A Universe of GOP Rising Stars

He's baaaaaaack! Crankyjewishguy (CJG) took a long break from his blog to go to the bathroom (yes, it took five months, but that's CJG's business). Actually, one reason CJG has been away is that he was finishing a book he wrote with Mrs. CJG that comes out next month. The marriage survived and the book is destined for greatness. The other reason, is that CJG decided to run for president as a Republican and has been building his campaign staff in the all important primary state of North Dakota where, next month, CJG will debate Michelle Bachmann on the subject of whether she is mentally competent. That should take about five minutes.

The new cast of "The Biggest Loser"? No, it's the 2011 GOP  field.
Note the presence of the Pillsbury Doughboy, third from left.
Tim Pawlenty, second from right, was voted off the island and Rick Perry
took his place only to find the surrounding waters way over his head.

Speaking of Michelle Bachmann, CJG has, of course, been closely following the circus known as the GOP race for president in which the idea seems to be to see who can say the most ridiculously stupid shit in hopes of getting the nomination. Rick Santorum's platform seems to be two pronged: the family is sacred and no one should have sex except under very special circumstances most of which have something to do with creating Christian families. Newt Gingrich, who by his own admission is the brightest of the candidates, thus damning himself with faint praise, looked at the wreckage of the U.S. economy and decided someone should go to jail -- not the CEOs of AIG, Lehmann Brothers, Countrywide or anyone else who actually had a prominent role in destroying the economy. No, Newt said Barney Frank and former Senator Chris Dodd should go to jail. Rick Perry, whose main qualification for the job appears to be incredible posture, apparently didn't realize that looking the part and acting the part are two different skill sets. Asked why there are one million children in Texas without health insurance, he immediately launched a blistering attack on Mitt Romney for hiring a lawn care company that employed an illegal alien to cut his grass thus drawing a illuminating connection between the two issues CJG had never made before.

Well, fancy me! Rick Perry as "yell leader"
at Texas A & M during his salad days.
The dog was later executed.

Speaking of immigration, the GOP field is doing what politicians do whenever times are tough: looking for a scapegoat. And what better scapegoat than illegal immigrants! They have no money or power. Let's blame them! So, who is the toughest hombre in the lot on this issue? Michelle Bachmann showed she is doubly tough on illegals by proposing not one fence along the entire US-Mexico border, but a double fence! Nice try, Michelle, but she never saw Herman Cain's solution coming: an electrified fence that would kill anyone trying to get across the border looking for a job as a delivery man for Godfather's Pizza. Cain is the new Ross Perot: a successful businessman with a simple solution for every complex problem. Most memorably, of course, his 9-9-9 tax plan that would raise taxes dramatically on the poor and the middle class while cutting them for Mitt Romney so he can fulfill his role as a "job creator."  The more Herman's ideas get exposed as lunacy the higher he rises in the GOP firmament. Please: someone call 9-1-1. Then, of course, there's good ol' Mitt Romney trying to come across as the everyman as he quadruples the size of his beachfront home in La Jolla, California and tells audiences that "corporations are people, too." He does have a point in that Mitt is a walking, talking corporation who specialized in taking over companies at Bain Capital then squeezing them dry for the cash while firing thousands of employees. He talks a good game about "job creation" but his real expertise is in job destruction and hair care products. Unlike many of his GOP competitors, Mitt cannot plead the insanity defense, but has there been a politician in recent memory so devoid of any core convictions? Trust CJG, Mitt Romney the presidential candidate and the Mitt Romney who was governor of Massachusetts are not the same person. Either that or the man has a serious case of multiple personality disorder.

Given the high quality of the GOP debates, CJG is amazed that no has taken the obvious line of attack against Perry yet: that if you rearrange the letters in Texas you get Taxes. If that doesn't set the Republican base on fire nothing will. The next time Michelle Bachmann is asked what color the sky is, she should go right at Perry on this.

Despite this, shall we say, lackluster GOP field, President Obama is in big trouble because everything that is wrong in the country today is his fault. You can take down bin Laden and Quaddafi (or Kadaffi or Qadaffy or Hanukah or Chanukkah, whatever) without a single American casualty, end the ten year war in Iraq, and finally make sure everyone is this country has health insurance, but unless you can fill, in three years, the 8 million jobs hole Bush left behind you're toast. So, help is on the way. As soon as the GOP regains power and can continue its massive wealth redistribution program in which the top 1% will soon have everything, they'll start using all that excess cash to create jobs on the plantation for the rest of us. CJG, for one, hopes to land a job as a surf board waxer at Mitt's place in La Jolla.

Man of the people, Mitt Romney, waves from his hot
air balloon above the 3,000 square foot La Jolla home
he is tearing down to build a 12,000 square foot home
in its stead.

Is Bush Piqued?

Hard to know if the reports are true, but a story is moving on various news wires that President G.W. Bush declined President Obama's invitation to join him at Ground Zero today because he feels Obama is taking a victory lap and did not give Bush sufficient credit for the bin Laden operation. First of all, as the text of Obama's announcement the other night makes clear, he credited the efforts of everyone involved over the past ten years; he didn't make it sound as if it all began on his inauguration day. Second, he was gracious enough not to note that after bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora Bush took his eye off the ball and gave low priority to the hunt for bin Laden as he pursued war in Iraq. Third, for the past two years plus the man has been living on a cul de sac in Houston. How much credit is he due? He wasn't "the decider" on this: Obama took the risk, made the gutsy call, and made the hunt for bin Laden a top priority after it languished for seven years under Bush. If you ask crankyjewishguy (CJG) the notion that Bush is piqued, if true, is outrageous. By asking Bush to share the stage so to speak at Ground Zero today, Obama was inviting him to a display of unity and to share in the moment. If Bush is such a small man that he feels dissed, then he deserves to be ignored.

Mazel Tov, Miss Massachusetts!

A fan of crankyjewishguy's (CJG) in Tampa wrote him a couple of days ago to ask if he knew that a Jewish woman was in the running to be named the next Miss America this year, which would make her only the second Jewish Miss America in the 89-year history of The Miss America Pageant. (The first was Bess Myerson in 1945.) CJG knows a lot, though probably not as much as he thinks he does, and he didn't know this. So, naturally, despite a hugely demanding schedule, CJG spent the better part of a day getting up to speed.

The contestant is Loren Galler Rabinowitz, the reigning Miss Massachusetts. Since CJG lives in Massachusetts he is especially excited and if the Miss America Pageant conflicts with a New England Patriots playoff game he plans to watch the pageant. Not!

Loren Galler Rabinowitz, Miss Massachusetts,
 Harvard grad and nice Jewish girl.

Unfortunately, aside from being Jewish, there is little to distinguish Ms. Rabinowitz from the other 52 contestants. Fifty-two? Yes, CJG knows there are forty-nine states in the United States, he just refuses to count Alaska. But Miss District of Columbia, Miss Puerto Rico and Miss U.S. Virgin Islands each get a shot, too. (Take that Miss Guam.) Anyway, as CJG was saying, Ms. Rabinowitz is just your typical beauty pageant contestant: her parents are both physicians, her grandparents are Holocaust survivors, she's a world class competitive figure skater, an accomplished poet and a recent magna cum laude graduate of Harvard. (If she'd applied herself she no doubt could have graduated summa.) With a resume like that how can she hope to compete with the likes of Beth Dennison, Miss North Dakota, a former University of North Dakota (UND) dining service employee, UND grad, farm hand and nanny? Or Alyse Eady, a former Miss South Central Arkansas and the reigning Miss Arkansas, whose official bio includes this little item: she once met George W. Bush in the Oval Office. Wow. So did Tiger Woods and we all know how that turned out. Now, if she'd met Bill Clinton in the Oval Office that might have been worth mentioning because then we all could have had fun speculating about what went down during the meeting or, perhaps more to the point, who. But what could Miss Arkansas and W possibly have discussed during their little visit? Waterboarding? And did she wear that hat?

Alyse Eady, Miss Arkansas, and former
 advisor to President George W. Bush.

So, CJG is rooting for Loren Galler Rabinowitz to prevail over Alyse, Ashley, Kelsi, Kylie, Courtney, Brittany and Whitney (yes, they are all names of real contestants this year) and all the other shiksas in the running for the title of Miss America 2011. Let the swimsuit competition begin!