What's that? Conservatives are now bleeding hearts on Obamacare?

Do you find it  bizarrely interesting, as I do, that the conservatives who have long resisted the "train wreck" of Obamacare are now the bleeding hearts who are gravely complaining  about the computer problems that are forcing millions of Americans to delay  enrollment in the program?...

And if you happened to see the sloppy fielding by the Cardinals in the opening game of the World Series, you can be sure somebody will step before a TV camera to blame it on Obamacare, the health reform plague on  all that is good in America the Beautiful.   Take it from Rep. Michele Bachmann, who speaks with Olympian wisdom.  The plan, she insists, is already killing women and children.  We can only ponder how much worse it will be by her standards once the plan is fully activated.

Finally, the more I encounter Ted Cruz on the airwaves, the more he impresses me as the brutish guy who would  saunter into a bakery and willfully sneeze all over the dough.      

Political life can be odd, if not always beautiful.

Let me try to sort out a few mostly odd odds and ends this week:

When Joseph Palazzo, the former tech director of the Cuyahoga Heights School District, was convicted of stealing $3.4 million from the schools, the Plain Dealer reported, Palazzo apologized  to U.S.District Judge Benita Pearson and declared that he had suffered a "lapse in judgment" and would never do it again.  Given that he was sentenced to 11 years and four months in a Federal prison, it would have to be awhile.

The PD also told us of Allen Warner's day in court for "secretly recording nude images of two former mistresses and a teenage grirl  using cameras hidden  in clocks and video players.

The 60-year-old voyeur,who apologized, told the court he had no idea he was doing anything wrong..  The court thought otherwise and sentenced Warner to a 17 year-hitch  for "voyeurism, pandering  sexually oriented material involving a minor and pornography related crimes".

* * * * *

It was a better week for GOP  Reps. Michele Bachmann and Louie Gohmert, and a terrible one for Congressman Paul Broun, the nutty Georgia Republican. Bachmann once lamented that if the rascals in the White House continued to assault the wallets of Americans, some day "there won't be any rich people in America."  She can relax.  Several reliable sources have now reported that people with assets of more than $1 million soared  more than 11 pct.  in 2012 in North America, a continent in first place on the planet with $12.7 trillion in assets.

I needn't remind you that I have long considered Gohmert, the Texas guy, to be the perennial claimant to the congressional dunce cap.  No longer.  It is now claimed by Broun, an MD, who has never stopped Biblically ranting about the evils of science.  He has again told us of the planet's twin-evils: evolution and the big bang theory.

"God's word is true," says Dr. Broun.  "...All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is from  the pit of hell.  It's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior."  (Or. at least Broun, whichever comes first in politics.) Yadayadayada. ..  Move over,  Louie. Don't think you can top this for now.

* * * * *

Finally, I've figured out the heart of the congressional wingies' opposition to humane immigration reform.  They simply don't like Latinos. No way.

As for the abortion controversy,  I propose that we contact our congressmen to support  a law that serves two purposes:  Any congressmen who will be voting to restrict abortions must first present a photo ID - a photo ID  - to determine whether there is a tell-tale  scar from  a birth controlling vasectomy.  Those who fail the exam  will be barred from going to a Major League baseball game to watch a team with more than two  Latino players. Problem solved.

Jim Allen: the ex-county chairman won't be playing in Farmersville anymore

Just when you wanted to believe that with the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks and Michele Bachmanns still on the loose  in full voice, nobody could top them with dumber-than-dumb political trash talk.  Well, someone just did, and so much for the career of an Illinois  Republican county chairman named Jim Allen of the unheralded village of Farmersville, Ill. (pop. 723) in downstate Montgomery County. (If you've just pulled out your Rand McNally road atlas,  Farmersville isn't that far from Divernon, Ill.)

Allen, beset by troubled reaction from GOP higher-ups, including National Chairman Reince Priebus, resigned in the wake of his comments that Erika Harold (shown here), a former Miss America running for congress in the Republican primary,  was a "street walker"  supported by her "pimps" among Democrats and moderate Republicans.

Limbaugh settled for "slut" in recklessly ill-defining Sandra Fluke's off-hours behavior.

But when guys like Priebus are so openly annoyed by  one of the party's official enablers that he called Allen's behavior "inexcusable'" and "not to be tolerated, you know that the ex-county chairman exceeded what's left of the levels of decency for the party's alleged brand. Allen recanted with an apology, but you know how those things go these days.

But Allen did earn a  citation from Grumpy Abe otherwise known as the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) Award. Somehow,  I still don't feel it fits the slanderous crime by this party operative.

Oh, Allen also accused Harold of being a notorious "RINO" - a Republican in Name Only.  But as they genuflect  to a Tea Party culture,  isn't it a bit of a stretch to refer to any of them as a Republican?

Today's ever-vigilant press with Maureen Dowd thrown in

BROKEN NEWS!!!!!

Maureen Dowd,  she of the "liberal"  media, has become the New York Times' Op-ed version of Michele Bachmann.  Forever full of herself, she's been obsessing  against President Obama, most recently likening him to a "sad sack".  She's even gone so far as to say that Hillary might have to run in 2016 to "restore honor" in the White House.   Wow!   It all leads me to speculate on whether she might not have been included on the A-list of a White House dinner.

* * * * *

A long piece in the Plain Dealer about the life and times of  crusading Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine quoted his soaring reason for wanting to hold office.   "I ran for attorney general not just to hold office, " he asserted. "I ran for attorney general because I wanted to do things."  Noble. Still shouldn't the story also have included  at least one word that among the biggest things that  he's wanted to do was to slap down Obamacare  and company insurance coverage of contraceptives as the lawyer for all Ohioans?  Even women.

* * * * *

There they go again:  The Beacon Journal ran another op-ed piece by Richard Vedder, the conservative  Ohio University  economics professor emeritus who is being paid $150,000 a year to write his slants by an outfit named Donors Trust.  It is sort of a laundering operation that channels huge amounts of contributions to ideologically compatible "liberty-minded" charities.   Fine. But shouldn't the reader be told that? Vedder did disclose in his most recent column that a Forbes magazine ranking of college president salaries that he used for resource material was compiled by his own think tank.
I've long believed that if you want a strong college degree,  become a conservative economist.  There's money in it.

Cornyn revives the hostile French connection

To hear Sen John Cornyn, the Texas Republican,  tell  it, the French are back to haunt America's way of life, both in war and peace. He says he has informed by a "guy" that French-speaking people were among the illegal immigrants crossing the border into Texas.  (Some  of the others were heard "speaking Chinese or basically all of the languages in the world...") But specific mention of the French  took us back to a decade ago when the  offended patriots in the U.S.House of Representatives boldly changed the name of French fries to "Freedom fries" in  the House cafeterias in a blunt reprisal for France's  refusal to join us in invading Iraq. Not one of democracy's finer hours.

Two Republicans who led  the demolition of Gallic fries were Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and Bob Ney of Ohio , the latter moving on to still greater heights by pleading guilty to corruption charges and spending some time in prison for his inexcusable  bad judgment.

Sacre bleu! (Update: French fries have regained their original name and are again being served  in the cafeteria.)

P.S. For all of his partisan concern about lax border security, surely the senator must know that border crossings  are now down to where they were under President Nixon.

* * * * *

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative Great White Whale, has conducted his own probe of the same-sex marriage issue and identified the homosexual perps as the "Gay Mafia".  We're not sure where he would cast the blame for his own four marriages.

* * * * *

Proving once against that even crackpots can earn fortunes in America, Glenn Beck is now "reporting" that Rep. Michele Bachmann is being investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics because it has been infiltrated by radical Muslims.   "We have been sold to radical Islam", he warned.  "It has been infiltrated and we have documented it."
Bachmann supposedly provoked the blowback last year by asserting that important aides in the Obama Administration were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.  

I can't make this up, but Beck can - and often does.

No need for the dog warden when Bachmann barks

With FDR, there was his "little dog Fala". With Richard Nixon, we learned of his dog Checkers.  With Michele Bachmann, there is her fantasy that President Obama spends taxpayers' dollars on dog-walkers for his family pet.  Even Bill O'Reilly is aghast at her fictions, declaring her latest one is not true. But the more things change, they more they stay the same for Michele, who has been walking around on her knuckles ever since she arrived on Capitol Hill as a Minnesota congresswoman.

You may recall that a couple of years ago she accused Obama of running  up a bill of $200 million a day for his official visit to India. That's eight zeroes after the two, folks.

FDR handled folks like Michele with cool panache.  When FDR's critics accused him of wasting $20 million by sending a destroyer to the Aleutian Islands to get his dog, the president wryly complained that Fala, who was Scotch, resented the spurious tale of loose spending.   "I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself,"  FDR  declared with staged indignation.  "But I have  a right to object to libelous statements about my dog."

Take a number, please.

michelebachmannendorsesmittromney.  next?

The GOP vendetta against Obama

IT'S REALLY TOO BAD that the most nonsensical presidential race in modern times isn't a Scrabble game. All of the GOP candidates could be tossed back into the pile and be replaced with a new lineup of tiles. Isn't that what we're hearing from polls showing that 70 pct. of Americans want the marathon to end quickly. Enough already.

That won't happen, of course. As front-runners come and go, there are still a few hanging around for their turns to be given first-class invitations to the TV talk shows.

Frankly, I haven't learned much from the serial debates, other than they continue to be driven by a long-standing, and frequently ugly, singular mission to dump President Obama. It began the moment he entered the office and was clearly expressed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, the party's imaginary Solomon who declared that his major mission was to defeat Obama four years hence. In the meantime, the business of government would have to wait as leading Republicans said the party would now be defined by what it opposed.

Traditional party rivalry has morphed into a vendetta. Think of it: a mere black Democrat defeated a Republican war hero! Obama's humiliated enemies could not process their historic loss. Still can't. Race became a conditioning factor the next three years, although the GOP found other ways to express its hostility that went well beyond the usual boundaries of party differences. So Obama's birthplace was loudly whipped around the news channels. As a likely Kenyan (Read: race) it was argued, he hated white Americans - thank you Rush Limbaugh, Trump et al. The vendetta only increased caustic words on the president's patriotism, honor and legitimacy.

Shameful. But a shameless GOP has lost any pretense of honor.. We're not watching a presidential race. We are watching a non-stop vendetta. Racism, by any other name, is still racism.

P.S. Latest from Mitt Romney: "I would be the ideal Tea Party candidate". (On the Pandering Scale of 10, that would get at least a 9. Not even the Tea Partyers believe him.)

And how about Michele wanting to get rid of 80 pct. of government? On Capitol Hill alone, that would eliminate 80 senate seats and 348 representatives. Maybe we could start in her Minnesota district.

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.

Miss Universe says it all for GOP debaters

IT SEEMS FITTING that the Miss Universe contest competed on TV with the Republican candidates debate Monday night as beauty contests in which both events fed us predigested answers to please the judges. Even the hype was intended to be breathlessly fetching for the viewer.

The advance reporting alerted us to the possibility that the presidential candidates would get after each other, and even crash in fireballs, as they sometimes do in the Indy 500 for the benefit of those spectators anticipating bloodshed. It wasn't enough to persuade me to skip the NFL game. Instead, I later scanned the on-line coverage. Smart move.

For starters, there was a huge difference in apparel, of course, ranging from baring to boring. Do you think we might get a self-conscious presidential debate in Nehru suits to remind the audience of the candidates' grasp of history? Somehow black business suits just don't work very well with the glittering pageantry of the moment.

I concede that I was taken by Miss Universe winner's response to the question of how she might change her "personal characteristics" if she could. Leila Lopes ( the winner) declared:

"Thank God, I'm very well satisfied with the way God created me and I would not change a thing. I consider myself a woman with inner beauty. I have my principles. I have acquired many wonderful principles from my family and I plan to follow this through the rest of my life."

That pretty well touches all of the principled bases for the self-assured debaters, too. No one can ever doubt their self-satisfaction in the pursuit of the Oval Office. Still, there were voices on stage with thoughts that made you wonder about their crazy pursuit of the crown. For example, Michele Bachmann attacked Rick Perry for mandating the use of an anti-cancer vaccine on teenage girls. There's more, folks.

She then rushed off to speak to Fox News, which is a kind of latrine for conservatives who have to go, to warn of the dangers of the vaccine. She said she had been told by one mother that the latter's daughter suffered mental retardation after she was vaccinated!

Poor Michele, whose fortunes are falling as fast as they once arose. That wouldn't even get her an honorable mention in the la-la land of Miss Universe.

How I imagined Michele's own "response"

Sorry, folks, but couldn't resist this "exchange" between two of America's leading Christians in which Michele Bachmann turns down Rick Perry's invitation to a pas de deux at the Texas governor's pray-in in Houston. Her dance card is filled these days in Iowa.

Republican theocracy rising again in Iowa

THE QUESTION WE face, Dear Friends, in the next half-year is not whether the nation will survive the Zombie-like creatures that inhabit the political Right (Wrong?) and close down state governments, but whether we can survive the rampant madness of the Republican presidential candidates heading into the Inquisitorial Iowa caucuses. The Christian Crusaders, on the march for a theocracy, have now elevated homosexuality and same-sex marriage to first place in their dire predictions of how we are all going straight to hell. And when we flinch upon hearing of Morals Police in other countries whose religious insistence leads to unthinkable abuses, let us turn to fanatics like Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum for our wackos.

Having been a political writer and editor for many years, I concede that such reporting would be better satisfied today solely by religious writers prepared to sort the nonsense from the nonsense. We have now reached the point where Santorum, the modern version of Savanarola in a business suit, has gone to public confession to tell us about his wonderful relationship with his wife, if not yet the Iowa Republicans.

Here's what he owned up to:

"I pledged personal fidelity to my wife when I was married to her. And pledged the same, that I would not involve myself in any other relationship with anybody else who is married. So that's a pledge I've taken and I take every single day when I - as a married person and feel very comfortable making that public statement."

Good for you, Rick. But why should anybody but the saints and sinners who will be evaluated in Iowa care, particularly those souls who spend most of their time trying to make ends meet or looking for a job?

Did I mention that Santorum's confession was part of his attack on same-sex marriage in a pledge circulated by an Iowa outfit called the Family Leader. Among the things the Santorum/Bachmann agreed to , if president, were bans on "all forms of pornogrphy and prostitution, infanticide, abortion, and other types of coercion stolen innocence."

Oh, in an article posted by Raw Story, they also promised to appoint conservative judges.

That, of course, would guarantee that the circle would be unbroken.

Independence Day: Religion, parades, politics

Independence Day weekend notes:

We read that the high priestess of the Tea Party was fully occupied with her business at hand: Speaking from her space station high above the usual political crowd, Michele Bachmann soared into the pages of the Biblical Chronicles as she urged the worshippers at two evangelical churches in Iowa to get right with the Lord . According to the Des Moines Register, Bachmann, a Republican presidential candidate, drove home her message with her scriptural route to salvation for America. She assured her audience that "if we do as Chronicles tells us, if we humble ourselves, and pray and confess our sins, and turn away from our wicked ways, and ask an almighty God to come and protect us and fight the battle for us, we know from his word, his promise is sure. He will come. He will heal our land. And we will have a new day."

Tall order, even for God.

Meanwhile, we also have read that Michele's husband, Marcus, who refers to himself as her "strategist', operates a Christian counseling service in Minnesota largely directed at making homesexuals "ungay". Indeed, he believes that gays are ...well here's exactly how he has put it:

'We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined.''

The quadrennial tent revivals in Iowa, otherwise known as the Republican caucuses, can't come soon enough.

**********

We spent some time as spectators Monday at the annual Fairlawn Fourth of July Parade. It is an annual Tootsie Roll shower and horn honking blast, the latter exercise as a means to liven up the pageant. I'm a sucker for Sousa marches but this parade has only one marching band in a mile of firetrucks, classic cars, politicians, martial arts and landscaping promoters. Well, the kids got pocketfuls of candy and loved it.

One surprising entry was Michael Williams, Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic's chief adversary in the Democratic primary. It isn't every day that a candidate in one city tries win favor in one of the suburbs. Meantime, Plusquellic was at Lock 3's big Fourth of July rib festival to introduce the Akron Symphony Orchestra performance and later the fireworks. It's where I should have been to hear the missing Sousa marches.

* ********

Less surprising in the series of weekend events was the unanimous nomination of Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff to the Board of Elections - a seat he had held before he was unceremoniously thrown out by former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. When he is reappointed by Jon Husted, Brunner's Republican successor - not IF - he will succeed Brian Daley, Arshinkoff's early choice to keep the seat warm until the boss was able to return with the changing of the guard in Columbus. But as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. After his nomination on Saturday, Arshinkoff was full of humility to return to doing "the people's work," as he described it, and spent the rest of the time slamming board member Wayne Jones, the county Democratic chairman. Here we go!

History is Bachmann's Waterloo

This comes from an alert reader:

Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has a thing for John Wayne. In an interview yesterday with Newsmax, she said she wants to live in “John Wayne’s America.” And in the Iowa town of Waterloo today, where she announced her presidential candidacy, Bachmann told Fox News, “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.” But unfortunately for historically challenged Bachmann, as the Washington Times points out, the John Wayne born in Waterloo is John Wayne Gacy, the notorious serial killer who murdered 33 teenage boys and young men, not the iconic Western actor.

Obama/Meyers vs. Trump: A Saturday night massacre

IF YOU MISSED THE annual White House Correspondents Assn. dinner Saturday night (C-Span, full coverage), you didn't see the classic putdowns of Donald Trump by both President Obama and Seth Meyers, the Saturday Night Live writer who was the standup comedian for the event. Obama's dart included a cartoon that imagined how Trump would bring change as president. The place would become a hotel/casino with cocktail servers wiggling around in bikinis. The Prex also opined amid rounds of laughter that his release of his birth certificate would allow Trump to show his leadership on such other weighty matters as whether the moon landing was faked.

Meyers, who followed Obama, didn't let up, telling the audience that although Trump figured to be running as a Republican, he was really running as a joke.

The Donald, who was the guest of the Washington Post for reasons that only the paper can explain, witnessed the assault from his table with his third wife seated aside him. He forced a few painful grins, then his inner cave man surfaced with that familiar bullish fright mask. He quickly left the scene with the same demeanor as the cameras followed him through the crowd of 3,000, some of whom who were still handing around when the event ended.

But the day wasn't totally a washout for the nasty billionaire. Earlier, at a luncheon, Sarah Palin (Remember her? She hopes so!) defended him, chirping words that went:

"We appreciate and respect Donald Trump. He's our buddy."

That's one, Mr. Trump. That's one.

Can't ignore Obama's spiked advice to Michele Bachmann, another of his loopy adversaries on the right. He reported that she was born in Canada. And tersely explained how the system allows such nonsense:

"Yes, Michele," he said of his fanciful one-liner, "this is how it starts."

Let's have a moment of silence for poor Iowa

WHAT MUST LIFE be like in Iowa to wake up each morning, turn on the radio and be told that Michele is back in town. Michele Bachmann, that is, the Minnesota congresswoman who is doing her part to move the Hawkeye state closer to a theocracy that she defines as freedom and liberty and such. Most recently, she again took on Planned Parenthood, now effortlessly describing it as the "LensCrafters of big abortions."

We can't be sure how that will go over with the execs at LensCrafters and whether they would rather that Michele drop her metaphors on a rival company. You can fairly ask why she chose an eyeglass company over, say, the "General Motors of big abortions" or the New York Yankees. Now we're beginning to make a little sense. Besides, what are big abortions, anyway?'

Poor Iowa, where there are some very nice people who don't need all of this silliness for the many months leading to the Republican presidential caucuses. They already have Rep. Steve King, whose dumb utterances arrive daily like the bong-bong of a grandfather clock. He will be remembered many decades from now as the fellow who said that if the government had followed his advice to abolish the IRS, one of its buildings wouldn't have been standing in February 2010 to tempt a crazed pilot to crash into it.

Nothing to be gained by mentioning that Mike Huckabee is working on another tent revival to carry him through the caucuses now that he has explained that he was misunderstood when he cast president Obama as a Mau Mau. Wanna bet that there won't be flyers tucked under automobile wipers on caucus day repeating Huckabee's original idea?

And it has to get worse before it has any hope of getting better. Donald Trump is scheduled to speak to a Republican Lincoln (!) Day dinner in Iowa in June. Will the thrice-married developer be inclined to speak on family values? Or will he still not have exhausted his mad crusade to expose Obama as, what? A darkly tanned Siberian?

Again, poor Iowa. The state deserves something better - and there's no chance that it will get it.

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.

Tea Party rebels upstaged by the one in Egypt

HOW INCONSIDERATE of the Egyptian protesters to hog up all of the precious TV time when the Tea Party rebels stormed Washington to take their country back. The mainstream media gave the conservative gathering's opening night rites such scant attention you could wonder why they didn't try to persuade Richard Engel to come home for the only true revolution.

The only thing absent from the throng of 10,000 saviors were fifes and drums and a tribute to Betsy Ross. Oh, Sarah Palin,too. She is so confident of her ascendancy in the public venues that she decided to stay away from this C-PAC to tend to her financial empire. Way to go, Sarah!

From the snippets I picked up of the calls to arms, the speakers obsessed on such things as President Obama's socialism, the delusion that he descended from the Montezumans, and that health care reform will lower the average life span of Americans by 20 years. (Think of the fogies on Capitol Hill that it would eliminate!) Rep. Steve King of Iowa, an unintended humorist, said he has a plan to defund ObamaCare. You will be hearing King's name often in a walk-on role in the months leading to the next election.

For these circuses, you merely have to round up the usual subjects to make it a worthwhile night on the town. Michele Bachmann was the keynote speaker, taking great delight in her every word. My favorite, as always, was Newt Gingrich, who for reasons that I can ony partly explain, reminds me of Jackie Gleason's pal, Crazy Guggenheim. Some of my friends might disagree, saying he more closely resembles Crazy Joe Davola of the Seinfeld cast. Gingrich never seems to be talking to anybody in particular as his words wander off into the atmosphere with ease.

I should mention, too, that along came Donald Trump with a surprise appearance that drew a crowd when he said Ron Paul couldn't win. He could have added the names of several others on the scene.

Finally, one of the Tea Party's major architects, Glenn Beck, remained in his classroom with all of the scribbled blackboards, grieving that America will be consumed by a new World Order while Obama joins the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Chinese Communists, whatever. "If you want to call me crazy," Beck babbled, "call me crazy." OK. I will.

P.S. Watch for the delirium over a straw poll at the conference for the presidential candidates. I predict the straw will win.

Next logical step: Reforming the 10 Commandments

A FRIEND WHO FINALLY landed a job as a fast-food dishwasher in Washington reports that John Boehner & Co. have decided to strike out in a startling new direction from months of calling for changes in the Constitution.. "They've decided there isn't much more mileage to be gained with the voters who have a short interest span anyway and they plan a major assault on the Ten Commandments," he told me.

"That's pretty risky business, " I said. "The Commandments have been around for a long time."

"Apparently that makes no difference to the reformers. They say that given the current mood of the country they can't afford to pass up this window of opportunity to advance their goals for a permanent Republican majority."

"Yes, that does make some sense. What are Commandments for if you can't break them as needed. Do they want to rewrite all of them?"

"No, that would be too disruptive for all of the TV preachers who condition their troops for Republican causes. At the moment, they are only looking at the Ninth Commandment."

"Which is ---?"

"---You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. They will argue that the Commandment is obsolete inasmuch as it was handed to Moses long before there was a Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann. But they feel a wisp of guilt when their children and grandchildren are around. By eliminating the Commandment, they can do what they are already doing without having to explain it to their families."

"Wow! They always think of something."

"They're just getting started. When Boehner becomes the House Speaker in the next Congress they have plans go after other things that we have long taken for granted."

"For instance?"

"I can only say that two congressmen from Texas came into our restaurant the other day to pass out copies of a new Boy Scout Oath."