Cleveland Rocks

If you're in the business of making with the funny, and thankfully I am, this week's Republican National Convention and indeed the entire campaign of Donald Trump, is frankly the gift that keeps on giving.

It doles out laughs faster than a Federally funded Saul Alinsky Welfare Program could dish out thousand dollar bills.

The plagiarized speech, referenced above, is but a tiny fraction of the miscues -- though I'm not sure many Republicans see it that way -- beaming to us live from the shores of appropriately named Lake Erie.

Two days ago, for instance, the California delegation caught a very contagious case of norovirus. So if the opening chaos on the convention floor, the lack of minorities in attendance and the anemic support of the Republican establishment didn't have them vomiting and shitting all over themselves, surely the three day old shrimp salad did.

And then there were the speakers.

At one time, I was a big admirer of Rudy Guliani. His handling and leadership of the post-9/11 crisis was nothing short of inspiring. Cool, calm and collected. The Rudy we saw the other night was anything but. As one online friend put it, it was as if he were doing a poor imitation of Benito Mussolini.

The GOP could be excused if Rudy was an anomaly.
That was hardly the case.

Ben Carson, the absent-minded doctor who, by his own admission and in some misguided attempt to get some street cred, stabbed a fellow schoolmate in his younger and wilder days. Not stabbed him in the back metaphorically, as politicians and advertising agency executives have been known to do.

But in the gut with a kitchen knife.
Thankfully, the boy was saved by a miraculous belt buckle.

Inexplicably, Dr. Carson made Lucifer, The Prince of Darkness, the keystone of his nationally broadcast speech.

We are staring at global climate change, intricate challenges in geo-politics, the rise of extremism, diminishing natural resources, overpopulation, growing income disparity, and a host of other problems that demand rigorous attention and out of the box thinking, but we are talking about Lucifer?

Have we really sunken to this infantile level of intellectual discourse?
Apparently we have.

You see the brain surgeon was preceded onstage by the un-brain surgeon, Scott Baio.

According to Baio, aka Charles in Charge, "Trump is a guy who gets things done."

Moreover, "it's not about getting free stuff" --though I'm sure some purchasing agents at the Pentagon, fond of gold plated toilets, disagree.

And once we put God/Jesus/Allah/SkyDaddy back in the classroom, "we're going to make America America again."

That's some mind-bending stuff, Chachi.

No wonder Joanie loved you.



Next week, the Democrats are up. In terms of sheer laughter, they're gonna have hard time topping this.