The Iowa GOP has canceled their

Infamous Summer Straw Poll...which is otherwise well regarded as a dandy fundraising tool and a quick means for spectrumy falangists to get some cheap heat in the headline. Allegedly it got sh*tcanned for lack of candidate interest which is odd given the overwhelming influx of twitchy lunatics into the republican presidential nomination race, you'd think a few of them would see the advantage...unless of course the pathologies therein have coalesced around the notion that they are ALL frontrunners who have to husband their lead most cautiously....and that is powerful delusion indeed for the cheap acts like Ben Carson and High Pitched Rick Santorum. Well if I had to handicap (and I dooooo) I'd say this was "Advantage Bush" since his campaign like a zombie thats been asked to solve a binomial equation for several weeks now, a setback in the otherwise meaningless Iowa Straw Poll is worth avoiding at this point. It likely a minor disadvantage for Walker/Rubio or whoever else is the Main Chance Conservative Flavah of the Month since it denies them a chance to show some ground game.

Chris Christie went up to Goffstown NH this week

rattling his saber demanding the USA "take a military approach" to the PRC's encroachments into the South China Sea. Oh thank Ghod I thought he was gonna advocate sending in the New Jersey DPW and really getting someone killed. I'm gonna gloss over the grim sad spectacle of Chris Christie ramping up the feckless international belligerence and instead suggest someone out there start keeping count of all the countries the GOP Presidential Field wants to invade confront or destroy as the primaries unfold. With upwards to twenty people and that incubus Donald Trump trolling around out there, it's gonna get to be a long sobering educational list by the time the first ballot is cast in Dixville Notch.

As Vice President Biden lays his oldest son to rest....

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Canada) took it upon himself to make a crass joke at the VP's sorrowing expense. Whereupon, Cruz promptly apologized in public. Well....I guess certain standards of gentlemanly behavior are still holding on by their fingernails over at Harvard Law. And anyway mark the moment, how many times does a republican apologize for anything? You can for example wait until perdition for Denny Hastert to say he is sorry. Well anyway Cruz did the decent thing for whatever reason I won't speculate. I will however note that for sheer crass rhetoric this is but the tip of the iceberg as far as the GOP presidential field is concerned, John Kasich (Governor of Ohio) piled in today, Rick Perry yesterday....the roster may top out at TWENTY yammering scolding barking mad candidates ere long all one upping each other to get a hold on the tea partei base. I predict a nasty off putting cacophony. And to Beau Bridges, peace to his ashes, succor for his loved ones and family.

Mike Huckabee has lamented

that he wished someone had told him about trangender status in High School so he could claim it and "look at girls" in the showers. Teenaged girls....under the age of consent that is what The Good Reverend Huckabee has on his mind....classy huh? Well boorishness pays in today's GOP sad to say, and yet I recall with the simplest nostalgia that Mike was allegedly the one wingnut in the USA who had mastered the "Indoor Voice". Clearly "The Indoor Voice" is an impediment to getting today's GOP Presidential nomination....confessing your filthiest most perverted thoughts....not so much.

Santorum checks into the Crazy House....

Rick Santorum beady eyes and fangs bared, piled into the 2016 GOP Presidential Stakes fully intent on trebling down on the Wingnut Craziness Margin. I have a perverse admiration for Rick, of the entire sorry assed collection of presidential jobbers the GOP has eructated, Santorum is the only one with enough vicious psychic energy to constitute an American Dictator in the Making. But on some ineffable level "High Pitched Rick" falls short, maybe it's his hate filled eyes, they register poorly on TV or his high pitched whining voice....but in the end he is Gerald L.K. Smith not Huey P. Long....a sort of zoo specimen of authoritarian ineffectuality. Rick might pull off another guerilla coup next year he has the sort of demonic focus that would be prized in the paranoia ward at McLean's Hospital, but he has some heavy competition in the wingnut craziness division and all those guys can fundraise....and fundraise some more. He is literally running out of sheer desperate lust for power, he will never make anyone's short list for VP or even Secretary of Transportation for that fact. But Santorum goes on ranting and raving, just desperate for the chance to throw someone behind barbed wire...anyone at this point. He will never get there, but you have to admire perversely his pathological single mindedness....

Thoughts while on vacation...

When an embedded dupe like Jeb Bush finally backs down on the Iraq War (along with Marco Rubio and Chris Christie) you know the GOP has finally turned its back on GWB's "Splendid Little War". All except John McCain he still fumes and snarls like Yosemite Sam on the floor of the US Senate he'd send the 82nd Airborne Division to every bar room brawl in the Third World if he could. It appears to me, that he is the last man out on the "Operation Enduring Freedom" ledge not sure who can talk him off it at this point. Mostly it is times like this that I breathe a silent prayer of thanks he didn't win in 2008....oh the wars he'd a started it's a long list indeed.

Jeb Bush blundered pretty badly the other daya

and airily announced that he'd a invaded Iraq if he was his brother George Junior. The resultant conniptions have compelled the Ex Governor of Florida to execute a very clumsy walkback (something no member of the family does well) and send out a press aide to insist Jeb somehow misheard the question. Well perhaps an audiologist ought to be consulted before Jeb gets completely hard of hearing or something. This is pretty embarrassing for Bush who seems to be booking off a gaffe a week since he announced, it mostly serves though as a mute objective reminder of how unpopular our intervention in Iraq has become with the general public. As to whether any of this will damage Jeb's candidacy only time will tell, however past practice indicates that both his father and brother said all manner of idiotic things on a daily basis and still sneak into office. But for the moment Advantage Walker....(who has been dummying up lately if case you didn't notice).