Okay, kids: POP QUIZ!!

Question: What the primary job of a United State Senator?

1. Deliberate thoughtfully and carefully on legislation proposed to advance the health, safety & welfare of all Americans, thereby improving the quality of life for one’s constituents?


2. Cower before the screeching voices of fear and prejudice while carrying water and bags of cash for the rich and powerful minorities who own 85 percent of the nation’s wealth and systematically blocking any progress of this nation into the 21st Century?


3. Make sure you never actually get caught with hookers and diapers or diddling a campaign staffer’s wife…or husband?

Naw, forget “3.” That was just a joke answer.

If, however, you answered, “2,” you are most likely already a United States Senator and a member of the minority Grand Old Tea Party. That’s right: minority. There are only 41 of you out of 100 and yet the spineless Democrats let you get away with blocking any measure that might accrue to the benefit of the nation.

And not only that, but you dare to go against Lady Gaga? Oh, there WILL be hell to pay for that one!

The Grand Old Tea Party in the U.S. Senate managed Tuesday to try to keep gay military personnel in the closet by refusing to vote for a repeal of the so-called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law. Nevermind that it’s been stuck down as unconstitutional by a federal judge in California.

Clearly the Republican Senators do not want the U.S. Military to be more fabulous. They also want to ignore the vast majority of good, decent Americans who think the whole debate over gay people is ridiculous in the first place.

The Grand Old Tea Party senators – along with Arkansas Democrats Blanche Lincoln and David Pryor – prefer Don’t Ask, Don’ Tell to Live and Let Live.

Oh, and by the way, nearly 14,000 members of the U.S. Armed Forces were discharged in the past year for being gay. Some were merely happy.

The same bunch of curmudgeons also blocked from passage the DREAM Act.

The Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act has been languishing in Congress for years. It would allow colleges and universities to accept children who were brought by their parents to the United States without the legal documentation. The children could also serve in the military. Eventually, they would earn citizenship.

But the curmudgeon Grand Old Tea Party senators don’t want to see children get educated.

They don’t want to hear about gay people defending the country.

They especially don’t want to see Democrats trying to help move the nation along, especially this close to November elections.

Alrighty, then! Here’s a great vision for ‘Murka:

The fundamentalist, backwoods Christians coming together with the Islamophobiacs coming together with the Tea Party curmudgeons to form a coalition promoting fear and hate of just about every dang thing we can imagine.

What fun!

The Values Voters Summit came together again in Washington this past weekend and, boy howdy, were they glad to see Tea Partiers come in to embrace their paranoia because they’d been losing steam recently given the fact that a person of color has occupied The White House for nearly two years and the Rapture hasn’t happened yet.

And so it was on this particular Sunday President Obama decided to go to church to prove, once and for all, how Muslim he really is. And it was a Kenyan Socialist church to boot!

But the good news over at the Values Voters club was despite all the chasms between the fundamentalist Christians, the Islamophobes and the tax haters they could unite behind their chosen leader for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination: Mike Pence!

Yes! Mike Pence! We’re on the road now!

Wait…wait…wait…who?

You know…Mike Pence: the four-term Republican congressman from, not making this up, Rushville, Indiana. Sure, he’s a household name.

He got 24 percent of the Value votes in the straw poll for President, outpacing last year’s winner, Mike “Huckleberry” Huckabee, who only managed 22 percent of the vote.

Mitt Romney was third with 13 percent and Eye-of-the-Newt Gingrich garnered 10 percent of the Fundamentalist-TeaParty-Islamophobe vote.

Poor Sarah Palin only received 7 percent of the vote.

She probably needs to align herself more with the star of the weekend self-love fest, Delaware Republican Senatorial Nominee Christine O’Donnell, speaking of Eye-of-the-Newt sort of things… “Those fingers in my hair; that sly come-hither stare; that strips my conscience bare…”

“Bureaucrats and politicians in Washington think they should decide what kind of lightbulb we should use, what kind of toilet we flush, what kind of car we should drive,” said the GOP senatorial nominee and high school dabbler in witchcraft.

“They even want unelected panels of bureaucrats to decide who gets what lifesaving treatment. They'll let your teenage daughter buy an abortion but they won't let her buy a sugary soda in a school's vending machine.”

That’s the kind of talk that makes sense…not reality…but sense to the Armageddon crowd.

And all this effort for the support of only 19 percent of ‘Murkan voters? Well, yea, but what else do they have to occupy their time?

And, finally, the U.S. Guv’munt declared yesterday the Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is officially, “dead.”

The Gulf of Mexico, while not officially dead still ain’t feelin’ so well.

So, the Pope goes to Westminster Abbey and acts like the last 500 years of aggressive secularism just never even happened.

And by, “aggressive secularism,” he means Anglicans and Presbyterians and, please, don’t even bring up the Methodists!

Okay, whatever. Maybe Madam Tussaud can post Thomas Cromwell’s head on the London Bridge once again. Just for old time’s sake.

Oh yea, and by, “aggressive secularism,” he means the printing press.

Back across the pond, however, Gutenberg would be shocked and awed by the speed with which we can aggressively circulate revolt, if not outright repulsion.

Fewer than five days after appearing onstage the VMAs wearing a meat dress (complete with meat purse she asked Cher to hold), the unstoppable Lady Gaga is taking Sen. John McCain to task on the Twitter for rumors we may try to filibuster the inevitable end to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

"SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN is attempting to stop the DON'T ASK DON'T TELL repeal vote this tuesday, with a filibuster,” Tweeted her Gaga-ness, only to follow up with, “All hands on deck Lil Monsters: Key senate vote this Tues. on   #DADT repeal. We need 60 senators. Call your senator now."

She meant, “dick.”

Sen. McCain, always the Maverick, responded with, “Who is Lady Gaga and why would anyone want to wear a dress made of meat? Don’t ask me. Don’t tell me.”

“And if the Pope is going to London does that mean King Henry finally gets his divorce?”

I’m just making all that up, of course. Sen. McCain doesn’t really live in the 16th Century.

But that doesn’t mean the current GOP isn’t trying to take us back there.

Judging from the candidates the TeaParty-GOP has fielded in Nevada, Kentucky, Colorado, Florida and, now, Delaware, it is clear retro-politics has once again become fashionable among the silk-stocking cowed…er…crowed.

It’s just not good politics without a heavy dose of fear and judgment thrown in. And for God’s sake, follow the advice of the GOP’s newest poster child, Christine O’Donnell and don’t try that masturbation thing at home! Leave it to the professionals.

Fortunately for us, aggressive secularism is a hallmark of this great country. That’s why we wrote that whole Constitution thingy to say a state shouldn’t be forcing religion on anyone.

But just the same, when we are ready for a new religious leader, 17 percent of us are ready for that leader to be…drum roll, please….that’s right: Glenn Beck! (At least according to a poll published by the Public Religion Research Institute.)

It’s reassuring, I know. But religious leadership is really such a fleeting mantle. Look for those numbers to change by the end of October when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hold their competing rallies on the Mall in Washington: the Rally to Restore Sanity and the Keep Fear Alive Rally…respectively.

Look for pigeons to fly over as a sign from God.