35,000 walrus need no 'proven proof'

It may offer small consolation but  I did want this entry to let you know that  humans are not the only stressed-out creatures on the planet today. Thanks to this remarkable AP photo that arrived via ThinkProgress, we learned that some 35,000  walrus sought solid ground  on a beach in northwest Alaska, driven landward as rising temperatures melted their ice base offshore. (Note the inland bulge from the sea)

Probably won't convince Alaska's Sarah Palin, the state's leading climate change denier that worrisome things are happening that are easily viewed from her front porch. After all, as she has reminded us, it snowed in Alaska last year, so where's the proof of global warming?

There was some of that gibberish in a debate involving the Republican Senate candidate in Iowa, Joni Ernst.  She did fuzz up her thoughts by saying she believed climate was changing but added that she was at a  loss to know what caused it, or whether human beings had anything to do with it.

As she noted earlier,  "I have not seen proven proof".

Good grief.  What is "proven  proof"?  Is it the same as "true facts"?  

As I have written before, when this generation of pols passes on, it  will leave no intellectual history behind for all of those who come later.

Palin: Low minimum wage a roadmap to brighter future

Reposted from Plunderbund

May we pause for a moment to give thanks to the presence  in our midst of comic opera diva Sarah Palin, who brightens each day with cheerful lyrics that sustain us in the rush of awful news from around the world.

 Her latest aria, voiced from a truck stop north of Fairbanks, and played quite broadly, told us there is a brighter  future for people who work for minimum wages - or less. Reaching a high C, she reminded all of us  that such jobs are not lifetime endeavors  but rather "stepping stones" to something quite  more rewarding. Another controversy happily settled!

Speaking of Palin, whom John McCain assumed would be his light to the end of the tunnel, CNN's Candy Crowley gave us some flickering gaslight as to why he appears on so many of her programs.  Listen to this Crowley gem, class:

"Senator McCain, lots of people, when we have you on, often say, why do you have him on so often.  And we say  because he answers our questions,  because he expresses his views quite clearly."

Oh? Still unanswered by him is how he dared risk the nation with a daffy woman a heartbeat away from the presidency."  Fortunately, the voters didn't wait for the answer.  




.

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...

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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.

That's one way to explain no GOP council seats

In our continuing effort to alert you to the crackling insights shaping today's political dialogue, we refer you to a comment by Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff to the Beacon Journal to explain  the absence of a single member of his party on Akron City Council.  Asked why the GOP hasn't elected a Republican to a ward seat  for 15 years - nor an at-large seat for 46 years -  the chairman for many of those shutout years told reporter Stephanie Warsmith that it's largely about demographics.

"It is very difficult for us even to compete in the African-American sections of the city," he said.  (Does this refer to the more upscale Ward 8?)

The problem  is  the ongoing effort by the party's deep thinkers in Ohio and other states  to circumvent  or shrink the African-American vote with various ploys that haven't worked.  Years ago Arshinkoff talked about how the party was making an effort to expand its base to include minorities.  Didn't happen.  Not even close.  Think the word didn't reach  the aforementioned sections of town that  black voters aren't on the party's A-list?

* * * * *

Heavens!  Sarah's back. Hasn't lost a syllable in her chirping indignation that she isn't provided her very own limo to important Republican events.  So there she was, so full of her Palinesque Tea Party self on Fox, repeating the charges against the Obama administration, including a rehashed reference to Benghazi.  She's now expanded her oratorical ramble to include Republican Mitch McConnell.  She wants to turn him into a loser   in next year's election.  That much, she knows something about , having lost in 2008  despite accompanying a war hero  at the top of the ticket.  Somebody ought to talk to her about also being available for weddings and wakes to liven up things.

* * * * *

Finally, speaking of absurdities,you can always find something bizarre about the Sean Hannity Show.  In his armored panzer assaults on Obamacare, he brought in  a panel to tug at your heartstrings over what each guest must suffer from health care reforms.  Turns out to be sort of a stunt, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Salon reporter Eric Stern decided to contact the guests  and found a lack of awareness in each.  One worried guest told him that he had to cut back his staff to four because of new costs.  You'd think  Hannity would have intervened  with a touch of reality by noting Obamacare does not apply to employers with fewer than 50  workers.  Others noted  that the new insurance rates would cost them much more.  But Stern checked each and learned that it simply wasn't true.

Stern concluded: "I don't doubt that these six individuals believe that Obamacare is a disaster; but none of them had even visited an insurance exchange."

But, of course, we're talking about a la-la Hannity event, aren't we?  .

* * * * *
That is a small portion of the week that was - and will be again this week. 

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?

Sarah Palin's new acting career in works

Ever since Sarah Palin's stunning Big Gulp comedy act at CPAC, rumors have raised  the possibility of a new acting career to replace a waning political role.  Some insiders are suggesting  that she would be a perfect Annie Oakley in  a Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun inasmuch as she could provide her own arsenal of guns. And a grizzly or two.

Other ideas would have her playing Eleanor
Roosevelt,  Mother Teresa (Sarah's not getting any younger!)  or Kate Smith reprising God Bless America in a TV series scripted just for her.  (Kate Smith would be a perfect fit for Sarah  if the former Alaska governor insists on gulping  sugary soda for her comedy routines.)

My choice is the  gossip that she is already in rehearsal to play Tina Fey on Broadway.  Go ahead and gulp, if you like. Just one won't hurt you.

Add another to the GOP list of rising stars

As I continue to explore the bright Republican firmament for "rising stars",  I am happy to report still another one as identified by McClatchy newspapers  in its coverage of the big conservative shindig in Maryland,  a.k.a. Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention.  It is Sen.Tim Scott of South Carolina, who was appointed recently to fill the seat of Jim DeMint, who departed to head the Heritage Foundation.

Scott made it to the not-so-exclusive  Rising Star column as the party's first black senator since Reconstruction.  He thus joins other media-designated alleged upwardly mobile luminaries as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, John Kasich and Jeb Bush's son, George Prescott Bush. (I hope I got G.P.'s name right.  There are so many Bushes demanding our attention that I get mixed up at times.)

Missing from the list is  ex-Sen. Scott Brown, who lost in November and is now a lobbyist.  A senator with an ex in front his title is immediately banished from the GOP's distinguished wish list.  Also missing is Tim Tebow, whose stardom was rising until he was flattened a few times with the New York Jets.  Now, he is afforded the backup possibility of a "window of opportunity" by the sports media inasmuch as  the team's starting quarterback is also a falling star.

You can forget Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, too. They have both worked hard at being rising stars and neither ever really  got off the ground. I'll keep you posted,

Mitt's game change doesn't change very much

Well, at least Mitt didn't land on the battleship Wisconsin in flight gear to announce his Mission Accomplished. His political histrionics also began with another  "game change"  with him announcing, and later correcting, Paul Ryan as the "next president of the United States."

With Mitt Romney, you never know.

As I watched Act One of the media cliff-hanger finally played out, I must admit that it all gave me a sense of Yogi Berra's "deje vu all over again".  As some of the pundits  quickly defined  Romney's  choice as the means to ignite his skeptical conservative base - why must conservatives always have to be ignited? -  I recalled the moment from the 2008 GOP presidential convention in which Sarah Palin bounded  onto the stage  to be introduced as John McCain's exciting runningmate.  There was a lot of talk at that time that this firebrand from Alaska or somewhere could be counted on to invigorate McCain's languishing campaign.  Some of the white guys in the the convention crowd showed up wearing buttons teling us that Sarah was "hot".

That, too, was to be the "game changer'", which ultimately led to a not-so-flattering  book and movie.  The irony of it was that it in fact changed Palin's  game of rising  celebrity to that of a slighted  - if wealthier -  bystander in today's political crowd.

Ryan, the right-wing "blue collar" Wisconsin congressman, has a long paper trail that will be fully vetted in neighborhoods  across America by November..  For now, we're content to  conclude that  McMitt Romney has been handed a partner by the hard right, succumbing to, say, William Kristol, the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove,  Wall Street Journal and Tea Party gurus.

You have to wonder.  Haven't the currents polls been telling us that independent voters are giving President Obama a wider edge over Romney?  They have.  But when you've become a captive of a well-nourished radically ideological base, this isn't really isn't something that worries him.

One of these days I may be forced to take Paul Ryan's advice and read Ayn Rand.

Word game of guilt by association.

Although word association tests are not within my comfort zone, they might be just what the political doctor ordered for Grumpy Abe on a balmy August afternoon.  So here is my effort of pregnant associations , which could be augmented if you are one to enjoy word games (my life story!):

Mitt Romney:  Stuff, a neutral non-commital word which is what he said he bought at a hardware store.  (It is also a word that  a friend once complained of having "too much of" in his house).

Newt Gingrich: Food stamps, which Newt accused President Obama of being the biggest provider ever.

Josh Mandel:  Money. No need to elaborate.

Rush Limbaugh: Slut, as in...

The Rev. Pat Robertson:  Godless, describing everyone who isn't on his page.

Sheldon Adelson: Israel, one of the few areas where he and Robertson agree.

Rupert Murdoch: Power, as in "fair and balanced is not what you think"

Gov. Kasich:  Idiot, his  reference to a cop that arrested him for a traffic violation.

Koch Brothers:  Uber wealth,  like Doublemint gum,  Romney's  right-wing "double your treasure" guys.

Sarah Palin:  Front porch, which is where her esoteric worldly vision begins.

Josh Mandel: Money.  Oops.  Already said that.  Still, worth repeating, don't you think?

'

Innocent abroad - or another ugly American?

Not since the colonists dumped the tea overboard in Boston Harbor have the Brits been so offended by  an American political act.  We refer, of course, to the outrage expressed by Prime Minister David Cameron and others on  down in booming headlines  over Mitt Romney's suspicion that our Anglo-Saxon friends might not be up to staging a successful Olympics.

Wasn't Romney the one boastfully slamming President Obama for hurting our international relations  like a raw kid at the rear of the class?  Meantime, we'll never know the details of Mitt's own stewardship of the 2002 Winter Olympics back home because somehow all of the records  have been destroyed..

Way  to go, Willard!   Time to get out of the islands  before they send in the Redcoats.  The country knows Churchillian prose - and you're no Winnie.

P.S.  If you had trouble remembering the name of labor party leader Ed Miliband as he stood aside you, take a cue from Sister Palin: Next time, write it on the palm of your hand.

Romney to choose "an incredibly boring" what?

Several media have buzzed a report from inside the Romney campaign that he will choose an "incredibly boring white guy"  as his veep candidate.

If so, that would make two of them at the top of the ticket.  Oh, where are  Herman Cain or Sarah Palin to enliven the ticket?

Tina Fey is back; Puerto Rico to Santorum: No mas!

SARAH PALIN, UNDAUNTED BY a movie that casts her as a dope, says she will go to the Republican convention in Tampa because she's "not closing the door" on anything. That can only mean that she has more fame and misfortune in her summer vacation plans, and that (1) she can see the White House from the convention stage or (2) she is, in fact, a winking dope.

At this point, my problem with her is that she always seems to be Sarah Palin playing Tina Fey who played Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. And now to complicate matters, she may start playing Julianne Moore who plays Sarah Palin in Game Change. If that happens, Katie Couric will have her hands full asking all three of them which newspapers they read, don't you think?

But we'll know for sure when she arrives in Tampa that she freakin' well is serious when she tells the media that, of course, she can clearly see the White House from her perch in Florida.

As she tells it like it never was, there will be other dopes in the crowd who will nod in approval.

* * * * *

WILLARD ROMNEY said this week end that he "can't take a stand" on U.S. troop withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan because he doesn't have enough information!. But he did opine that things don't seem to be going very well in the decade-long conflict and that President Obama must share the blame for his "lack of leadership".

He said what?/?/?

Among Obama's failures is lack of experience in running a business, Romney said, insisting that even though the economy is improving Obama made it worse. Finally, he says he's quite wealthy and won't apologize for it. And he tells us that Obama is a "lightweight?

* * * * * *

Finally the week-end brought McRick Santorum bad news from Puerto Rico, where he was clobbered by the voters in the wake of of his decree on English-spoken statehood. Did I hear them say, "No mas!" ?

His latest fervent crusade is against what he calls a "pandemic" of pornography. Like Romney, he blames Obama for an absence of leadership, accuses the president of being soft on porn by his "refusal to enforce obscenity laws."

We recall a day when Mayor Ralph Perk staged an anti-porn conference in Cleveland and went on endlessly about men who bed down with inflated rubber dolls. My hunch is that some still do, and will continue to so long after Santorum moves on to his very own monastery.

She's back; need we say more?

Notes from the other world...

AS A DEDICATED chronicler of survival news for your civics classes, I am offering an updated memo on the current crop of patriots who want to lead our country. You will note that there is nothing of significance that escapes their vigilence and incisive reflection .

So let the wisdom flow:

Michele Bachmann: She warns that, according to a Tampa mother, her infant daughter suffered mental retardation after receiving HPV, the vaccine against cervical cancer.

Newt Gingrich: Child labor laws are stupid, and judges who hand down politically incorrect decisions should be arrested.

Ron Paul: A Libertarian, he would prefer to have all government eliminated. He also believes the Civil War was unnecessary because Lincoln could have avoided it by buying all of the slaves.

Mitt Romney: We mustn't be too specific here. Whatever he says today could be obsolete tomorrow.

Rick Perry: He supports gun control by advising gun owners to use both hands.

Rick Santorum: C0nsensual gay sex in the home is the same as bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. He explains: "That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing."

Sarah Palin: She's critical of the White House's "odd" Christmas card that has a seasonal setting of poinsettia and the Obama's dog, Bo, who is is reclining in front a fireplace framed by garlands. She complained that the card lacks the traditional values of "family, faith and freedom." (Should she be reminded that President Reagan's 1984 card pictured a snowy White House driveway with a dog's footprints?) Jeez!

Donald Trump: We saved the best for last. Always the player, he says he would be a formidable third party candidate because of his popularity among blacks , Hispanics and labor

unions. (Not to mention his face in the mirror!)

Well, I tried.

Of hurricanes, locusts and Michele Bachmann

THE REPUBLICAN presidential candidates and their kin have been constructing their own Tower of Babble since Annie Oakley arrived from Alaska to lay waste to the Obama Administration. Sarah Palin and her wondrous reflections on everything not verified by textbooks have sort of been orbiting on the fringes of the current crop of carnivores, but it does lead you to wonder whether there isn't some truth to the peril of peaking too fast.

Meantime we've been treated to the grapes of wrath from everyone else carrying the banner of God, Jefferson Davis, Glenn Beck and Grover Norquist. (I've left some others out, but you surely get the idea.)

Some samples of this political theater of the absurd: The President will declare martial law (Mentioned prez candidate Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican) ; The federal government should be "inconsequential'', hotshot (hot flash?) meteor Rick Perry; Obama is overreaching by encouraging children to exercise (Fox & Friends, presidential "advisors".) Obama is only interested in creating class warfare instead of jobs (House Majority leader Eric Cantor) ; Obama is a Communist, socialist and elitist because he put Dijon mustard on his hamburger. (Ready choir?)

And just now, candidate Michele Bachmann has plaintively lamented in response to the hurricane: "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians."

If you don't mind, Michele, I presume we still have to get to the frogs, lice and locusts. I don't even want to wait for the movie.

In politics, a belly ablaze replaces gravitas

AS WE STUMBLE to another presidential election in the hazy distance, this will be the moment when new criteria are accorded wannabe candidates. Unlike the sensible days when we judged the aspirants on whether they had "gravitas" or whether he or she was an alpha person, today's standard is whether any of them has "fire in the belly." Haley Barbour, you may recall, retired to the bleachers with the explanation that his settled tummy told him that he needn't bother. On the other hand, Sarah Palin took umbrage to reports that she had suspended her ballyhooed tour because she no long saw the oval office in her future. (Nor did the media that grew tired of her stunt and stopped covering it!) She reminded anyone who still cared that she was not a quitter and still had a blazing belly.

I spent my childhood around immigrants who kept Alka-Seltzer at their fingertips after a hell fire dinner that could have been serviceable to clean battery terminals. Their agony was never very easy to witness. On this topic, trust me. I know what I'm talking about.

I think we ought to find other ways for candidates to judge their personal ambitions. The level of gray matter in their skulls would be a valid indicator of whether to be or not to be. A maximum of three dumb statements would disqualify one faster than a fiery dyspeptic belly, don't you think? That would eliminate most of the Republican field, including the alphas. And one of the things I learned when candidates were being judged by the gravitas quotient was that most voters had no idea what the pundits meant. (I do recall being told by one astute observer that he was certain gravitas was a major league shortstop.)

Well, I'm digressing, I know. But it comes from paying too much attention to the oddest things that will determine the next GOP presidential nominee - if, as we are repeatedly being warned, the world doesn't end sooner.

Sarah's East Coast Iditarod

AS WE GLANCED at the latest TV report of Sarah Palin's Lower 48 version of the Iditarod up the East Coast, it became clear from the frenzy that we were witnessing the Palin First Law of Centripetal Force. That is,

A falling body decelerates relative to the mass of media energy affecting it.

Folks, not since reporter Nellie Bly infiltrated an asylum for a story and followed up by circling the globe in 80 days have we seen such a determined self-absorbed human spectacle. Donald Trump, with whom she met along the way for a collectible photo-op, could not match it once his birther plot died. The media could not resist Sarah's latest stunt. It's a given factor that she doesn't overlook these days. Will her gravitational pull ever be exhausted? Not until after she topples over Niagara Falls in a barrel?

Palin Aboard the Traveiing Circus

INDOOR COOK-IN for hot spring day:

Andrew Sullivan reports in the Daily Dish this fragrant quotable from Sarah Palin at her Rolling Thunder bike appearance in Washington:

"I love the smell of the emissions."

Now that she's found a way for the media to mention her, has there ever been an over the top national politician who has made so much money purposely doing silly things. Next: a bungee jump without a bounce? Or maybe Medea-like, to soar aloft in a magic chariot!

Finally, did you happen to see the the full-page spread on traveling circuses in today's New York Times. The headline told us: No Elephant Left Behind: On the Road With the Circus.

Although I'm sure it was coincidental, the paper's facing page carried a large photo and story about biker Palin's bid to be.... the elephant that wasn't left behind.

Harper's June Index had this report re religiophiles:

Amount of federal money that went to National Public Radio in 2010: $2,700.000.

To Jerry Falwell's Liberty University: $446,000,000.

John Boehner and others in his crowd are complaining that the reason a majority of Americans oppose the wonderful Ryan Medicare proposal is that they don't understand it. Peter the Great had the same problem with his subjects who were not on the same page with some of his ideas, lamenting: "They understand everything erroneously."

For the Palins: It's all in the family

I'll HAVE TO give Sarah Palin some credit: if there's a dollar to be made by her or her daughter Bristol, they'll find a way to come up with it. As a teen ambassador for an anti-teen pregnancy foundation in 2009, Bristol, now 20, was paid $262,000 by the Candies Foundation, a division of the Candies clothing company. However, the foundation reportedly only spent $35,000 on actual pregnancy prevention programs. Bristol, a single mother herself, defended the pay , telling the Associated Press: "I don't think anyone realizes how difficult it really is until you actually have a screaming baby in your arms and you're up all night." Hey, Bristol, those of us with kids, know. For heaven's sake,we know!.

When Lincoln Day has no meaning for the new GOP

AS I MENTIONED earlier, I will not be attending the Summit County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner Saturday night at Quaker Station. Big deal, right?

Let me explain: First of all, as you may have guessed, I am not a Republican. Secondly, I wouldn't want to be keeping company with Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's special guest, Mike Huckabee, who will be signing his book(s), playing guardian angel with all of his well wishers and promising to lead a failing nation away from President Obama's road to perdition.

An evangelical preacher, Huckabee has been spending some time rounding up hundreds of like-minded preachers in an apparent effort to run the table in the 2012 Iowa presidential caucuses just as he did in 2008. In Iowa, the former GOP has become a subsidary of the right-wing pulpitistas who are educating people on how to be "Biblically informed" in politics.

Huckabee has left no doubt that he wants to Christianize the nation as he sees fit, and so Akron area Republicans will get a strong sense of his purifying anti-Obama, anti-gay and various other assaults on secular abominations targeted by the social conservatives.

There has been some feeling, I'm sure, that my anti-Arshinkoff pique is soley the reaction to being unceremoniously ejected from his big wingding last summer. Wrong. As a nosy reporter over the years, I've been thrown out of much better places. But the incident at the party's fundraiser fueled my stronger disdain for what little is left of the GOP as a whole. As such, Arshinkoff is merely a local apparatchik for a deranged national party whose marketing message has become the property of Tea Party favorites like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and an army of freshmen senators and representatives in Congress. Don't think so? Ask John Boehner.

In a relatively short time on Capitol Hill and among legislators and governors' offices across America, they have strutted around with weighty chips on their shoulders since the November election. Insisting that their thoughts have been sculpted by "the people who have spoken", they have taken enormous liberty with realities, from huffily condemning environmental concerns about global warming to downgrading the needs of the elderly and the poor. (Goodbye food stamps?)

They have become the new hucksters of the Midway, seeking novel ways to challenge voters on Election Day. In Ohio, where there has been no evidence of serious voter fraud, the GOP is intent on creating new hurdles for voters to prevent, um, serious voter fraud. They have set out to eliminate unions once and for all under the cover of restricting collective bargaining while at the same time denying the public unions the right to strike. By the most rational labor relations gambit, that is still a non sequitur.

They have bashed gays with Falwell-style license ("Love the sinner, but hate the sin" - Huh!) and disagreed with military sources who say ridding the ranks of Don't Ask Don't Tell is not causing any problems. Same sex marriages? Stem cell research? Forget it - this from a party who wants get the government off our backs.

While we're at it, how about their mind control efforts as they rework our text books and darkly monitor what they consider offensive in museums. The evangelical governor of Maine orders the removal of a mural at the state's Department of Labor as being too "pro-labor". (You can't make up such insanity.) In Wisconsin, the Republican Party has demanded to see the e-mails of a distinguished University of Wisconsin history professor who has been critical of the governor. It is purely a fishing expedition.

National Public Radio? It's too liberal - and good luck on explaining that spin. Sarah Palin, the wintry wind from the north, has slammed the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, describing the two agencies as "trivialities". She obviously has no sense of the darkness and dense culture of the Middle Ages. A real case may be made that we are not talking about liberal broadcasting here, which would be hard to prove anyway. Instead, there are religious broadcasters waiting in the wings for spots on the radio spectrum that will be vacated when some NPR stations go out of business..

In their long pursuit of an abortion-free land, these culture warriors otherwise acting as politicians also want to put Planned Parenthood out of business (with plenty of help from the Catholic and Southern Baptist hierarchies).

Sometimes the new arrivals stumble over their own far-fetched ideas. In Ohio, Gov. Kasich wants to privatize liquor sales to please his crony investors even though booze is the only profitable business run by the state. In his haste to serve his own contributors, he has been ready to privatize everything except Lake Erie. But only because the state only owns a slim part of it.

All of the above is at the heart of my scorn of the Republican Party. Arshinkoff's antics merely helped me file it under damaged goods.

It's ironic that the Lincoln Day Dinner may be held on the week end when a Gingrich 2 may be upon us - a government shutdown. And who will be hurt the most by it?

I've decided that instead of giving a $50 dinner fee to the GOP on Saturday, I'll send the money to where reality exists 24 hours a day - the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank's Harvest for Hunger. It will do a lot more good for humanity, don't you think?

Harold MacMillan, the former British prime minister, once grunted to an aide as he was uncomfortably obliged to move into a crowd of voters during a campaign.

"Beastly things," he said. "Elections."

That's where we are today, people.

UPDATE; Arshinkoff has reached farthest to the right for the Ohio congressman who will introduce Huckabee: Urbana area Republican Jim Jordan, former OSU assistant wrestling coach who has won several awards from right-wing groups , including Pro-life Legislator of the Year from the United Conservatives of Ohio. He is now chairman of the Republican Study Committee in Washington, a conservative outfit with no peer. He has joined four other congressmen in sponsoring a bill whose provisions include capping food stamps for all recipients and even denying them to a family if one of its members is on strike. Among his other positions, needless to mention, are limits to sex education, opposition to gay marriage and support of the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. Whew! Way to go, Alex, who happily describes Jordan in a press release as a "fast rising conservative star"!