Counting Really Small Blessings

This year I am giving thanks for the Republican presidential debates.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

I have a real tolerance for boring television, having watched at least two series now on the air about people who bid on abandoned storage lockers, as well as several segments of the show about extreme coupon-collecting. So the debates are right up my alley. After the 10th or 11th episode, you get a feeling of up-close interaction previously reserved for people who live in Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters are so entitled that they find it hard to support anybody who hasn’t been to the house for dinner, or possibly a sleepover.

You come to know everybody’s special gimmicks. Newt Gingrich will say something snotty to the moderators to show he hates the news media. Whenever Rick Perry gets lost in the verbal weeds, he has taken to demanding that Congress be made part time. Michele Bachmann points out that she’s had 23 foster children. Mitt Romney’s special thing is to swear that, unlike President Obama, he will not apologize for the United States. Which Obama never did.

Meanwhile, Romney’s campaign was running an ad in New Hampshire that purported to show Obama in 2008, saying: “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” Which was actually Obama quoting John McCain’s campaign. Romney has a long and well-documented history of changing his positions. This time around, he is apparently also planning to just make things up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/opinion/collins-counting-really-small-blessings.html?_r=1&hp

In related but totally not made up news, a Mullet trims a beard.

The FBI has busted the leader of a breakaway Amish sect who they believe was behind the bizarre and violent beard and hair cutting attacks against other Amish in rural eastern Ohio.

Sam Mullet has been accused of brainwashing the members of his clan and ruling them with an iron fist. The men who disobey him are forced to sleep in a chicken coop while he has sex with their wives to 'cleanse them,' authorities say.

Mullet and six men who were already facing charges in the beard cuttings are now accused of committing federal hate crimes against the Amish who disagreed with them or tried to split with the clan.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065366/Amish-haircut-attacks-Sam-Mullet-6-beard-cutters-charged-hate-crimes.html?ito=feeds-newsxml