rick. No teenager is he, but far ahead of me in knowing what buttons to press while his father is sitting back in sullen panic. There are no how-to books on filling the empty hours when a computer has been prepared for burial. Oh, I did get some stiff advice from Nancy on what a good thing it would be if I took the time to clear out some of the debris in my office. Even a little effort would help the general appearance.

So I started pecking through the piles of printouts, clippings, notes to myself, magazines with paper-clipped pages and 2-for-1 hamburger ads that unfortunately had expired. Sifting through the piles I discovered it to be a much-needed break in the action. Since much of it turned on politics, it was sort of a low-budget romp through Disney World. Buried in the mess, for example, was a complaint by Republican Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin who lamented that he was having a hard time making ends meet on his $174,000 annual congressional salary.

And then we found that delicious James Bond -type report that the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, was accused of pressuring GI's to use psychological operations - psy-ops, for goodness sake - to "target visiting VIPs" to send more troops. Folks, they were talking about getting into the heads of senators like John McCain and Joe Lieberman. It would be a lot simpler and certainly not as messy, if they had just flat out asked these two hawks for the money or credit cards, don't you think?.

There were several tidbits from Rep.Steve King, the Iowa Republican, who is always ready to confound the listeners. King defended the Republican leadership "for having established their integrity and mendacity for years" against wild accusations by their opponents. Mendacity? Is that any way to talk about your side, Stevarino?

Finally I came across this old treasure from former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. He wrote that upon inquiring about why John Boehner would pass out tobacco lobbyists' money on the House of Representatives floor, Boehner Chief of Staff Barry Jackson replied, ever so innocently: "The floor is where the members meet with each other."

Can't argue with that. Really no need for the four-day package to Disney.

Des Moines: The fringe's giant leap for mankind

IN MY CONTINUING effort to monitor giant leaps for mankind, I think you should know about the latest gathering of GOP presidential hopefuls in Des Moines. That's the capital of Iowa and serves nicely in the heart of the state as a Sharia-free zone for another round of the show up-and-tell fringe politics of Michele, Newt, Haley, Herman et al. With the state's potential game-changing caucuses on the line next year, only Sarah Palin would get away with ignoring the ultra-conservative forum over the week end hosted by Iowa's thought-free congressman Steve King.

Some of the tone recalled the days when you could get a very nice bedside lamp with Top Value stamps; in the current version of Republican politics, the first test of any candidate is whether he or she subscribes to King's reliance on Judeo-Christian Family Values to pull a country of majority Christians out of its economic depths. Steve King says it better to his audience than I can:

"If we get the culture right, the economy will be right eventually.

Meantime, Newt Gingrich, who has been spreading like crabgrass these days , rose to the podium with more assaults on lefties and the president. Armed with his own mathematical proofs, Newt bellowed: "There is a huge difference between Obama and the left and 80 pct. of the American people." Of course, you never know what American people Newt is hanging out with. Some observers had hoped that he he would satsifactorily explain the huge difference between supporting a no-fly zone in Libya one day and rejecting it the next.

Haley Barbour joined others in promising that tax cuts would produce jobs (unfortunately not for the armies of workers laid off because of shrinking budgets). That audience-friendly proposal is much like the first line of a classic poem without a follow-up line.

But back to values. Michele Bachmann, whose head has become a revolving turret that nails every moving object in Lib-land, told her cheering crowd: "It is the character and the values of our people - that's why I am so confident in our people in 2012".

That is a summary of what we can expect for nearly two years. I confess that I'm never sure what values these people are talking about. But I promise to let you know after I turn on the Top Value bedside lamp and open a book. The lamp is now in the realm of heirlooms. Can't say that the giant leap for mankind in Des Moines produced anything of that lasting value

PS. Oops. Did I forget to mention prexy hopeful Herman Cain's economic dialectic? Or John Bolton's hawkish remedies for Iran? You didn't miss a thing.