When one begins with a narrative already in place to which every occurrence must conform, it’s much easier to come to conclusions about “why” a creepy nerd and loser obsessed with others’ private lives suddenly won three state primaries against much better-funded opponents.  You see, the narrative of the week had already been established,  Liberal Baby Killers Bully Real Americans, and then it happened twice more!  Bonus!  Tiny, powerless, retiring outfits like Susan G. Komen and the Catholic Hospital Complex both got cruelly slapped down by thuggish, hairy-legged harridans, provoking ritual pearl-clutching and chest beating (depending on gender, of course), not from those concerned, but from those paid to bloviate about such things. While that whining temper tantrum was still very much in progress, with more to come in TV green rooms across America, the dreaded, commie 9th Circuit Court tossed Proposition 8 out on its well-scrubbed Mormon ear.  The God-botherers are, as you can imagine, thanking Supply Side Jesus for dealing them such a Royal Flush of false victimhood, and are not unexpectedly using Santorum’s “victory” to “prove” America is as obnoxiously holy as they are.

Right.  The same America that so recently fell for Newt.  As I’ve mentioned before, the dire problems the Republicans are facing in 2012 are all of their own making, and all a product of the descent of the party from governing idea to marketing scam.  As Americans, even Republicans, we are quite aware we’re being scammed, because its happened so often before.  Basically, the Republicans have sold out to a bunch of wealthy interests who don’t have the country’s interests at heart, and enabled them to systematically loot its wealth.  Since saying so honestly, much less campaigning on such a program, would never do, they have instead promised the moon and the stars to religious zealots, racists, gun nuts, and what have you, inconveniently guaranteeing a bunch of disgruntled crazy people watching their every move, when all they wanted was the keys to the treasury.

Putting up a malleable figurehead like Reagan, Bush, or Romney, and then using the now-purchased presidency to pack the courts and agencies with fellow plunderers, thus, must constantly be accompanied by distracting sideshows to fool the rubes into thinking the party is, as Bill O’Reilly put it, “Looking out for” them.  This time, the rubes are getting restless, and you can hardly blame them.

“The Iranian programmes are proceeding apace and represent a strategic threat,” said the diplomat. “The aim is to have a big impact on the Iranian financial system, targeting the economic lifeline of the regime.”

Well, then.  The “diplomat,” who doesn’t sound particularly diplomatic to me, is Ivo Daalder, the US ambassador to the EU.  Earlier, in response to Iran’s hardly surprising threats to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to even stiffer sanctions, he said this:

“The strait of Hormuz needs to remain open and we need to maintain this as an international passageway,” he told the BBC. “We will do what needs to be done to ensure that is the case.”

Of course, Daalder justifies such acts of war against Iran because of its still-hypothetical nuclear program, and the force of the related “Killin’ Habibs for Jesus” foreign policy from George Bush and Fox News that Obama has eagerly adopted for his own.  No matter the vast majorities of Americans opposed to any more wars, the Hope and Change campaign is in an election year, which means, ironically, no Hope and no Change, when it comes to chicken-hawkery.

Since no other American media figure will do so, with the notable exception of Glenn Greenwald and a few others, let’s look at this, just for a moment, from Iran’s perspective, if only hypothetically:

CHNN: So, Abdul, why do all you dusky-hued sand niggers want nukes?

ABDUL: So you fat whiteys won’t bomb us and steal our oil.

CHNN:  That couldn’t possibly be the reason.  Isn’t it really because you hate our freedoms?

ABDUL:  What freedoms?

CHNN:  Never mind about that.  Next, we go to Pamela Geller….

It’s useless.  Now that “American Exceptionalism” has become our national religion, even the ostensibly “liberal” politician pretending to be president must beat the war drums until we as a nation are left limbless and caterwauling like the guy in the Monty Python movie.  Unlike politicians, ordinary people can see that we never “win” wars, we just have them, and pay for them with our futures.  And unlike media stars who “cover” our overlords, we actually care if their ballooning expenses are bankrupting us.  Sadly, wars, like every other major decision we as a country make, have been moved upstairs, and nobody has any say in the matter except those who profit from them.  Democrat, Republican, it doesn’t matter; the latter will loudly demand more wars and more money for them, while the former will do so too, only more, uh, diplomatically.

One dreadful consequence of the current Republican disarray, for ordinary people anyway, is that it leaves Obama free to pick useless, unwinnable fights hither and yon while everyone’s busy snickering at his opponents.  The worst is that nobody cares, and why would they?

Orwell must be rolling over in his grave.

A more than usually horrifying video has cropped up (above), and as hard as you might find this to believe, it has right-wingers knickers in a twist.  Not about the pissing, naturally, but about that anyone would dare to find it unseemly.  Behold:

Of course, since we’ve dedicated more than a decade now to the undeniably worthy cause of killin’ Habibs for Jesus, such events are no longer surprising, either for their sadistic homoeroticism, nor their utter disdain for the humanity of others.  The sort of violent, eliminationist rhetoric that was mischievously concocted by cynics who clearly knew better, just to sell their ridiculous wars, has “trickled down,” if you’ll pardon the pun, a little too well.  As the tweeter (and wingnut welfare queen) above illustrates, we now believe that everyone America’s bloodthirsty military murders is a terrorist, and figuratively, if not literally, ought to be pissed on. Even if they’re obviously unarmed and appear to have been pushing a wheelbarrow at the time of their deaths.

Well, if that ain’t keeping America safe, I don’t know what is. I had grave reservations when Bush decided we would drop out of the International Criminal Court, and forever abandon the “good guy” image that helped us win WWII and later become the heroes of Nuremburg, but in my worst nightmares I never thought it would come to this. Thanks a lot, Fox, Limbaugh, Savage, et al; now somebody will need to “apologize for America.” But early indications show you won’t be among them.

When asked what he would do if one of his sons revealed he were gay, Santorum replied, “I would love him as much as I did the second before he said it. And I would try to do everything I can to be as good a father to him as possible.”

Let’s unpack that statement, just for fun.  For starters, “the second before he said it” leaves the sex-phobic creep a little wiggle room.  After all, a second is a brief enough window that even someone so clueless and bonkers as Santorum might have already suspected what was coming, particularly when the lead-in probably would have been, “I know you’re going to hate me for this, but…”  Further, in such an instance, being a “good father” would doubtless include aversion therapy, invocations of Leviticus, and travel brochures about Hell, though not necessarily in that order.

It’s a pickle, really, for a raving homophobe like Santorum to be saddled with so many children that, statistically, one might well turn out to be what he considers to be the moral equivalent of man-on-dog, and may one day even find fault with Dad’s fashion choices.  Let’s hope it’s soon, if only to retire the unflattering sweater vests.

But this misses the larger question; despite their undoubtedly abstinence-based home-schooling, the Santorum children will eventually figure out that even Dad had to have engaged in that icky sex thing no less than eight times, perhaps even a dozen.  Although the act couldn’t possibly have been pleasant for either party, it seemingly did happen.  Though no child likes to imagine his parents en flagrante delicto, for Santorum’s offspring the picture must be particularly unsettling, and not just because he’s, well, Santorum, but because his entire public career has been built around damning the very idea that sex is anything people do so often.  Eight times?  How many Hail Marys did he have to say to atone for such wanton excess?

I always thought, and evidence has generally backed me up, that having a gay child is the surest cure for homophobia, but I don’t believe for a moment that it would do so for Rick, and his answer indicates that he doesn’t, either.  He answers dishonestly because in his mind, it’s impossible that any of his kids could be gay; that sort of thing only happens to other, less perfect people.  For that reason, and that reason alone, I hope he’s right.  It’s bad enough for a straight kid to be saddled with the name Santorum.  For a gay boy, it would be the worst thing possible, in more ways than one.

As we approach the 2012 elections, I have to admit grudgingly sympathizing with the poor Republican contenders on  some level; everywhere you look, one (hilarious) presidential aspirant after another has to deal with the fact that large blocs of their party hates them, for one reason or another.  The reasons, to a sane person at least, often seem a bit unfair:  the party of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay “hate” Newt Gingrich for being a corrupt Washington Insider with a tenuous connection to reality?  The party of David Vitter and Rudy Giuliani “hate” Mitt Romney for (barely) straying from Christianist orthodoxy, fully clothed?  What the hell?

Well, let’s call it what it is, an embarrassment of riches.  Long ago, before Fox News (!) and 24/7 hate radio, conservatives realized that the only reason, given their relative wealth, that they didn’t bestride the world like a Colossus was that their ideas were both dumb and detrimental to most Americans, let alone other humans on earth.  In his infamous 1970 Memo, which led a bonkers, elitist ideologue to a Nixon lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, Lewis Powell spoke for fellow plutocrats in saying that, essentially, the far-too-comfortable rabble has caught on to our scams.  We’d better have a Plan B, but fast.

That plan, of course, was to flood the public discourse with propaganda from think tanks, media outlets, and newly endowed “professors” to spout the plutocrat line, which, as you might expect, wouldn’t be too successful if other opinions were heard.  Thus, the strategy’s practitioners, chief among them Nixon himself, decided that rather than bothering wih refuting liberal ideas, still a somewhat tall order to this day, they would focus on refuting liberal people, whom, duly discredited, would finally shut up once and for all.  The Hate Campaign was born.

This wasn’t the easiest proposition, understandably, given that the poorer and less educated group they were attempting to persuade would undoubtedly be harmed by their ultimate goals.  They had to go for hate, and go big, before anybody wised up.  To this end, taxes, which largely went, than as now, to support the military and (then, anyway) beloved entitlement programs for white people, had to be re-branded as extravagant cash transfers to shiftless Darkies; wars had to be sold as rare opportunities for vicarious triumph to an increasingly marginalized and powerless populace, and respecting foundational civil liberties had to be portrayed as dangerous capitulation to treacherous hordes abroad and at home.

It’s a neat trick, really….  Convincing the dumbest and most resentful in any society that everything, and I mean everything, they don’t like is somehow connected. Once you’ve done that, you’re off to the races.  You see, most people, particularly in the hard times Republican policies invariably create, are left looking around for solutions to what ails them; the key to eliminating such dangerous receptivity is to have the most reasonable, but unwanted, solutions pre-tainted by painstakingly encouraged cultural biases.

With Nixon, this meant a whole lot of industrial-grade hippie punching, and it worked so well at he time that it’s still in wide use despite its often tinny, anachronistic feel.  It may be both dumb and insultingly cheesy to lots of people, but the fact that the hippie’s modern-day equivalents want to, say, protect the environment, reliably creates a massive call amongst rank-and-file righties for more pollution has become, for polluters, anyway, the gift that keeps on giving.  That the (now proven correct) resistance to our retarded, failed adventure in Iraq was advanced by  our younger and less conservatively attired Americans means that Fox News “culture warriors”  will dutifully scream for more wars until kingdom come, sooner rather than later.  And on and on.

As I’ve said many times before, this is a project that has become a victim of its own success.  Hopelessly saddled with a befuddled band of followers whose hate, like a 1960′s Alabama firehose, must constantly be turned  on something, the Republicans are finding that even their own bespoke suits might get unseemly wet spots.  Just mention without utter disdain an idea that at some point a “liberal” might have ever endorsed, no matter how mundane, and the fury is unleashed.  George Bush found this out when he tried to hand his anti-labor supporters an immigration bill, John McCain was similarly chastened when he said, from experience, that torture wasn’t okay, and Ron Paul, who is momentarily leading the polls in Iowa, was nonetheless almost booed off the stage for the impermissible effrontery of talking about pointless, costly wars like they were a bad thing.

In their relentless pursuit of hate-driven infallibility, Republicans have painted themselves into an interesting corner when it comes to sewing up a presidential election….  Their people have been taught, carefully, you might say, to hate so much that they can no longer love.  Even their own candidates.

It couldn’t have happened to nicer guys.

To arrest one foreign car-making executive under Alabama‘s new tough immigration laws may be regarded as a misfortune; to arrest a second looks like carelessness.

A judge has acted to put a Japanese employee of Honda Motor Company out of his misery by dismissing immigration charges against him, three days after he was booked under Alabama’s new immigration laws that have been billed as the most swingeing (sic) in America. Ichiro Yada is one of about 100 Japanese managers of the company on assignment in (the) southern state.

Aside from the mystifying Anglicisms and sloppy editing, the Guardian’s rather easy reporting shows that the American media is, as usual, making utter asses of themselves by ignoring such a significant story.  Oh, we’ve heard here and there about crops rotting in the fields, children fleeing schools, and families escaping this racist hellhole under a cover 0f darkness, but any indication that the whole law, and the politicians profiting from it, are another depressing example of how contemptible bigots are cynically used for political advantage by those with nothing better to sell, is striking in its absence.

In a more enlightened era, it was said that patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels, but after the excesses of the Bush era, patriotism as an excuse for every domineering outrage is pretty much played out.  So racism has inevitably become the new patriotism, since its practitioners are even more dumb and desperate than the flag-wavers, and are thus that much more unquestioningly  loyal to their overlords.  In the grinding, dire, and endless recession they’ve deliberately created, and aren’t through exploiting, the 1% and their concubines must plunge ever deeper into untapped sociopathology to find, well, Dittoheads.  Why not blame the Darkies and Mexicans for all of your growing problems, when you’re the sort of dumb redneck predisposed to watch (and worse, believe) Fox News?  It isn’t a strategy so far tainted by failure, after all.

It’s a neat trick, really, with the caveat of its lack of relationship to reality.  Like other southern states, famous for their appalling schools and lack of rudimentary government services, Alabama unwittingly embraced the Global Economy by luring international manufacturers with the promise of docile, dumb, workers who would work for shit and thank you for it.  Naturally, Galtian CEO’s from socialist dystopias like Japan and Germany knew a good thing when they saw it; their countries had wantonly abandoned slavery a century or so before Alabama went to war to preserve it; indeed, they want to bring it back.  There’s money to be made from people that stupid.

Of course, both Germany and Japan are rightly infamous for their past (and current) xenophobia, and like all perpetrators of racist authoritarianism, they’re not so keen on being subject to it.  Given that, it’s too bad they picked Alabama.  What they didn’t realize was that in a place rife with cousin breeding, you only need an accent and a slight shift in pigment to be seen an a “furriner.”  The Germans found, much to their chagrin, that being white wasn’t enough; the Japanese found that being relentlessly industrious wasn’t enough, either.  Alabamans, or at least their police, evidently only recognize the legitimate citizenship of those to whom they’re directly related.

Doesn’t matter if you’re an executive; doesn’t matter if you’ve fired a lot of uppity people.  If you’re not a drawling, tooth-shy piece of white trash, then it’s off to the hoosegow with you, fancy-schmancy boss or not. This isn’t exactly going over.   When Jessica Mitford wrote about how Deep South places like Alabama in the 1060′s, by closing public amenities to avoid integrating them, were cutting off noses to spite faces, she didn’t know the half of it.  The Germans and Japanese are now finding out about the other half.

No tendentious description of the phenomenon is required, nor is a detailed and boring historical context necessary, since they (like the poor) “have always been with us.”   But the sudden “surge” of poseurs, fakers, demagogues, deadbeats, and crooks stands out right now, as our vaunted world economy teeter-totters, and institutions – from colleges to banks to temples of journalism, and pinnacles of power – croak under the strain.

Here’s a partial list, culled from today’s headlines, of new and emerging Little Men.  Please feel free to add a name which may have been missed in this initial installment.  Step right up!  There’s room for everyone, and probably no end to it, once the battle has been joined.

Herewith:  The Little Men Of The Moment!

Silvio Berlusconi - the blessedly former prime minister of Italy.  The ultimate Mistero Buffo of Italian politics pledged to resign (and by God he did!) if a new, technocratic government now in formation can begin cobbling together a fiscal plan to prevent massive default by Italy, a member state in the Eurozone.  But like the magician/clown he is, some skeptical Burlesquecrony-watchers are wondering if this world-class fraudster and cockmaster will ever leave the stage (and, by God! – he hinted upon departing he might continue lurking behind the arras, in Milan).  What is not in dispute is Berlusconi has diddled and fiddled within his court of  whores and bunga bunga hangers-on, while failing, over twenty years, to do the job he was elected to do, so that Italy – more than Greece, Portugal, Spain, or Ireland – may truly sink the European “common market,” and possibly, the world economy itself.  Basta!

Joe Paterno – the disgraced former head football coach of Penn State.  Whereas Berlusconi was not a great man, Paterno might have been, to the extent he fashioned a winning, and honorable, sports tradition.  He did win a lot of football games; ya gotta give him that!  Brought truckloads of money to Beaver Stadium too!  His teams won, or contended for, quite a few national championships.  And he did, judging by the loyalty of the Penn State community, demand and get excellence from his players, on and off the field, for over two generations.  Some of them actually read books; most graduated.  He did not, sadly, measure up when faced with an unavoidable moral dilemma.  He has experienced a great fall.  His catharsis, and that of Penn State, awaits.

Jon Corzine – resigned CEO of MF Global, former Democratic governor and senator from New Jersey, former Goldman Sachs honcho.  Corzine took a mere year and a half or so to capsize MF Global, which traced its lineage to the sugar trade in late 18th century England.  Corzine bet on sovereign debt and lost.  Big.  MF Global under Corzine, a darling of Democratic big wigs, reported a nearly $192  million quarterly loss after betting on European government bonds.  At the end of October the company’s credit rating went to junk, and it filed for Chapter 11.  About a thousand Wall Street wizards went out on the dole.  Just like that.  MF Global’s demise has been logged in as the 8th largest bankruptcy in American history.  Corzine, a little man posting big losses, appears to have a few little Democratic Party leaders around him, saying:  “sssshhhh.”

Bill O’Reilly – reigning Fox News gasbag.  O’Reilly, a little twit with global reach, has been enjoying a two months-long perch on the New York Times bestseller list with a book he “wrote” on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  However, the “no spin” king’s tome has been banned from the shelves of the Ford’s Theater book store, operated by the National Park service.  Ford’s Theater was where Lincoln was shot by the mad thespian, John Wilkes Booth.  Among numerous errors cited in the book, O’Reilly asserts there was an Oval Office in Lincoln’s White House, when in fact the executive suite was not built until 1909, when, presumably, there was a federal budget surplus.  In another egregious error, O’Reilly for some reason had Honest Abe “furling” his brow sometime before he was shot (he might have been furling about the feckless Gen. McClellan).  Everyone knows a man would “furrow” his brow, not furl the damn thing, whatever the situation, right?  This flap from Ford’s Theater appears to be a collection of minor quibbles to the author.  O’Reilly’s publisher says the little man is working on another quickie about presidents, to be written in a “narrative, novelistic fashion.”  O’Reilly responded to the Ford’s Theater critique by saying, “Enemies are trying to hurt my book.”

Rick Perry - governor of Texas and Republican presidential candidate.  Perry doesn’t know which federal departments he wants to shut down, but he does know he wants American foreign aid under his administration to start with no money.  Way to go, little man!  Perry may seem drunk at debates he’s appeared in, but it’s just the best a little man from Texas can do.  What can you expect from a guy who used Whiteout on a rock at the entrance to his family’s vacation retreat, but can’t remember why exactly?  Also, such a little man should be cut some slack if he thinks real, light amber New England maple syrup might work as a companion to barbecue sauce!

Michael Bloomberg - mayor of New York.  Well now he’s done it!  There’s a lot of talk in the city about how bored Bloomberg is with his job; and a guy I know who was hanging around Zuccotti Park on Tuesday morning while the cops were mopping up says simply that Bloomie will run for prez as an indie and pull close to 20 percent, drawing the indie vote,  while cutting into Obama’s hide.  Result:  one crazy Republican president, unless it’s Willard the flip-flopper.  Maybe Bloomie will turn out to be a little big man.

Karl Rove – formerly Bush’s brain.  During an appearance at Johns Hopkins recently, Rove, evidently exasperated by taunts from OWS protestors and other unsavory characters, actually challenged one (or all) of them to a fight.  This does not compute.  It’s just hard to imagine this dweeby little man stepping up to his own challenge.  Bombast knows no bounds.

Rush Limbaugh – radio bombasterbasta! – par excellence.  This week the little man of the airwaves used every slur in the book to denigrate the OWS protesters, particularly those evicted from Zuccotti Park, since Tuesday was not a slow news day, and therefore an opportunity for el Rushbo to spike his sagging rating a tad.  Limbaugh spent minute after minute on one of his shows this week obsessing about the OWSers’ tendencies to spew precious bodily fluids all over public spaces across America’s fruited plain, just to call attention to their sad state, which to dittoheads means they’ll have to move back home with Mom & Dad when it’s all over – as a spent force.  Only a man with a little whatnot could stoop to that.

Well, there you have it!  But there are many other candidates to be nominated, to say nothing of the untold millions of Honorable Mentions, past and present.  Step right up.  Tell the nation who you’d like to see on the Pedestal of Heroes in this category.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly; she set the standard for right wing attack Barbie that has infected all of Fox and most of the rest of the media.  Prettier than Ann Coulter, smarter than Gretchen Carlson (by a country mile…), and less grating than lesser lights like Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham, Kelly struck me as the most sinister of them all, until here lately.  Maybe it was motherhood; her most recent attack on righty classlessness and cruelty was a searing rebuttal of some sexist stupid remarks made by Bernie Goldberg about maternity leave.  As righties are reliably wont to do, ol’ Megyn suddenly got to rather like a hated liberal idea when it happened to directly benefit her.  As self-serving as her epiphany may have been, though, seeing her take down Goldberg with tapes of his own words and shame him, repeatedly, for saying them was undoubtedly the best thing I’ve seen out of Fox since Jeremy Glick slaughtered Bill O’Reilly years ago.  But she wasn’t just slapping a perceived critic around for personal revenge as they usually do on Fox; she came out not only forcefully defending and explaining the hated Bill Clinton’s Family Medical Leave Act, but even adding how stingy it was, because every other civilized country provides paid leave for new parents, as does that commie outfit she works for.   It was the first positive thing anyone has said about France on Fox since 2002.  I naturally assumed she’d promptly get a formal warning and cut this sort of thing out.

But she didn’t, as the above quote* shows.  She went after the aptly named Ablow with every tool ordinarily left out of the Fox toolbox, except the vitriol.  Facts.  Science.  Experts.  What’s the world coming to?  Better yet, she did so defending Chaz Bono’s appearance on “Dancing With the Stars,” affirming that transgendered people, who rank several ranks higher on Fox News’ Hate List than, say, regular gays, Mexican drug lords, and Al Gore, are human, too.  Rather than opining on Fox, she could have been speaking at, well, at least a Log Cabin Republican event; she spoke forcefully against hate, even.  Call me crazy, but I think this sort of thing is going to go over like a fart in church with the “folks,” given how Fox is America’s 24-Hour Hate Channel, when Megyn Kelly starts acting like hate is a bad thing.  It’s ruinous to the brand.

I’m guessing that pretty soon she’ll find herself caring about the unemployed, too.

*Sorry, I couldn’t get the video to embed; I hope my computer isn’t in its final throes….

Witness this conversation between my mother (Joan) and a doctor at the hospital where she was being treated for heart trouble:

DOCTOR:  Your mother is abusive and out of touch with reality.

JOAN:  Really?  She must be feeling better.

DOCTOR:  Well, we plan to hold her for psychiatric evaluation when her condition stabilizes, and wanted to let you know.

Those were the days, huh?  When somebody, even a potentially terminal hospital patient, yelled at everybody and said demeaning things about them while believing a whole slew of patently errant nonsense with unseemly and ferocious fervor, the reality-based community (in this case the doctors) used to step in, inform the family,  hand the person a book of rubber wallpaper samples to peruse, and call it a day.  Now, demented loudmouths like Etta who believe, say, that the world is 6000 years old, Jesus was against taxing rich people, hurricanes are caused by uppity gays, and that climate change is a fraud cooked up by greedy scientists, proudly (and too often, successfully) pursue political careers.  Even Etta knew her limits; when she was threatened with real authority by a judge who was about to hold her in contempt for talking about baseball bats and their usefulness to her court case, she knew enough to pipe down.  No such reasonable checks on cuckoo behavior affect crazy people today, as long as they’re politicians, or maybe Fox News hosts.  Thirty years later, perhaps it’s time to start talking about how the eight times zero “controversy” is “still not settled.”

The next call Joan made that night was to Etta herself, at the hospital:

JOAN:  Listen, Mother, you had better shape up or you’re never getting out of that hospital.  You’re going straight to the Looney Bin.

Etta’s response was never accurately recorded, an oversight for which I’m eternally frustrated; we had a half dozen extension telephones, at least one equipped with recording devices we used all the time, and Etta died later that night, much to the delight of all concerned.  At the rosary, one of Joan’s oldest friends walked up to her and said, “I guess I’m sorry,” and that wouldn’t be the last time I had to suppress a laugh that week.

I’ve stopped laughing long ago.  Etta’s back, and she’s running for President.

First, we have Sarah Palin’s novel notion that Paul Revere rode around Massachusetts sporting an NRA bumper sticker on his horse, ringin’ bells and raisin’ hell to “warn the British” about something or other, a delusion so jaw-droppingly ridiculous that even Fox News’ Chris Wallace could barely stifle a chuckle over it.  Surreally, this got Michele Bachmann’s well-teased dander up, leading her minions to solemnly proclaim that Caribou Barbie was insufficiently “serious.”  Before Allen Funt could pop out of the bushes, along came Tim Pawlenty with a “plan” that makes George Bush look like a hippie, and not incidentally would increase the deficit by several trillion.

Not to be outdone, Herman Cain then became the first Republican to propose stimulative infrastructure spending of suitably millennial  proportions; our own Chinese wall to keep out the Mexicans, complete with an alligator-infested moat, to predictable cheers from his addlepated supporters.  In case this idea sounded like too, well, constructive, he hastened to add that no Mooslims would serve in his cabinet, but he might hire a gay or two because they would potentially be a fashionably dressed bulwark against creeping Sharia.  Later, after that, he backtracked a bit…  Mooslims could serve, if they took a loyalty oath over a pizza that resembled the Blessed Virgin.

Meanwhile, Democrats again demonstrated their lameness and political ineptitude by calling loudly for the resignation of Rep. Anthony Weiner, politely ignoring the whoremongers (and just plain whores) on the other side of the aisle.  The Republican leadership has its flaws, but stupidity is not among them, so they largely (and wisely) stayed mum, perhaps partly out of envy.

Then, along came the Frothy Mixture, and I was finally moved to type.  For sheer loathsomeness and anti-electability, no one beats the repulsive and crazy Rick Santorum:  Palin minus the brains, Newt minus the popularity, Pawlenty minus the sex appeal, and Mitt Romney minus the principles.

Behold today’s brief exchange after a “discussion” about climate change, which he naturally considers a liberal plot, with, naturally enough, Rush Limbaugh (h/t Mother Jones…):

Limbaugh: I have a minute and a half. You ever ask yourself where the American people are politically? Do you ever fear the American people just maybe want a European socialist country, that they’d rather be dependent on government? Does that worry you?

Santorum: Does it worry me? Well, you know, Rush, ’cause you combat it every day with the popular culture and the media and academic institutions, that gets pounded away every day into the minds of our young people, and I don’t know how many times I’ve listened on your show where people said, “You know, you opened, the scales fell from my eyes. It’s finally making sense to me. I understand all of these lies I’ve been told.” You tell people lies enough and you indoctrinate them enough, of course I’ve got grave concerns and that’s one of the reasons I’m doing this is because I think we need — look, the person who’s been able to win the presidency since the age of television has had one thing in common. They’ve been the best communicator in the race. We need someone like a Rush Limbaugh who can communicate and can touch the soul of Americans and can reach out across the radio and television and paint a vision that helps drop those scales, that can remind people what a great country we are and that it’s a great country because we believe in free people and the ability of free people to provide for themselves, their family, their community, and the God they love. That’s what America is about, and we can with get back to that. We need to begin to believe in ourselves instead of the having someone tell us that they need to believe in him, the anointed one to provide for them.

Limbaugh: Rick, thanks for your time. Your passion is infectious. It really is.

And there you have it.  Santorum went on Limbaugh’s show to promote…  Limbaugh.  Even he is too embarrassed to endorse himself, and for good reason.  Not for nothing did Pennsylvania voters turn his useless, cuckoo corpus out of the Senate, along with his stillborn fetus in a jar that he carried around in his minivan, and not for nothing did he get his richly earned Google Problem.  The guy is stupid and crazy enough, but Republicans hate him anyway.  Go figure.

I guess Obama can be as lame, ineffective, and as big of a sellout as he wants, and get away with it.  Kind of like being, as Jon Stewart put it, the thinnest kid at fat camp.