So, here’s the deal.  In all likelihood we’re going to be facing the threat of another government shut down.  Republicans and Democrats disagree over whether to offset $1.6 billion in FEMA funding with spending cuts.

Republicans, of course, say that if you help people who have been hurt by fire or water, then you have to hurt other people to help the hurt people.  Then you have to hurt other people to help the people you hurt to help the hurt people.  It’s a big ole circle hurt.

So, Republicans think they can find $1.6 billion dollars of cuts from the federal budget.  I say start with their salaries, retirement and office supplies.  Those dudes are all rich and don’t need the money.  Lord knows they don’t earn it.

No, seriously, where were they when we needed somebody to come boo at the fire or the flooding?  I’ll tell you where they were:  standing around practicing the circle hurt.

We don’t need a shut down.  We need a shut up.

Brilliantly contrasting himself with President Obama’s plan to Win The Future, Republican Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is setting as his goal to Patch The Past.

Encouragingly and joyfully looking to his failed past, Gingrich is calling his rearview vision the “21st Century Contract with America.”

Gingrich said his ideas, which he will unveil Sept. 29 in Des Moines, are “very big, and they’re exactly what Abraham Lincoln would have campaigned on.”

Monday night’s campaign stop, at Bent Tree Golf Club, centered on a screening of “A City Upon a Hill,” a documentary Gingrich and his wife, Callista, helped create about the concept of American exceptionalism.

“Yes, you read that right,” Juanita Jean reports.  “Gingrich is campaigning on a platform from 1861 at a private country club.  I seriously doubt there’s anything hopeful here for women or blacks.   On the upside, however, carpetbaggers, plantation owners, and confederate flag makers have reason to celebrate!”

Gingrich being in last place and having a snowball’s chance in Texas of ever winning the nomination still does not reassure the faint of heart that, according to Gingrich, his new Contract With America “will be 10 times deeper and more comprehensive than 1994.”

“Holy crap,” Thelma hollers while running around looking for her civil defense gear,  “you cannot get ten times worse than the Contract With America, at least on this side of hell.  Just trying will cause a hole in the space/time continuum and we’ll all have to go back to wearing pantyhose in August or something.”

.

Have you ever noticed that the only time Newt Gingrich looks forward is when he is looking for his next wife?

Thanks to Ralph for the heads-up.

The next Republican Presidential debate is going to be on Bloomberg teevee on Tuesday, October 11th, in New Hampshire

That only gives us two weeks to come up with something they can boo at.  So far they are anti health care for people in the intensive care unit,  pro executing innocent people, and, finally, decidedly against the American soldier in a combat zone.

At great personal sacrifice and expense, I am willing to walk Truman across the stage at the next GOP debate to get him booed.  As an adorable little puppy, Truman is also willing to make this sacrifice because he’s sincerely afraid that they are gonna boo Grandma.

Or apple pie.

Or the Washington Monument.

Or little helpless kittens.

Or baby booties.

Truman is a big boy.  He can take it.

He can also tinkle on their expensive shoes.

Although close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and dancin’, it is powerfully edifying to see that Barack Obama is just a howdy and half away from taking Texas.

And, in some cases, he’s close enough to raise a blister.  Nobody expects President Obama to win Texas, but he may shut a few mouths around here.

Obama……………44%
Perry……………51%
Undecided……………5%

Go visit Ted over at Job’s Anger to see how Obama stacks up against the rest of the GOP field.  I’m with Ted, I’m not saying yet that Obama can win Texas, but I agree with him that fightin’ for it might be worth the effort.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a waste of time to do some calling and knock on some doors in the next election — especially if Obama shows he has some fight in him for the jobs creation bill he has proposed.

And MaryK let me know that Fox News stomped on Perry this morning.

“Perry really did throw up all over himself in the debate, at a time when he needed to raise his game. He did worse, it seems to me, than in previous debates. … Perry is one-half a step away from almost total collapse as a candidate,” said Fox News commentator Brit Hume.

Personally, I’d relish the chance to throw up on Brit Hume, but at least somebody spun him around and pointed him in the right direction.

Thanks to MaryK for the heads-up.

I don’t know what’s funnier – this teevee spot or that somebody named “Cruz” thinks he can win a GOP primary in Texas.

It looks like the Texas Senate race is going to be more fun than we expected.

Thanks to Stephen for the heads-up.

You know, for the past several months, some of my customers have been shaking their fingers at me, telling me that I should take Rick Perry more seriously because he could be President.

Honey, I take Rick Perry as serious as a heart attack, but apparently, so does everyone else.

Next time you get to thinking that I’m too sassy for my britches when it comes to Rick, just check out what his fellow Republicans are saying about him.  Honey, they’ve seen the temperature drop when he enters a room because he hasn’t got enough brain cells to emit heat.

Contributor Ben Howe, in a post called “I Need a Hero,” called the GOP field “a panel of damaged goods best relegated to sniping at each other or making statements that cause their staunchest allies to stare in bewilderment.”

Of Perry, Howe said: “I feel that I’ve seen what he’s made of, and it makes me sad.”

The site’s editor, Erick Erickson, also a CNN contributor, deemed Perry “a train wreck.”

I don’t buy the train wreck analogy.  Train wrecks have less damaged goods than Rick Perry.  And there’s usually something salvageable at the end.

But, here’s something I do agree with —-

“Rick Perry has not been doing all that well in these debates, and he isn’t improving,” The conservative American Spectator’s blog observed shortly after the debate ended, in a post titled, “Perry’s Awful Night.” “Perry seems to have a stamina deficit; he tends to score points early in the debate and then become lethargic to the point of incoherence later.”

Yep, they didn’t wind him up tight enough.  I mean, he’s so stiff that when he smiles, his kneecaps jiggle, but his battery ran down quicker than chained lightening.

And then this news tonight.

Baby, he’s Texas Toast.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign was dealt a worrying blow Saturday when he finished in a distant second place to businessman Herman Cain in a closely watched straw poll in Florida.

He got taken to the woodshed with a Cain.  Perry got 15% to Cain’s 37%.

Babe, if you can’t beat a black man in the Republican primary, how the hell are you gonna beat Barack Obama in a general election?

Take it away, Willie.