Republicans demonstrate that their party is nothing more than a comic book, while Melania Trump all but lip synchs Michelle Obama

I  must say, watching the first night of the Republican convention last night was almost as entertaining as my first exposure to comic books.

I tuned in too late for the floor fight to boot Trump off the ticket. News reports have the Republican-Trump Complex squashing their opponents like a bug, thwarting what could have been a grave embarrassment to the party and The Donald.

But I tuned in just as the comic book characters that represent the Republican Party came onscreen.

Among them  were Mr. Flag Wrapper — Willie Robertson, the

Duck Killer Willie disses the American 

flag by using it as a sweat rag

long-bearded, hillbilly-ish, Duck Dynasty dude, who took an American flag and used it as a sweat rag to wrap around his head. Had a Democrat done this on TV, no doubt the Republican outrage machine would have been belching steam and giant clouds of volcanic ash. "How dare some lib-tard desecrate the flag?!?!?!"

But should a Republican even use the flag for toilet paper? Well heck, that’s showing he has a patriotic ass.

Is he Rick or is he Clark?

Then former Governor Oops of Texas, perfectly disguised as Clark Kent, got up and said something so forgettable that I can’t remember what it was. Sort of the way he forgot the three departments he'd eliminate if he remembered to become president.

Another huge highlight for me was Rudy The Air Chopper Giuliani, the so called “security expert.” Rudy's “accomplishments” included establishing a super-double-secret emergency command center for grave emergencies in the World Trade Center, shortly before 9-11 (but after terrorists had already tried to bomb the World Trade Center with a truck bomb in the garage of one of the towers.) 

Shucks, what made Rudy think that just because they failed once to blow the place up, and because it was a symbol of what the terrorists decided they hated about America, that they would never back and try again? 

Crazy Rudy. His gestures are in-sane!

Rudy last night looked as if he had lost whatever common sense and sanity he ever had. He turned into a cross between a super villain out of Batman, and a former New York TV appliance salesman named Crazy Eddie, ("His prices are in-sane" said Crazy Eddie's slogan.) 

It was like a nuthouse ballet to watch Rudy wildly gesticulating, chopping at the air, with his hands, looking like somebody the cops would blow to smithereens if only he were black and someone whispered, “He probably has a gun, and as you can see, he’s a whack job.”

And finally there was Melania Trump, all but lip synching the wife of the man Donald Trump says we should hate. There were some interesting demonstrations on TV this morning: Michelle Obama says it, then Melania Trump says the identical thing. Then Michelle says something. Then Melania Trump copycats again.

"I'm not really bad. I'm just ghost-
written that way."

But I don’t believe Melania plagiarized Michelle. I believe it’s the fault of plagiarizing speechwriters, who put Michelle’s worlds in Melania’s mouth. I feel just a bit sorry for Melania. 

I suspect that after his first very costly divorce from Ivanna, and a later divorce from Marla Maples, The Donald’s lawyers have engineered prenups so harsh that Melania would be all but living on the street if she ever divorced The Donald. So she's trapped, forced to forever mouth plagiarized words and defend a loose cannon of a husband.

She’s like that beautiful but not in control character in the movie, “Who Killed Ronald Rabbit?” I’m talking about the cartoon character Jessica Rabbit who spoke the immortal line, “I’m not really bad. I'm just drawn that way.”

And these are the people that roughly half the voters want to put in charge of America’s future?

God help us! 

Governor Rick Perry of Texas talks a good free enterprise system. But when he can’t get socialist-style relief for his state’s corporation-made disasters, guess what he turns into?

So in the past few weeks, it’s been hard in New York City to tune into the morning TV news without having Rick Perry in your face.

He’s there been all over the screen, in advertising paid for by Texans, to ask New York businesses to pull up stakes and move to Texas.

Governor Perry is dangling lures in front of New York business the way Anthony Weiner dangles his…but I’m getting off track here. Perry is talking about no taxes. He’s talking about no meaningful regulations on business. He’s telling “bidness” people they’ll grow fatter and richer than a wet dream in the mind of Croesus if only they fire everybody in New York and come down his way.

Don’t believe me?  Go here.

Now all this would be fine. New York would suffer a tragic loss of masochistic business owners and senior executives who don’t mind the humid heat in Houston that could give a shovel full of desert silicon an incurable case of wet rot.

He’s also no doubt trying to lure business people who don’t mind the crappy schools in Texas, where school boards seek to outlaw critical thinking as part of the Texas program to grow adult ignoramuses.

He’ll probably also lure folks who are amorous of “Palmetto bugs” – those are cockroaches the size of Wladimir Klitschko’s fist – that fall out of trees on peoples’ cars and heads, as well as infesting kitchens and attics. Hey, if you or your wife or your kids find a few Palmetto bugs in sexual congress in the china cabinet, you can always say it’s a sign of good luck.

As I said, masochistic New Yorkers-turned-Texan could enjoy the “good life” there. Umm, except for a the little matter of what happens when the setup there gets you into deep trouble.

See, not long ago a fertilizer plant blew higher than a cowboy on loco weed in a Texas town called West. Turns out, there was enough explosive stuff stored there to kill 12 citizens, injure hundreds more, and flatten homes, businesses (perhaps some lured there by Governor Perry), a school, and probably a whole lot of outhouses. Now Governor Perry wants the rest of us non-Texans to pay for it.

This might not have happened had “business-friendly” Texas chosen to regulate plants where explosive chemicals are used and stored.

Didn’t happen.

It might have been avoided if Texas demanded enough liability insurance so that the insurance companies themselves would inspect the plant and threaten to cancel the insurance if the plant didn’t get safe fast.

Didn’t happen.

Or even, if Texas had a reasonable tax structure, like most states, the Texas treasury might have been able to handle the under-$35 million Texas needs to fix the mess – at least until next time. Hell, in New York City alone we spend more on that on subways in a month. Or is it a week? Whatever. In any case a reasonable tax structure didn’t happen in Texas, either.

So why should the citizens of the other 49 states reach into their pockets to help out Texas, when Texans won’t reach into its own pockets? I mean, it just might sound to some people like a bunch of lazy or greedy Texans are demanding welfare to fix up their own mess.

And that's why Governor Perry is crying like a baby with something disagreeable in his diaper.

So the citizens of West are screwed. And I do hope, when the survivors of West figure out that it’s their own governor that screwed them, they – may I borrow one of your own phrases, Governor? – I hope they treat Rick Perry real ugly.

Who’s the new Republican presidential candidate waiting in the wings?

The see-saw is doing its thing. Newt is up. Newt is down. Newt is down and Romney is up. Romney is up and Newt is down. Is the see-saw making you sea-sick yet?

The odds are good that it’s nauseating some Republicans, too. My condolences to them. Or maybe not, since what they seem to want to do most is dismantle the economy and the safety net that keeps most older Americans (and many of the younger ones) from freezing to death on the streets. And to lower taxes on the rich even if the rest of us have to pay for it with smaller soup rations on the bread line.

Still, one senses that the Republicans finally sense that they’re not going to beat Obama. Not with Gingrich. Not with Romney. And not with the passel of other candidates who either threw themselves in front of the bus, got thrown there by Republican primary voters, or who simply got sucked under the bus by the vacuum in rational thinking that surrounded them. (Think Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann, for example.)

This morning the New York Times ran an article saying that former Florida governor Jeb Bush is withholding his endorsement from Romney. Cranky old cynics like me immediately start wondering if Jeb is planning for a draft Jeb rally after Newt and Willard (aka Mitt) badmouth each other into a stall at the Republican convention.

Chris Christie, who also says he’s not a candidate, is also possibly a candidate.

Mitch Daniels, the Indiana senator who gave the world’s most boring speech to “rebut” President Obama? Possible candidate.

But I’m going to go with a long shot bet here, and nominate New York’s impresario of self-dealing, Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Never mind that the billionaire “Mayor Mike” who can spend triple digit millions on a local political campaign the way you and I might drop $3.50 for a latte at Starbucks sabotaged the two-term mayoral limit and is now serving his third term.

Never mind that he keeps standing by his police commissioner, Michael Kelly, a character who looks like Popeye in a business suit. There have been outrageous excuses to shoo away Occupy Wall Street protestors in Zucotti Park. There’s the commissioner’s son, who now stands accused of rape and whose case has to be investigated by people outside the NYPD. There have been numerous instances police misbehavior such as this one, which resulted in … err, ah, umm … an “investigation” which has been creeping along at what some might consider a snail’s pace, despite the fact that police miscreants were caught on video pepper spraying their victims. What's to investigate for three months?

Never mind the outrageous Kathy Black scandal, in which the mayor appointed a crony with zero – that’s zero – educational experience to run one of the world’s largest public school systems. Fortunately, she self-destructed by mocking angry parents at a public meeting.

None of this matters. The mayor can only be mayor so long – even if he had to pay what most of us would consider a fortune to blow up the law that limited his term. What Bloomberg wants, Bloomberg buys. And I wouldn’t be amazed to see him try to buy the Republican presidential nomination.

Sorry, I gotta run out on you for a while. I've got "Mal de Republicanism."

I'm gone until after the Labor Day Weekend. I'm outta here. On vacation. I have my reasons for blowing town.

First of all, I'm having problems with Republicans stealing my stuff. Now, Republicans haven't had an original idea in years. Their political ideas were new three centuries ago. Their notions of religion and freedom of religion are medieval. Their ideas about economics and science have the sophistication of a Neanderthal throwing rocks at an elephant

To make up for a complete lack of imagination, they steal. They make money for their rich buddies by stealing money from the middle class and the poor. (I guess they've either got the Robin Hood story backwards, or identify with the Sheriff of Nottingham.) Okay, the world is watching when they pull that kind of flim-flam. But I draw the line at their stealing from me.

At the beginning of this month, I posted a piece suggesting that Eric Cantor and other "Tea Party" Republicans were treasonous in their political behavior, which was sinking the U.S. economy.

And guess what? As you've probably read in the papers and noticed on TV, Rick Perry, the know-nothing governor of Texas who's seeking the Republican nomination "suddenly" got the bright idea of declaring that Fed Secretary Ben Bernake is guilty of "treason" and sinking the U.S. economy. They stole my hammer. And now they're trying to drive a rubber band into a brick wall with it.

Is somebody on the Perry campaign staff is gleaning my cranky little blog for ideas? (Is that really you, Rick?") Mabe.

Or maybe it was merely a coincidence – a spontaneous idea that flew into Rick's mouth. At any rate, I've had it with the Republican crazies and those who kowtow to them. I've had it with Michelle Bachmann. I've had it with the sudden reemergence of Christine O'Donnell. I've had it with Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, and – well, you get the idea.

So I'm taking a short vacation, from this blog, from work, even from New York.

See you in September.