May we have a truce in War on Christmas?

There's no letup by the gateway theologians who are making war on those accused of  making war on Christmas.  As the tinseled authors of seasonal books, they have made it to the top of the best-seller lists under the trade names of  Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, among others, producing screeds in time to increase their own mass marketing  profits  before Santa arrives.

That's smart business practice.  Why would you complain about a war on Christmas in mid-summer when many Americans are preoccupied with making war on crabgrass?

The inspirational leader  of these entrepreneurial tests is O'Reilly, who has found his groove in titles that begin with "Killing..."  That, of course, thrusts his literary pursuits directly into America's passion for violence.  In another five years or so, O'Reilly will have killed  off more people than the Florentine plagues.

As a merciful writer, I have despaired of the war crimes associated with Christmas. So I chose my only option with a cue from O'Reilly.  In a few hours I will begin writing my own book titled "Killing Macy's"  and will have it on Amazon in 24 hours. Without apologies, my book will take it to the heart of the battlefront.

I hope the gateway theologians will accept my desperate enterprise in the spirit of the season with a holiday truce that  could begin to  fill my own Christmas stocking.

Fa la la la...

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To digress:  After watching OSU 's loss to MSU, it seemed reasonable to conclude  that the Bucks stopped in Indy.

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Let me close by assigning the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy Award (GALL)  to Sen. Rand Paul in the unholiest sense.  The Kentucky Republican  asserted that the extension of jobless benefits beyond the Dec. 28 expiration date would be a "disservice" to the unemployed.  Guys like Paul forever keep me guessing about their loose talk.  But he said it on Fox News so it must be true.

Michel(l)e Bachmann, how could you abandon us?

Somehow, I'm going to miss Michele Bachmann.  It has taken me so long to remember whether she spelled her name with one "l" or two, as in Obama and Pfeiffer.  (I didn't always succeed in print!)

For the lifespan of my  Grumpy Abe and Plunderbund posts , she  provided bizarre "content" when everything else seemed to be on the serious side while Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert  and Rand Paul were taking the day off.  You may recall that it was Gohmert, the wacko Republican representative from Texas who advanced the notion that immigrant women bear children  on American soil so  that the kids will grow up to become terrorists.  (If you don't recall it, you've  lost nothing, folks.)

You could always count on the Flat-Earth Goddess of the Tea Party  in the U.S. House to say something scarily entertaining even though it didn't make sense.   But. alas, she announced during a tour of Russia - see how comedic this can be? -  that she will not seek another term from a Minnesota district in 2014.

You would have thought that Queen Elizabeth had  abdicated and moved to Ireland. The Bachmann  news reverberated across Big Media, if not shopping malls, baseball games and garden clubs.

Still it's  hard to imagine a planet without  Michele's wisdom,  the preferred sweet-sounding voice of the Flintstones.  The immediate buzz was that she will be offered a fat contract by Fox News to continue her unofficial  labors for much that is wrong about political life in America.

In a melancholy mood, I  offer a few Bachmannisms as a going-away cache  from the Micel(l)e archives.:

She accused President Obama of spending $200 million on a trip to India.

During her overreaching presidential campaign, she promised the electorate that as president she would let Americans  choose their own  light bulbs.

She insisted that an aide to Hillary Clinton was "affiliated" with the Muslim Brotherhood.

She thought it was an "interesting coincidence" that swine flu outbreaks in the 1970s and again in 2009 occurred during Democratic presidencies.

Michel(l)e, how could you leave  us bloggers when you have so much to offer on those days when we have nothing more to think about but the hapless Ohio legislature?

Rand Paul isn't putting me to sleep

Talk about sequester - doesn't everybody? - Sen. Rand Paul, the self-styled Republican economic fortress from Kentucky,  says he can't understand what the fuss is all about.  The cuts would be nothing more than a "pittance", he says,  which is more than  a lot of people will be forced to live on. And a "yawn".  But who can really sleep with this loopy guy on the loose in the corridors on Capitol Hill?

Lose or lose, the crocs go after (president) Hillary

Having been thwarted in their four-year mission to make Barack Obama a one-term president, Republicans have now embarked on a new mission: Make Hillary Rodham Clinton a no-term president.  If you checked in on Clinton's appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, you may have gotten a whiff of Campaign 2016 even though not a soul has yet announced his or her candidacy to succeed Obama.

Given the chance of the Capitol Hill TV version of Project  Runway to get to the root of the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, the GOP side pounced on her testimony with a story line that Hillary is an incompetent "Madam Secretary" and a phony at that.

Some in the anti-Hillary camp had  accused her  earlier of faking a concussion to avoid appearing before the virile committee that a mere woman could  not match.    And when she teared  up at the beginning of her testimony, that proved  she was following a script to win public sympathy.  At least, that's what Rush Limbaugh raged to his  own audience that nods like wilting sunflowers at his every word.  She did, however, have her strong moments  against the critics on the panel who, um,  were doing the will of the people.

A few of the Republican darts stood out:

Sen. Rand Paul, the airball from Kentucky,  told Clinton that if he had been president,  he would have  fired her.  (The good news: No danger of this guy ever being president.)

Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, in a blustery melt,  repeatedly declared that the American people are frustrated by the lack of  information about Benghazi. (Translation of this mouthful: Some of the  American people from his southern district.  Wasn't he the guy who once described undocumented immigrants as "vagrants and animals?" )

Tea Party Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin accused her of making excuses for not  taking a  hands-on role in the Sept. 11 attack.    She replied it wasn't an excuse but a fact that she didn't want  to interfere with the ongoing FBI's  investigative role.  When Johnson persisted , she angrily replied, her voice rising:

"Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference , at this point, does it make?"

With a 67 pct. approval rating, this special woman proved it would take more than the crocodiles from the other side to tarnish her profile with the American voters.  Of course, we're still four years away from the next election. So what's the point of the new GOP search and destroy initiative?  That's the McParty's problem. It doesn't have any points these days.

Words from Supreme Court 'authority' Rand Paul

Late words from the Rand Paulpit:   

''Just because a couple of people on the Supreme Court declare something to be constitutional does not make it so"

Right .  And just because people  call you senator doesn't mean you're not  totally mad.

Surely Senator Paul jests. Not.

Let's see.  There was Mad King George.  And Mad King Ludwig.  That's pretty tough company  for Sen. Rand Paul, but the Kentucky Republican is getting closer to making it a threesome.

Paul added another  claim to his bogeyman  behavior in the Senate this week by strangely linking federal flood insurance to the abortion issue. He warned that he would block a bill extending FEMA's flood insurance program for five more years unless the Senate  voted on a  measure declaring that life begins at the moment of conception - the so-called personhood concept.

Surely, he jests.   Surely,  he doesn't.  And his timing is awful, coming just as flooding caused by  Tropical Storm Debby was driving tens of thousands of Floridians from their homes.  Paul says he's "just trying to get  a vote for the people who elected me". Kentucky, the Beautiful.

Mad Senator Paul?  I'm getting used to the idea.

Three's a dumb crowd

DUMB:

When asked what sort of vice president he would choose for his presidency, Mitt Romney said he would pick somebody like Dick Cheney because of the former veep's' "wisdom and judgment''. Let's see. What would be the first country Mitt would invade?

DUMBER:

From the lips of Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican : "People move up, the American dream does exist...The rich are getting richer, but the poor are getting richer even faster."

DUMBEST:

From the lips of Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Republican (like son. like father): A sick man who opted out of buying health insurance should be left to die. (Note: Ohio's Tea Party "leaders" have endorsed this screwball for president. )

Rand Paul: Rich people can solve drug problems

(Eighth in a series)

That's Rand Paul in the photo. By now most people have probably heard of him. He is a Kentucky veterinarian, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate and a bad joke on what's left of the political class. Paul should be an embarrassment for the GOP, but not that you would know it. After all, he is seeking the seat that will be vacated by Jim Bunning, a Republican and a former baseball pitcher who once threatened to sue his own party in a moment of sheer wackiness. Of late, Paul has been taking on the severe drug problem in his state by insisting that it can be rolled back by creating more rich people (cue the tape to where it talks about cutting taxes) . Do you think he's aware that some folks have gotten quite rich already, thank you, by pushing drugs?