There is absolutely no truth to the rumor President Barack Obama jumped off Air Force One in Japan wearing golf shoes and knickers under his presidential suit to announce:

"We are the Pros from Dover and we figure to crack this kid's chest and get out to golf course before it gets dark."

Actually, the Japanese were reported to be impressed with the tall, dark Hawaiian but immediately insisted he give back the WWII submarines he just found off the Hawaiian coast.

"Not a chance," Obama replied. "How ‘bout we give you back Okinawa instead."

Seriously, POTUS is making a whirlwind tour through Asia: Japan, Singapore, back to China then South Korea. In the process, he's setting a record for traveling abroad more than any other president in his first year. Also, a record for consuming more sushi in his first year than any other president.

The Faux News is expected to highlight this fact repeatedly while also doctoring video tape to make it look like Obama also sneaks over to Indonesia to get final instructions from the madrassa they said he attended and in which he received indoctrination as a small child. There is no confirmation the president will visit Manchuria.

Back in the good ol' U.S. of A., Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, and ranking GOPer on the House Intelligence Committee continues to leak classified 411 all over the place in an effort to persuade the good people of Michigan to make him their governor.

Meanwhile, down in the Republic of Texas, Gov. Rick Perry, again sounds the call for secession…or bigger teabag rallies, whichever will help him cement his idolization among the idiot class and to defend his position against that radical leftist Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson for continued control of the state capitol in Austin…which, ironically enough, is really the only part of Texas any Americans really want to retain. Okay...and maybe the Dallas Cowboys.

But there is good news for dedicated Christians who fear and are repulsed by the 140-character cesspool of Twitter.

We can now answer the 2,000 year old question: Who Would Jesus Tweet?

Long-time Christian snake oil entrepreneur James Paris has launched ChristianChirp.com, a micro-blogging site for Christians who are sick of 3-point, 10-minute homilies from their priests and pastors.

Paris says he launched the new service because he claims he was banned from Twitter for posting a pro-Douche Limpbranch link after the radio carnival barker was rejected by the NFL.

Jesus is probably happy about this. It's much easier to sort through 140-character self-serving prayer requests than those long, boring self-serving prayers requests issued by traditional means.

However, this does raise a very important theological question: Is it okay to ChristianChirp during church??

There he was in the dim and growing light of dawn, dancing across his front yard, shouting to all the world of its unfairness, not angry, just confused and overwhelmed.

When he jumped on top of his truck and began kicking and dancing more, the neighbors decided it was a good time to step in and check on him.

In that single unchoreographed ballet of fear and depression was a microcosm of the state of our nation.

The poor man was worried sick, worried to the edge of insanity about losing his job. His bills, he said, were already overwhelming. He had nowhere to turn. He drank beer and danced to exorcise the demons within.

The man is a veteran.

He's a working man; works for a hospital and could be treated – but only in the hospital emergency room. He can't afford group health insurance. He's not poor enough to qualify for VA Care or for Medicaid.

He's lost in the swirl of macro-economics and special-interest encrusted national politics. Posturing and catering to the monied power brokers leaves the common American without a voice, without the basics needed to maintain an even keel.

According to a study released this week by the Harvard Medical School, almost 2,300 veterans – all under the age of 65 – died last year because they didn't have adequate health care.

If you're keeping score, that's 14 times the number of active soldiers who died last year in Afghanistan and over twice the number who have died since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 – 8 years ago.

This is no way diminishes the lives lost in Afghanistan. But on the Veterans' Day, it gives one pause to wonder what, exactly, our nation is doing to care for the vets AFTER the nation has used them for its political purposes. Those nearly 2,300 veterans who died for lack of health care didn't need to die. They were victims of politics at home.

A devotional reading this morning from a mainline protestant church ask the simple question: Are we – as a society and nation – living to be worthy of our veterans' sacrifices?

Are we, though our corporate actions in the polis, worthy of the sacrifices made by those who sacrificed all?

Wouldn't you know it?

No sooner had the Democrats – most of 'em – passed health care reform in the House of Representatives and thereby ordered construction to begin on death camps does God hissown dang self step in and send a hurricane toward the Gulf Coast, mudslides in El Salvador and earthquakes all over the Pacific Rim.

The House GOPers and big insurance companies tried to warn us but the Democrats – most of 'em – just wouldn't listen and insisted through a majority of votes that nearly every 'Murkin get a shot at decent, affordable health care.

The debate will now move over to the Senate where we hope God will be appeased because Senators won't be able to repay the millions in insurance company campaign donations and will be much more likely to do their bidding.

You just wait and see.

The hurricane will be long gone. Alabama and Florida will play for the SEC Championship (which is REALLY the NATIONAL title game) and God and Santa Claus will join forces to keep 'Murkins free and out of the hands of good health by the time the Senate gets around to pretending to do anything!

What really pissed off the House GOPers, though, was having to work over the weekend and well into Saturday night, nearly into Sunday morning, to vote on the health care enslavement act. That cut into prime drinkin' and hittin' on the local talent time and that's just clearly un 'murkin.

Those Stalinist-Hitlerist Democratic House leaders, Pelosi and Hoyer and the rest, just insisted the work get done when, heck fire, we've put this off for over 50 years and we just don't understand why it can't wait one more weekend!!

The debate was not, however, without its light moments. One GOPer played ventriloquist with a real live baby and John Boehner, leader of the GOPers and head of the Congressional Rub-On-Orange-Tan Caucus pronounced the word, "hyperbole," as, "hyper-bowl." That was rich.

But the best hijinks of the night were left for the game of football played by the House with a woman's uterus. Invoking the overwhelming need to keep federal dollars from – in any way – paying for abortions, the House agreed to an amendment to make ensure government intrudes on the personal health decisions of women across this great land. No matter that such a federal ban already exists, they needed that amendment and they didn't mind kicking around a few women to get it, by golly.

In the end, 39 Democrats voted against good health care for their constituents and all come from districts who voted last year for John McCain over Barack Obama. If better health care passes the Senate, perhaps they will be able to get spine replacements.

One lone Republican, Anh "Joseph" Cao of New Orleans, voted in favor of health care reform. What? A Republican from New Orleans? WTF? Yes, that's right. Mr. Cao won the special election to replace Democrat William Jefferson who kept cash in his freezer hoping it would turn cold and hard.

Mr. Cao, who happens to be of Vietnamese descent, was immediately whisked away to an undisclosed location for safety as some right-wingers suffering flashbacks jumped in their swift boats and headed up river.

All in all, it was mostly a good night for Americans, the vast majority of whom really want to heal our diseased health care system.

We try in this space to make something funny out of national politics – which is usually like catching fish in a barrel.

But there is nothing funny about the tragedy at Fort Hood yesterday. We all want to be in prayer for the soldiers, their families and, yes, the shooter and his family, too. Christian prayer, Muslim prayer, Jewish prayer, Buddhist meditation and prayer; it doesn't matter because prayer is prayer; God is God.

There is also nothing funny about where we are as a society, a nation, that such a horrific event would even be possible.

History is rife with examples of how non-violence and peace have overcome oppression and violence. But we seem so ready to choose violence as the first option.

Pray for us, too.

All too predictable and sad is the reactionary vitriol and hate coming from the extreme right-wing as the Fort Hood news unfolded. We all know by now the shooter, an officer and Army-trained psychiatrist is an American, born in Virginia who also happens to be Muslim by faith.

It took a nano-second or two for some on the Internet to start screaming the U.S. military should be cleansed of – and I'm not making this up – "all Muslims and anyone darker than a Ritz cracker."

It was said by relatives of Maj. Hasan told family members he was distraught because his faith was the object of so much derision in the Army.

Meanwhile, just earlier and on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, a few thousand folks described as "mostly white, in their 50s and 60s, many self-described as Christian" led a protest of efforts to provide decent, affordable health care to other Americans.

One of the protesters' biggest signs showed a stunningly evil photograph of a pile of naked, emaciated, dead victims of the Nazi death camps. The words on the sign read, "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945."

Seriously, is this the best we can do?

Is it possible that we've become so selfish and unthinking that our best example of citizen participation in this democratic experiment is conning a bunch of aging people to come Washington to protest "government-run health care" when so many of them are enrolled in Medicare and receive monthly checks from Social Security?

It's a sad day in this corner of 'Murka…for many reasons.

A year to the day that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and overnight turned this great nation into a socialist gulag, 'Murkins fought through imperial police barricades in a fistful of states to elect bland, unimaginative, fat white guys.

This proves the Obama revolution was just a flash in the pan, a brief if luminescent shooting star across the dark electoral night.

Okay, for the record: voters elected Republican governors in Virginia, the seat of the Confederacy and in New Jersey, the seat of…um, well…the pants.

But for the first time since Peter Minuit traded beads with the indigenous Lanape people and became the first mayor of New York City, voters in upstate New York elected a Democrat to congress.

Voters in New York's 23rd Congressional District found the answer, my friend, was Bill Owens in the wind to the all-out war on Republicans launched by Republicans who don't like other Republicans if they take strident positions like supporting the rights of a woman to make her own reproductive decisions.

Owens, a Democrat, was elected over a dude named Hoffman who was the Conservative Party nominee. The Republican Party nominee, Dede Scozzafava, dropped out of the race and endorsed Owens over the weekend after being hounded and thoroughly trashed by the Jackboot wing of the GOP.

"I happen to think when Republicans stay conservative, Republicans win," said one Right-Wing GOP columnist.

But, apparently, not in the traditionally conservative New York Congressional District 23.

"It is time to lock and load and go to war with these establishment Republicans," said long-time right-wing plotter Richard Viguerie.

Looks more like a circular firing squad.

But, hey, right-wingers; take heart because Virginia elected a Pat Robertson disciple as governor. You'll remember Governor-elect Bob McDonnell made news some months ago when his thesis emerged from undergraduate studies at the Roberston-run Jesus State University (home of the Fightin' Lord-And-Saviors). Yea, it was a thesis in which he suggested women ought best be kept barefoot and pregnant.

Looks like it could be a great four years for women in Virginia.

Meanwhile, up in the strategically important, bell weather state of Maine voters rejected the idea that gay people should get married. Not sure why any self-respecting gay people would want to get married in frozen, moose-filled, poorly decorated Maine but that's beside the point.

The rejection of gay marriage in Maine is considered a blow to gay marriage in favor of sadder, more miserable marriage because we all know as Maine goes so goes…well…Maine. Not to worry, Maine is blocked on the board by the rest of New England, especially Provincetown.

Oh well, pundits will have a field day or two punding away about the various reasons why this election was a complete rejection of the Obama Doctrine to clean up the severe and tragic mess left by George Bush.

Life will go on and with the consent of Senate Czars Harry Reid and Jomentum Lieberman we may actually see our nation's health care system reformed by, say, the end of the 21st Century.

"I'm a good Republican…and I went to the local GOP office to volunteer my time for the upcoming election. You're heading everything up and damn, as soon as I saw you my schedule cleared right up for phone banking."

"Seriously, you are hot. Like, so gorgeous I stare at you while I make my phone calls to angry Democrats that managed to get on our lists. I'm normally a somewhat cogent conversationalist, but I get so distracted by you I keep saying the dumbest (stuff) to you just to give me an excuse to stare. Sometimes you even laugh."

"I don't know quite how to tell you I am now single and would like nothing more than to jump your bones amidst all the yard signs (preferably when all the old ladies that volunteer aren't there, but hey, I'll take what I can get)."

"I know you are way busy - and that makes you even hotter by the way - but if you manage to get a few free minutes at like 2 am once the campaign work is done, I will totally come by and de-stress you."

"Call me. Or text me. Or just kiss me, I'm not particular. Let's test out that theory that Republicans have better sex lives."

– – Posted on Craig's List.

And no, it's not GOP Chairman Michael Steele writing to New York Conservative Party candidate for the Empire State's Congressional District 23; nor Gin BecksBeer, nor Douche Limpbranch, nor even Sarah "I'll get right back to ya (wink)" Palin.

Why, heck, it's not even totally rejected GOP N.Y. 23rd Candidate Dede Scozzafava fawning over Democratic Candidate Bill Owens.

Nope, just a volunteer…politics is a sexy bid'ness.

Hilarious, too.

Witness that gigantic cluster taffy pull up in Upstate New York where the official Republican nominee for N.Y. Congressional District 23, Dede Scozzafava, was absolutely hounded from the race because the national Republican leadership (BecksBeer, Limpbranch and the like) didn't like her.

She's too liberal, they said (read: "moderate") and they bolted the party ranks for the Conservative Party Candidate Doug Hoffman. Scozzafava, having quit the race, endorsed over the weekend Democratic Candidate Bill Owens. ("The answer, my friend, is Bill Owens in the wind.")

What a cartoon.

But that's the way it is with the jack-boot crowd. They really don't care if you're a Republican or not. They just want you to be as extreme as you can be, goose-step just like they do.

And don't think they'll stop in New York, either. Plenty of states still have moderate Republicans running for office. They'll come after them, too.

The Republicans once boasted of having a big tent, a place for everyone. Heck, there was once a proud tradition of Republican progressives. Those days are over.

And one wonders why the radical right-wing can only attract, say, 20 percent of the population?