Portman: a garden variety GOP right winger

Better get used to the happy face in the photo. It's Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. He's been a gleam in the eye of some ranking party planners for the 2012 national ticket ever since his election in 2010. The drumbeat has begun in earnest as the current ensemble of GOP presidential candidates continue to chase their tails in full view of a less than enthusiastic public. Even though the senator's current term doesn't expire until 2016, the American Petroleum Institute, the powerful lobby for the oil and gas industry, is already running TV ads with its blessings for Portman, stressing that he is opposed to raising taxes.(Good grief!) This isn't to suggest that he is yet at the head of he class to lead the GOP ticket. He's merely insurance, and at least the party's logical veep candidate in its effort to carry Ohio.

That's only part of the story. Despite his low profile behavior (read: he is seen as low-key firebrand), he is a rock-ribbed right-wing conservative who votes with his party 97 pct. of the time. The votes on the other 3 pct. really aren't that important.

His ideological report card: Firmly on the side of the social conservatives from don't-ask-don't-tell to pro-life to anti-same-sex marriage His votes on issues affaecting gays are clear to see. On economics, he opposed the stimulus, and supports a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. And the ACLU gives him a a single-digit approval rating . In short, he is sort of like a Rick Santorum without saying too many dumb things in public.

His pre-Senate credentials mark him as one of the top budget advisors to President Bush. And you know where Bush economics got us. He was a member of the failed Supercommittee - which never had a chance from Day One. So now the analysts are wondering whether this will hurt his chances for the national ticket. No problem there, not with the American Petroleum Institute's dollars, probably complemented by the energy investments of the Koch brothers, on your side.

Pumpkins: the GOP treat-or-treaters

A PHOTO IN Sunday's papers told us more abut the divinely-inspired GOP presidential candidates who are fervently attempting to lead America into the grasp of evangelical

Christians. Seated at a round table were Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich (and doubtless others not shown.) Unfortunately, by the reported tone of the discussion, it hardly measured up to the level of the lively Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s, the daily luncheon group at the Algonquin Hotel that included such nimble minds as Alexander Woollcott and Dorothy Parker.

By all accounts the presidential wannabes that met for a "values" discussion in Iowa each swore allegiance to taking down the liberal miscreants of the modern world to fill in the ranks with people as spiritually pure as they are. It never stops.

Even the table props sent a message of the wholesome family affair. In full view was a pumpkin. How appropriate for the trick-or-treaters seated for the photo-op. Pumpkins? Were the panelists sitting in judgment of the pulpy seasonals as to whether a pumpkin is a blowfish or a vegetable? This isn't as silly as it sounds. There is a precedent on Capitol Hill. Many on the GOP side have already dared us to consider pizza a vegetable to placate their lobbying frozen -pizza friends.

But let's get even more serious: Reports from the values auditions for the Iowa caucuses in January said several of the candidates tearfully(!) described their own trials in life (Example: Michele Bachmann told of becoming a true Christian after the awful divorce of her parents). What is it about sobbing in this party? I thought Boehner had claimed that value for himself.)

I should also report that Rick Perry signed a pledge by Bob Van Der Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, which sponsored the event. Perry vowed never to support same-six marriage.

But when the pledge bullies ask the candidates to put it in writing, do you get the feeling there is a limit to their trust in the pols' informal promises?

Now can we get back to the nation's economy and the haloed candidates' promises to create jobs? Halloween is over.

Footnote: As long as we're on the subject, Republican icon Thomas jefferson, whose name still adorns the menus of the party's dinners, once said this:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

The chief warns of pale face invasion

TO FOLLOW UP WITH late word on the Buchanan post:

A historian has turned up an old document of turkey skin recording this mid-16th century event in the New World:

Fearful of his tribe's declining fortune, an Indian chief assembled his people with a dire warning about their status as an exceptionalist nation. As they gathered around the fires, the sachem said balefully:

"It is my duty to tell you that we are being threatened on all sides because we have been remiss in dutifully mounting our steeds at the borders of our most honorable Yakohotchee Nation."

"How can that be?" one of the braves, newly arrived from a outpost just west of Atlanta, asked. "We are brave warriors."

"That, we are,." the chief responded approvingly. "We are indeed brave warriors, blessed by the gods that have looked down upon us from our papoose days."

He paused to find the precise words. "This afternoon, however, our exceptional scout, Kemo Sabe, arrived from the distant land of sky blue waters to tell us of many strange things that are happening. Most worrisome, he said, were the visages of the people landing on our shores.

Worrisome?' the braves gasped. 'What could cause such fear in exceptional braves?.

"Their faces," the chief replied. "Their faces were pale, and they spoke in a strange language.

"Pale faces? How can that be. They will mock our exceptional ruddy skin with the deathly pallor that they bring to our hallowed ground!'

"We must act before it is too late,' the chief commanded. "I am asking you, my brave friends, to authorize a moat along the entire valley to prevent them coming any farther".

"A moat? Do you really believe that will stop this invasion of strange pale faces?

" It will," said the chief with self satisfaction, "if we fill it with crocodiles. "We cannot afford to lose a minute, or our noble Yakohotchee nation will perish.

"Why not rattlesnakes, too?"

"Those, too," the chief said. "These are perilous times. We must think of our grandchildren."

Pizzagate: fat waistlines vs. GOP fatheads

DID YOU SEE that the Republicans in Congress want pizza to be officially declared a vegetable? Yeah, that floored me, too - and I'm a pizza lover. But in doing the people's urgent business, if they can recalibrate the substance of the food we consume, don't be put out if they tell you that pepperoni is a byproduct of lettuce and pork chops pop from cucumbers.

This Capitol Hill gang has been adrift in its own universe and apparently enjoying every minute of its cash flow from lobbyists. In this instance, it responded to word of heartburn by the big frozen pizza lobby to the Department of Agriculture's move to change school menus to less fattening food. But your Republican congressmen seem to care not about the growing epidemic of obesity. Besides in the land of the free, Big Brother shouldn't tell kids what to eat, right?

The only thing worse than the expanding waistlines are the fatheads who blocked the Ag department's initiative. So if you find any anchovies growing from your cabbage in the garden, send them long to your GOP congressman. After all, during the holiday season, it's

really the thought that counts.

Buchanan: White supremacist in a business suit

I GUESS NO ONE should really be surprised that Pat Buchanan, the MSNBC commentator. author and polemicist, has written another book defining America as a Manichean struggle between pure good and devastating evil, with no pastels in between. (Or as George W. Bush once declared, "I don't do nuance.") I haven't read Buchanan's "Suicide of a Super Power", which others have asserted is so much recycled white supremicist gibberish. But based on his past syndicated columns and commentaries, Mr. B is clearly on the side of the angelic forces defending a declining white America from a takeover by Hispanics, African-Americans and any other invasive non-Caucasian whom he believes has no standing in the Constitution.

That recalls the notorious Dred Scott case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Scott had no rights because he was, after all, a slave. The issue turned on whether having resided with his master for a while in slavery-free Wisconsin he could demand his freedom once he was taken to Missouri, a slave state. The notorious Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled against Scott's freedom, thus drawing the cheers of the South. Not only that, he extended the court's decision to all slaveholders who moved their "property" anywhere in America.

Check these words from a chapter titled "The White Party" in Buchanan's book , included in a list of excerpts provided by Talking Points Memo:

'"And although Howard Dean disparages the Republicans as the 'white party,' why should Republicans be ashamed to represent the progeny of the men who founded, built and defended America since her birth as a nation?"

Do you think it was a mere oversight that Buchanan overlooked all of the African-Americans and Hispanic-Amercans who died in American uniforms in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? Hardly. It's not a neat fit in his rants against too much color.

Anybody know a Generic Republican?

WE NOW HAVE a rising entry among the presidential candidates. The pollsters are seriously referring to it as "Generic Republican". It's the mysterious name they are using in matchups against President Obama. I've been wondering: Are they referring to Abraham Lincoln?Hardly, he held the Union together instead of dividing it. Oh, then it must be the immortal Ronald Reagan. Except that he presided over 18 debt ceiling increases and didn't do a thing about abortion. He would hardly do. No style points there.

Let's see. George "Read My Lips" Bush. No way. He raised taxes and spent his leisure time in a place strangely known as Kennebunkport (close by Saco Biddeford, which I'm told doesn't appear on any map in Texas, where men are men.) Besides, who can spell Kennebunkport without looking it up, which I just did? Dubya Bush? Whoa there, Tonto. Republicans hardly mention him any more, and for good reason.

So who is this "Generic Republican" running for president - the one who may be among the stand-ins for "None of the Above"? He/she may well be named by a non-elected lobbyist, Grover Norquist. He's the guy who got a majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill to sign a pledge (on a slate tablet?) never to raise taxes. It was sort of a pagan covenant with Norquist, the Republican anti-tax God, and a vindictive one at that against anyone who defies him.

I'll bet all of the voters who sent an army of Republican lawmakers to Capitol Hill really believed their candidates who pledged to serve them, not Grover. At this rate, could he be the Generic Republican? And while I'm at it, what is a Generic Republican these days anyway?

Box not recommended for weak stomachs

From an alert reader: Cain vision

O'Reilly book: We report, you decide

UPDATE ON O'Reilly/Lincoln book:

It is now being reported that while the Ford's Theatre Museum in the basement is not carrying the book, the separately operated Ford Theatre Society's gift shop upstairs is selling the book. The Museum is operated by the National Park Service, which was critical of the inaccuracies in the book and banned the O'Reilly version of Lincoln's assassination. However, the Society was not averse to cashing in on the book, which is a best -seller. The Society's director, Paul R. Tetreault, explained: "While we understand the National Park Service's concerns, we decided to let our visitors judge the book themselves." That pathetic concession probably was driven by two things: Conservative rage by O'Reilly's allies, and the Society's interest in making a profit, historical accuracy be damned. It's the world we live in, folks.

Terry, it was great knowing you

THE PASSING 0f Terry Oblander, a colleague and friend, has opened another hole in the ranks of enthusiastic newspapermen who considered it a privilege to show up at the office every day. His disheveled presence at his desk, whether he was trying to fill in a few more blanks for a feature story or grinding out hard news, was usually a sight for the journalistically correct reporters and editors in his midst. One moment he would be bellowing, the next he would erupt in violent laughter. His gestures were broad; his personality, for better or worse, never suppressed. The world, for "The Dutchman" was never a neat place where the spoons and forks were properly placed at the sides of the plate.

He wasn't crazy, folks, Just a very good - and honorable - reporter who was happily dedicated in his work. It was serious fun, richly expressed.

He was doubtless the last demonstrative vestige of the shrinking hometown business in which newsrooms have been quieted by vanishing staffs, energized voices and clicking typewriters. Today a lot of people communicate with lowered voices, hopeful, among other things, of keeping their jobs before retirement in a few years, months or weeks.

For many years, Terry, stricken by heart failure at 64, gallantly hung on to the end despite the loss of his wife and the need for care for his kids as an everyday workingman. But his bad luck seemed to follow him in his post-Beacon Journal days at the Plain Dealer. He worked in the PD's once-flashy bureau in Montrose, joined the subsequent move to the paper's windowless office in a basement on the Medina Square that could have passed for submarine quarters and continued his odyssey to various other points that wound up in Cleveland - all with a family home in Medina. He was one of the victims of the paper's confusion over what it wanted to be if it ever sank some roots south of Cuyahoga County.

I had worked part-time(!) for the PD and witnessed the upheaval before deciding there could be a decent life as a writer free of newspapers. During the later years, Terry called from time to time, beginning with "How's it going?" (He was the sort of person who really wanted to know, instead of the usual conversation gambit.)

I began to sense that the vitality in his voice was absent. Cynicism had crept in to his gung-ho love of a reporter's life. I wish I could have told him that things were bound to improve, but that would have been a lie to one of most conscientiously honest human beings that I had ever met in the business - or anywhere else, for that matter.

So I listened. We talked. After the newspaper talk, he would tell me about his kids' love of sports, and the memorabilia of the passion. Finally, he would say, "Well, I gotta go. Let's have lunch sometime". Just like that.

I' m sorry I took so long to share another beer and shelled peanuts with him. Too soon, his heart, as well as his business, let him down.

For O'Reilly, an oval office isn't an oval office

To all of you conservative literati who accuse liberals of being unkind to Bill O'Reilly's unique form of, eh,... sloppy work habits, I am passing along the latest word on the topic from Ford's Theatre in D.C. (The place where Abe Lincoln was fatally shot). The Theatre bookstore has removed Billo's new book,"Killing Lincoln, " from its shelves. Seems there were an inexcusable number of factual errors in his work that stands at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. Not that this makes any difference to O'Reilly , who already has cashed in on his pseudo historical authority. One reported example - one of many - his many references to Lincoln in the Oval Office, which legitimate historians will tell you wasn't built until long after his death. I know. It's the thought that counts with these guys. But those who ignore historical truths are destined to repeatedly skew them for their audiences.