It's not too early

To start mocking the GOP candidates for 2016.  Right at the moment, it looks as though the people who might go up against Hilary Clinton whoever wins the Democratic nomination include:

• Rick Perry, Lunatic Governor of Texas
• Ted Cruz, Canadian Texas Senator
• Rand Paul, Son of a ... Son of Ron Paul  Kentucky Senator
• Ted Nugent, Lobotomy patient  aging musician
• Viktor Yanukovych, (apparently) ex-head of the Ukraine
• Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto
• A pack of feral Chihuahuas from Phoenix

Michigan's own little bad boy, Dave Agema, has refused to say whether he'll run, since an obscure note in the Constitution forbids candidates to stand for election while being pelted with dung by members of their own party.

America: Love it or leave it

It's not often that I manage to find something positive to say about the GOP, here in Michigan. But I want to take this opportunity to thank Dave Agema, our Republican National Committeeman. His candid expressions of opinion have allowed me to cross off one item on my life list.  His assertion that the Russian policies regarding LBGT rights are "common sense" will let me do something that I've waited decades to do. Ever since the Seventies, I've wanted to say to a social conservative:

Hey, punk. If you don't like it here, move to Russia!

 

And while you're at it, stop off in the UK, look up a guy named David Silvester, and take him with you.

The back stories, if you haven't seen them:

Agema
Silvester

OK, you figure this out

Thad McCotter, the former Republican Presidential Candidate, former Republican Congressman from Livonia, and former, um, I guess that's it, who flamed out of the 2012 GOP primary like a gift camel from Mali, is suing his former (there's that word again) aides for -- not making this up -- deliberately committing fraudulent acts in order to keep him from running for Congress again. (At least that's what the sketchy story on MLIVE says -- I thought he wasn't running for Congress again, due to his involvement with the Presidential race, but maybe he was just hedging his bets.)

Now, let me go back over that, in case you're as baffled as I was: McCotter is suing two of his ex-staffers for deliberately (he says) falsifying signatures on his nominating petition, specifically to keep him out of the race. That is, knowingly doing things that were illegal and that could (and did) get them (them, not McCotter) prosecuted. Motives are not mentioned.

Let's see, here. Who could have put them up to such a dastardly deed? Of course, if you're a Republican, you might assume that the Democrats did, striving to keep a brilliant, effective flag-bearer of the party from opposing them in the crucial race for a seat representing that powerhouse of commerce and culture, Livonia. Or, if you're a Democrat, you might be inclined to believe that the GOP told McCotter to keep his cotton-pickin' hands off the Presidential race (he did say some uncomplimentary things about the GOP, during the twenty minutes or so that he was a candidate), and suspect that they acted to spank him for interfering with their carefully-orchestrated Romnapocalypse. Either way, the whole thing is so spectacularly stupid that it only makes sense in a state whose GOP Party Chair thinks homosexuality and alcoholism are parallel constructs and whose Democratic Party couldn't find anyone to run against Rick Snyder except a guy named "Virg."

But at press time, odds were running twenty-eight to one that it was North Korea, attempting to get Dennis Rodman a foreign service appointment. Go ahead, look me in the eye and tell me it makes any less sense that way.