Happy Halloween, from zombies to Jackass

THE PROXIMITY OF Halloween and Tuesday's elections recalls something that Gerald Ford said upon taking the Oath of Office to succeed Richard Nixon:

"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over..."

With all due respect to the late president, I would say: Not yet.

That was then, when most of us were pleading for sanity and found comfort in the new president's words. But this is now, in the wake of unhinged political witches and warlocks who sank to an ugly manic depth and are merely the prologue to another nightmare if the polls are anywhere near the truth. As Frank Rich so clearly expressed it in Sunday's New York Times, the new battlefield will embrace the Tea Partiers against the Republican Party, a rear-guard clash between the angry protestors shouting that they want their country back (from what?) to the Old Guard Republicans ensconced in the ways of fancy country clubs, Wall Street and Corporate America. The warfare has already begun as several GOP incumbents were clobbered in the party primaries.

Thanks to Fox News, which encouraged much of the nonsense that created scary moments of grandeur for Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell, to name a few, the Tea Partiers will not go back to their rooms quietly.

What will the new Republican brand be when everyone is seated in the new year? We can only look back and track what the nature of the insurgents will be. A short history lesson is in order.

Sharron Angle, a Tea Partier who might take the Nevada Senate seat from Harry Reid, declared on Christian Radio that the country is violating the First Commandment with its idolatrous "dependency on government." Said Angle: " We're supposed to depend on

God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government."

Conservative Guru Rush Limbaugh: "There is no equality....some people are self starters, and some people are born lazy. Some people are born victims. Some people are just born to be slaves."

Rep.Darrell Issa, right-wing Republican of California, a proponent of extending the Bush tax cuts: "One of the things you lose in a debate is most people don't make a quarter million dollars a year. But a great many people once in their lifetime will sort of win the lottery."

Former U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, the Texan now leading a Tea Party charge against Social Security: "Social Security is a pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme."

Newt Gingrich: "What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]. That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

Christine O'Donnell, Republican senate nominee in Delaware: "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. S0 you can't masturbate without lust."

And so it went with the new group of Founding Fathers and Mothers that will lead us into a debt-free, Obama-free Utopia - and away from Sharia in our neighborhoods, headless bodies in the Arizona desert and wedlock between human beings and clocks. You can count on it when you get your country back.

But should we be surprised in a day. as a Plain Dealer story tells us, when "vampires, ghosts and zombies claw back, win respect in books" ? Or a day when the leading box-office movie is Jackass.

How do you exchange vows with a clock?

(Eleventh of a series)

That's Tea Partier Rebecca Kleefisch, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Wisconsin. She says people shouldn't be able to marry clocks. Or a dog. Or a table. That was her quaint way of slamming same-sex marriage. As she explains her ill-timed imagery to make a point:

"This is a slippery slope. In addition to that at what point are we going to be okay marrying inanimate objects?"

That would not be too far off the reservation for some spouses who have long lamented that their partners were inanimate objects. But really, a clock would take it beyond the point of no return even though by Kleefisch's fundamental Christian references, I doubt that the Bible would have anything useful to add for anyone who might want to say "I do" to a tall oak timepiece at the altar.

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When important news isn't that newsy around here

THE PRESIDENTIAL oil-spill commission has reported that Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, had used unstable cement on the deepwater platform that exploded in the Gulf and triggered the worst oil spill in history. Ho, hum. What else is new about Halliburton, which has enjoyed billions of dollars in government contracts for its less than reassuring work. Besides, Halliburton blames BP for not being more vigilant. How's that? If the big gorilla was aware of the weakness, shouldn't bells and whistles have gone off to alert everyone along the line ? Ho hum, again. But you don't call attention to soiled laundry.. Even reports in today's media in northern Ohio seemed to ho-hum the report from the commission. The Plain Dealer stuck a short piece on Pg. 4 and the Beacon Journal ran a single paragraph on Pg. 2. The only informative paper that arrived at my door (that leftist "rag", the NY Times) strung out two accounts on the front page, then jumped inside with the remainder , plus a photo and illustration. It is what it is these days, and I wouldn't look for it to get better.

Rupert Murdoch: Media emperor at large

SHOULD THERE be any remaining doubt among you (excluding those who would sleep soundly during a tornado) about who has taken predatory control of the media, allow me to recommend a piece in the November issue of Harper's Magazine titled Triumphant Murdoch. The headline is deceptive only to the extent that it understates Australia's gift to empire-building, Rupert Murdoch, while much of the remaining media world is simply trying to hang on.

We all know Murdoch as the Sugar Daddy of his News Corp, the unthreatening alias of a sprawling rightwing network that reaches from London to the U.S. and deeply into the pockets of politicians and other friendly allies who expertly handle the cash.

I was once told by a fellow in Palermo, Sicily, that the Mafia was so skillful in disguising its dark work that one could have lunch with a well-dressed Cosa Nostra operative without sensing that he was a hoodlum shielded in a maze of streets and alleys where the real business was being taken care of.

Step by step, Marvin Kitman's article traces the careful journey, often without raising suspicions by a majority of voters, through closed-fist media control - Fox News, for one - that has made Murdoch a zillionaire and drawn politicians to him like islets in an archipelago. If you think about it, the names of his allies in the political and business class aren't surprising.

Shall we begin with Newt Gingrich, the old warhorse who has been carrying out a pathetic nomadic tour in the belief that he ought to be president. Shortly after Gingrich was at the top of his game with the Republican sweep of 1994, Murdoch paid the speaker-elect what was then described as a "social visit". But it only took a few months for the game plan to unfold as key Republican congressmen began to bow to Murdoch's fervent need to have the FCC pull back from an investigation of foreign ownership of U.S. Media. GOP House chairmen saw no need to press the matter further and money began to arrive in their campaign accounts, Marvin Kitman tells us.

Miurdoch reached farther in conditioning the public to the validity of his friends by hiring Roger Ailes, the Republican escort to the party's presidents, to shape the content of Fox News. Again, it was money well spent as O'Reilly, Beck and Hannity became the cutting edge of what is now widely regarded as the TV arm of the Republican Party. As New York mayor at the time, Rudy Giuliani, supported giving Fox broad freedom deserving of a good citizen, describing the Fox channel 's value to the city as "incalculable." For the first time, a single network exists to do the bidding of one political party. Such voices in other countries used to be called Pravda.

Still, Murdoch doesn't leave anything to the slightest chance as the owner of a network, 17 television stations, six cable networks blah blah blah. Plus the Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times of London. New York Post blah blah blah. He's now dumping tons of money into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Governors Assn., a million to each, who pass it on to the friendly candidates who need it the most. But Murdoch says he has no idea what they do with the money after it arrives. You can bet, however, that it wouldn't go to even a middle-of-the-road Democrat.

The Murdoch phenomenon was given enormous help by the U.S. Supreme Court's wisdom to let the cash explode as a kind of carpet bombing in the notorious 5-4 Citizens United decision supported by 5 GOP appointees.

Kitman does give us a pointed epilogue to the court's decision by dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens:

"While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

Assailants man up, woman is stomped down!

THE MADNESS OF the election season reached a new level of deranged behavior in Kentucky when a supporter of Tea Party candidate Rand Paul stomped a young anti-Paul woman who had been slung to the ground by two other thugs (note the extended hairy forearm in the photo). But the stomper, Timothy Profitt, offered a novel excuse for forcing his shoe into her neck. He said he suffers from a bad back and could not bend over. The Lexington(Ky.) Herald-Leader was not impressed, saying the the assault was evidence of the return of the "goons". You never can be sure what they ill do when they man up.

Tom Ganley: The bombast of wanting your country back

TOM GANLEY, whom we all know as a wealthy auto dealer, opened his remarks at the Akron Press Club luncheon Tuesday with a cry that must have echoed across the entire University of Akron campus. Adding his voice to the current Tea Party manifesto, the Republican nominee for the 13th Congressional District declared:

"I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK."

We can only hope that we will get at least some of it back when the shouting ends moments after Election Day, but not for the reasons that have so steamed up Ganley and the right-wing candidate class this most discordant election season. Still it was Ganley's moment to preach to his choir what it already knows. Since the guy loves to come at us with statistics, let me add a few: More than 80 pct. of the 103 in attendance were seated at tables reserved by their boss. There was a handful of mindful Republicans at another table. As a seasoned regular at Press Club luncheons, I can only say they used to be a lot more fun.

Attendance figures would be remarkably insignificant except that he went down the same road when he said that he refused to debate Rep. Betty Sutton at the Akron Press Club and Cleveland City Club because he will only show up on a "fair" playing field where his opponent wouldn't have packed the hall with her friendly "outside" organizational supporters (notwithstanding the 10 tables his campaign reserved!) . Obviously not aware of a press club's open door policy, Ganley later backtracked on the insult to the Akron Press Club, saying he was largely talking about the Cleveland City Club. Too late, Tom. You did show up at the very same lectern when you had it all to yourself. Go figure.

He did want you to know in an imperious delivery that he was (1)a successful businessman (2) that he was a successful businessman and (3 to 32 ) that he was a successful businessman with 32 aut0 dealerships in Ohio.

Easing slightly away from the Tea Partiers' aroused attacks on President Obama's religion and birthplace, Ganley said he honestly didn't know what religion Obama practiced nor where he was born. For God's sake, Hawaii, Mr. Ganley, Hawaii, where all of those darker skinned Americans wear outrageous floral shirts and hula skirts.

Not much else is worth reporting because you've already heard it so many times as we tiptoe through a landscape of Halloween goblins: we can solve our economic problems by cutting corporate and individual taxes, Obamacare must be defunded ,the budget must be balanced, it was wrong to bail out General Motors and Chrysler, government is wrong to fund the arts, and corporate and individual taxes should be - oops, I already reported that, didn't I.

But there's no need to tell him, in the lingo of the day, to man up. He assured us that nobody owns him and that he packs a concealed weapon. Won't argue with that.

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!

The week-end strike zone

BREATHLESSLY AWAITING PUBLICATION:

The neighborhood Arshinkoff Republican Party added another statewide candidate to its list of $150,000 campaign contributions: GOP secretary of state nominee Jon Husted. That generous sum appears to be a reprisal of sorts (and insurance against it happening again if in Republican hands) ) for Alex's dismissal from the Summit County Board of Elections by the current outgoing Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner. As we have long known , his motives are never very subtle. The Husted campaign contribution joins another $150,000 bonus, that one to the Kasich campaign. (Can we reasonably call this a GrumpyFirst?)

The Beacon Journal's decision to run a lengthy corrected version of Rep. Betty Sutton's talk to the Akron Press Club could be the longest correction on record for a single speech. But if you look at the first piece that was reported on Thursday and the much longer corrected version on Friday, you might understand why the editors were left with no choice to give up all of that space. For reasons that must be left to greater minds than mine, some of the congresswoman's comments that were reported in the Thursday article were oddly rearranged on the copy desk - forever a journalistic no-no. This was worth more than a tsk, tsk.

Overheard: With the Akron Zips' football team heading for a winless season, might it not be a good idea to have the Zips' world-class soccer team don the uniforms and play out the schedule? It couldn't hurt.

The Harper's magazine Index is always a handy guide for keeping us up to date on modern culture. The latest statistic on young people's habits: Eleven per cent of Americans under age 25 say they would read a text message while having sex.

The Summit Arshinkoff Party invests $150,000 in Kasich

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH reports that the Summit County Republican Party, which represents about 10 pct. of the registered voters within our borders, is the leading contributor - by far - to John Kasich among the state's 88 GOP county parties. Party Chairman Alex Arshinkoff has come through with $150,000 for the Republican candidate! No other county Republican party appears in the Top 10. In fact, the list of contributors falls off to $22,791 from the next in line - ABC Northern Ohio PAC. (The leading contributor at $485,835 is the Ohio Republican party, but that's to be expected.)

It's no secret that Arshinkoff is looking at this race as possibly his Last Hurrah for statewide recognition with a job in the Kasich Administration. He's been Kasich's champion and regular host since the mercurial right-wing Republican announced for office. He tried that years ago with George Voinovich by raising a fortune for him in hopes of getting George's blessing to support him for state chairman. Didn't work out that way. In the end Voinovich went for Robert Bennett.

May we assume that since Arshinkoff gave up his $52,000 party salary to, as he has explained it, keep the headquarters afloat, that a third of the money that went Kasich came out of the chairman's pocket? Secondly, as another Republican pointed out to me, what does that say about the local party's debt of about $92,000 that has been on the books for several years?

The Summit County Democratic Party has given $151,175 to Gov. Strickland but that has been spread across his four-year term in both money and in-kind services.

How important is it to have a governor from your party? For Arshinkoff, it would increase his power in appointing his choices to university boards of trustees, to the judiciary and for the various other perks that are handed down from above. With the race now being called a tossup, you can imagine how many sleepless nights the always-emotional Alex is suffering these days.

UPDATE: The Summit GOP s latest financial report filed this week now lists its debt at $99,046.

CNN/TIME Poll: Ohio governor race a dead heat

THIS WEEK'S CNN /TIME poll that shows Gov. Ted Strickland moving ahead of Republican John Kasich by a nose, 48-47, is a surprising development, if true. But possibly more significant is word that the Kasich forces are getting so concerned that his earlier big lead is fading away that they called in their campaign people to Columbus for a pow-wow last Friday. At that meeting Team Kasich was said to have been told that his lead had dwindled to 2 pts in an internal poll - much too close for comfort. It wouldn't be surprising if the Kasich campaign got much nastier in the final lap before Nov. 2.