FROM NORTH AMERICA SYNDICATE, 300 W 57th STREET, 15th FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019  
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       BOB FRANKEN
       FOR RELEASE TUESDAY, JAN. 24, 2012
       NEWT’S MITT PICKING
       BY BOB FRANKEN
       Because they make buckets of money from it, political professionals hate to hear us smart alecks contend that their hovering presence around candidates means little. That’s because elections are not won but lost. There’s a lot of evidence to back that up. Do the names John McCain, John Kerry and Al Gore make that point? How about Michael Dukakis? In the elite arena of presidential campaigns, they all are in the Stiffs Hall of Fame.
       Among the active players who are making a valiant effort to reach those fallowed heights we certainly can include Mitt Romney.
       Romney’s awkward pretense that he has any idea about common-people concerns time and again end up with him blurting out in ways that demonstrate he’s oblivious. His little aside about making “not very much” from speaking fees quickly becomes an embarrassment when we find out he’s talking about $374,000 in one year. When the pressure is on to release his tax records, he seems to become visibly agitated. He starts speaking faster, his eyes appear to jump. It’s no wonder. At least a chunk of his massive fortune was made by causing misfortune for many others.
       All of that said, we cannot ignore the very clever tactics of Newton Leroy Gingrich. He loves to disparage Romney’s “poll-driven, consultant-guided” campaign. His rise and fall certainly have defied the political industry’s conventional wisdom. This is Newt’s Law of Gravity -- the opposite of the other Newton: What goes down goes back up.
       Gingrich’s life has been one big roller-coaster ride. However, to give credit where it’s due, the man is a master at reversing a slide. He is a ferocious counterpuncher, most dangerous when he’s against the ropes.
       Just one example: The very same day the tawdry interview with his ex-wife Marianne was released and then grossly overplayed on cable TV, Gingrich turned what might have been mortifying embarrassment into a triumph that will be long remembered in debate history.
       The memorable moments usually are defined by a single sound bite. Lloyd Bentsen’s “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” shot inflicted permanent damage on Dan Quayle. Ronald Reagan’s “There you go again” arguably had a lot to do with his making Jimmy Carter a one-termer.
       Poor John King of CNN. When he led off the evening by asking about Wife No. 2’s bitter comments, Gingrich made mincemeat of him, getting a roar of approval from the audience. It was a defining moment in a state chock-full of rock-solid conservatives and evangelicals who scorn the “elite media,” as Gingrich put it, for “protecting Barack Obama.”
       A chagrined King, a consummate professional, nevertheless became Gingrich’s Quayle. It will be replayed forevermore..

       FROM NORTH AMERICA SYNDICATE, 300 W 57th STREET, 15th FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019  
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       BOB FRANKEN
       FOR RELEASE FRIDAY, JAN. 20, 2012
       WAR CRIMES PERSPECTIVE
       BY BOB FRANKEN
       I don’t know if the same signs are in every Whole Foods, but there are several that adorn the walls of my neighborhood store. Probably the most cloying one extols the corporation’s support of The Animal Compassion Foundation for “raising animals naturally and humanely.” “In short, we believe,” it goes on, “that through the work of the foundation, we can improve the lives of farm animals.”
       Now, ain’t that nice? Of course, they did leave off a line: “THEN WE SLAUGHTER THEM!!!”
       It brings to mind all the moralistic hand-wringing over those U.S. Marines who made the mistake of being photographed as they urinated on the bodies of apparent Taliban fighters the Marines seem to have killed before they were killed.
       Inevitably, the pictures hit the Internet, and just as inevitably, U.S. officials of the highest rank, the secretaries of state and defense among them, expressed their outrage: “Utterly deplorable,” said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta; “inconsistent with American values,” added Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Panetta promised appropriate punishment for this violation of the international laws of war prohibiting “abuse of corpses.” Tellingly, military officials also were pondering charges against those who took the pictures. It’s not nice to embarrass the United States.
       Nobody seemed to state the obvious, which was that the worst mistreatment of the dead was making them dead in the first place. Nobody spoke up for the Marines who were cast in that role. Nobody, that is, but that noted wise man Rick Perry.
       Yes, that may have been a tad sarcastic, considering that Perry has since decided to pack it in and go lick his own wounds, but he was one of the few voices when he went on a Sunday gabfest to bemoan the “over-the-top rhetoric” about the Marines’ actions, saying they should be reprimanded and not punished since, “Obviously, 18- and 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that’s what’s occurred here.”
       What occurred there in Afghanistan was depraved and ghoulish, but also understandable when you remember that these young men have been fighting for their lives for however many months and were probably in a rage about the friends they have lost in hostilities that are hard to understand.
 

       FROM NORTH AMERICA SYNDICATE, 300 W 57th STREET, 15th FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019  
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       BOB FRANKEN
       FOR RELEASE TUESDAY, JAN. 17, 2012
       THE END OF HUNTSMAN’S HUNT
       BY BOB FRANKEN
       The appropriate observation about the latest from the world of politics is downright Orwellian: Sanity is Insanity. How else would we describe Jon Huntsman’s belief that he could succeed by taking the middle of the road, using rational ideas against competition that is way out there, spouting extremist babble that is only sometimes coherent.
       Happily for Huntsman, he seems to have regained his connection to reality by pulling out of the race. Now he can reconcile those fantasies where he assumed he ever had a chance. Obviously, he had some moments when it occurred to him that this wasn’t quite right; the time, for instance, when he tweeted “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”
       OK, Jon. You were crazy. You want evidence? How about when you uttered, “I don’t think you need to run down somebody’s reputation in order to run for the office of president”? Of course you do, Jon. What would possess you to think otherwise? It was that kind of thinking that put you so far down in the South Carolina polls ... way down. Even Stephen Colbert was ahead of you, and his participation is a big joke.
       Of course, “big joke” might describe the candidacies of those still in the running. Surely when Mitt Romney declared that “Corporations are people,” he was making a funny. Or when Rick Santorum compared gay relationships to bestiality, he couldn’t have been serious. Could he? Actually, someone thinks so, since he got that endorsement from evangelicals.
       We don’t even need to list all the wild rantings of Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul. First of all, there isn’t enough space, and besides, they would be hard to believe outside the election loony bin. As Rick Perry said, “Oops.” By the way, Perry is still strutting his stuff.
 

FROM NORTH AMERICA SYNDICATE, 300 W 57th STREET, 15th FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019  
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       BOB FRANKEN
       FOR RELEASE FRIDAY, JAN. 13, 2012
       ROMNEY CAMPAIGN BAIN BANE
       BY BOB FRANKEN
       Here is what’s confusing: The free-enterprise system, held up as such an ideal, is supposed to reward those who risk THEIR capital and THEIR livelihoods in pursuit of the American Dream.
       How did that morph into the nightmarish way Mitt Romney and the others of his ilk game the system? They make huge fortunes gambling with the precious savings scraped together by millions of others who than suffer the loss of their future. These greedy manipulators add to their bulging coffers no matter what.
       They love to proclaim that their frontier spirit of entrepreneurship is what encourages innovation. But, research and development is one of the first outlays to go in their process of reducing every business to nothing more than a ledger-sheet entry. There is no more cutting-edge experimentation. Cutting workers, however, is high on their list of ways to achieve precious efficiency, tossing them off onto an economic landscape the profiteers have robbed barren.
       Romney started out wealthy, thanks to his accident of birth. His claims that he ever sweated unemployment deserve the ridicule they’ve gotten. He’s used his silver spoon to scoop up untold millions at Bain Capital, a private equity firm that used OTHER people’s money to buy existing companies and do whatever it took to maximize their resale value. If, as it so often did, that meant pulling the rug out from under employees, so be it. That’s the way things work in their Darwinian world, where Survival of the Richest

FROM NORTH AMERICA SYNDICATE, 300 W 57th STREET, 15th FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019  
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       BOB FRANKEN
       FOR RELEASE TUESDAY, JAN. 10, 2012
       SPORTING GAMES, POLITICAL GAMESMANSHIP
       BY BOB FRANKEN
       If it seemed like an inane question at the end of Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate, that’s because it was. But, in the effort to inject some warm humor into the long conversation among cold, humorless people, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, who was participating as co-moderator, actually got a telling response in spite of himself by asking if each wasn’t at the debate, “What would you be doing on a Saturday night?”
       The candidates were quick to say they’d be watching sports on TV, answers calculated to demonstrate that they are just regular guys, and not the weirdly irregular ones they appear to be.
       The problem is that they took this puff ball and dropped it. As the sportscaster used to say, “LET’S GO TO THE TAPE!”
       NEWT GINGRICH: I’d be watching the college championship basketball game.
       (UNKNOWN): Football game.
       GINGRICH: I mean, football game.
       (LAUGHTER)
       Thank you.
       RICK SANTORUM: I’d be doing the same thing with my family. We’d be huddled around, and we’d be watching the championship game.
       Sports fans everywhere would have seen how the disingenuously jocular candidates were genuinely un-jock-u-lar.
       Obviously, Newt shot still another airball.
       And Santorum, who claimed he’d be taking in the college football championship, also fumbled, since that game was to be played two full nights later.
       The fact is, it was NFL playoff games that were broadcast Saturday night. That’s professional football, of course, not the semi-pro college version. It might seem somewhat nit-picky, except that anyone who really would be tuned in knows the difference. Of course, they probably didn’t see the debate.
   

       FROM NORTH AMERICA SYNDICATE, 300 W 57th STREET, 15th FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019  
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       BOB FRANKEN
       FOR RELEASE FRIDAY, JAN. 6, 2012
       NO ONE IS NO. 1
       BY BOB FRANKEN
       It’s quite possibly the outstanding news photo of 2012. OK, that might be a little gushy, since it appeared in The New York Times Jan. 3, but it may best capture the mood of the entire election year.
       It shows a sign depicting a ballot with a check beside “NO ONE!” According to the caption, it was taken outside a barn in Marshalltown, Iowa, but it certainly reflects the sentiments of mass disgruntlement everywhere in this nation.
       How many polls do we need to quantify how fed up millions are with what they consider a dismal choice to lead a “government of the people” that only seems to function on behalf of rich people -- that is, when it functions at all.
       Only Nevada offers a “none of the above” option, but it’s nonbinding. Unfortunately, huge numbers of American voters make that selection in an even more damning way: They don’t vote. Time after time, they’re in the majority. And those who do show up at the polls all too often are registering not their support but their opposition ... not FOR a candidate, but AGAINST the other.
       Instead of a participatory democracy, we’ve deteriorated into a passive-aggressive one, where citizens have good reason to believe their well-being and beliefs will be sold out to the highest bidder and feel powerless. That’s probably why there’s an organization that advocates for “none of the above.” Since there’s a group to push just about any case, why not this one? Naturally, it has a website, NOTA.org, with its own pitch:
      

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BOB FRANKEN

FOR RELEASE TUESDAY, JAN. 3, 2012

THE TRAVELING SALESPEOPLE AND THE HOME FOLKS

BY BOB FRANKEN

Every four years, we dust off the Willie Nelson song “On the Road Again,” because presidential campaigns are one big road show. The moment the contrived drama is over in Iowa, the actors and their directors, their tap-dancers, as well as the Greek chorus of reporters, all strike the set and move to New Hampshire. Then it's on to the next one-week stand, talking love and rewriting the lines to fit the local mood.

Each quadrennial (I LOVE using that word), the various states get to enjoy a moment in the cold light of pretend concern about the issues that fester there. The candidates rejigger their kinship message for a week and then move on.

But there are performances that stay in the same theater, in the same district or within the borders of the same state, from beginning to end.

Obviously, each is the war story about a slice of congressional turf. These set pieces ultimately determine which party controls the House and Senate, and which decides the fate of the agenda put forth by the one who ends up in the White House.

What will be great fun to watch will be the contortions by the members of Congress as they individually try to untangle from the twisted mess they've helped create. Both halves are ripe for change. The House is currently controlled by the “Tea Party,” formerly called the “Republicans.” The most zealous have large enough numbers that they have created near paralysis. This election serves as another chance to vote on the promise they've made, and kept, which is to blow up the system No one should be surprised by the gridlock -- horrified maybe, but not surprised.

Meanwhile, as usual, in the Senate, obstructionism is a way of life, if you call that “life.” The upper body, as it likes to call itself, is under Democratic control, although “Senate” and “control” make up a bodacious oxymoron. The rules are so mind-numbingly archaic that the majority has little clout. The real power is the ability to block anything and everything. That takes just a minority of the members, sometimes a minority of one. But every two years, many states get to choose one of the two who sleepwalk on their behalf.

Right now, the numbers favor the GOPs, with seven Dems retiring and 16 incumbents trying to protect their seats, or whatever word you want to substitute. The GOPs have just two retiring and eight incumbents seeking re-election. Of course, the presidential prospects and the hopes of each party in the Capitol are intertwined. And the races have one other thing in common: money, lots of it. It is provided by the rich and powerful (pardon the redundancy) to render the concept of government by and for all the people equally almost laughable. But here we are again, looking for change in all the wrong places. In November it will be over, and that's when we rediscover how we're being shortchanged. As Willie Nelson also sings, “Funny How Time Slips Away.” There is a growing worry that the country is starting to slip away, too.

© 2012 Bob Franken

Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

The truth of the matter is that Tony's human friends included an equally diverse collection of the human kind. It is a mix of people coated in a wide variety of political stripes and those who wear different hats.

I was in the herd of journalists whose relentless pursuit of his clients was never taken personally by him. No matter how hard the collisions that came with our work, when he would finish defending his client, Newt Gingrich, from our professional onslaught he would go to dinner with his antagonist to laugh about the day and chew over ideas and gossip along with our meal.
.
I enjoyed many such evenings as well as warm times with his family and Our get togethers would always range from lofty intellectual discussions to low humor. And of course, time with the llamas.

Now he's gone. He died this weekend, leaving a large group of admirers who will now circle around his incredible wife Lynda and their children.

He never forgot his British roots and manners. Frankly, it was amusing, because he had come to the United States at such a young age. I used to joke that when we got angry at someone, he would "smite the bounder", while I would "kick the ---- out of him". On this side of The Pond, his family settled in Hollywood where he became a child actor. He grew up to be an attorney, speech writer, columnist, editor and during his years as Newt Gingrich's press secretary, a fireman who was constantly putting out Newt's rhetorical fires. He somehow managed to be bon vivant and down to earth at the same time, which is remarkable when you think of it, as was his ability to bridge the gap between restless curiosity and graciousness.

A few years ago, he showed me video of his role in the movie "The Harder They Fall". He was eight years old and played Rod Steiger's son. I was astonished at how he looked like a miniature of his grownup self, a munchkin duplicate. In adulthood he managed to be bigger than all the pettiness that so often reduces Washington. I am among the many who will mourn his premature passing and celebrate the good fortune of sharing his life, both professionally and personally.

FROM NORTH AMERICA SYNDICATE, 300 W 57th STREET, 15th FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019  
CUSTOMER SERVICE: (800) 708-7311 EXT. 236
BOB FRANKEN
FOR RELEASE FRIDAY, DEC. 30, 2011
MORE PROMISES TO BREAK
BY BOB FRANKEN

Gonna be a resolution ...
Actually it’s that time of year, the beginning, when we make a slew of resolutions. As a public service, let’s resolve to help our leading lights promise to change their ways in 2012. It’s Make and Break Time.

Where do we begin? With whom? So little space, so many irritations and so many irritators. But let’s start at the top of the list.

Newt Gingrich promises to rid his speech of all bombastic, bomb-blastic adjectives and adverbs. That means no more meaningless but incendiary qualifiers like “radical(ly),” “secular,” “Islamist” and “socialist,” so often spit out in various combinations, and no more self-aggrandizing ones like “profound,” or “truly conservative,” “historical” and “professorial.”

That last one has antagonized professors everywhere, given Newt’s habit of bragging that he’s read a book and then spewing a few CliffsNotes ideas from it. History scholars are particularly incensed with the “historical” one, since he so often embarrasses them with his out of-context descriptions of past world events.

He comes across as a pedantic someone trying to snow the voter who thinks the Ottoman Empire was a furniture store and has no idea what the Federalist Papers are but thinks it sounds nice when Gingrich cites them, albeit inaccurately.

Mitt Romney is another one who could come with a ton of resolutions. And like Newt, he doesn’t need to worry about keeping them, given their history of changing direction whenever expedient. So why not let his hair down (actually, that’s a good place to start) and stop pretending he’s anything but the silver spoon he’s been from birth. Yet if he’s going to maintain his common-touch charade, he needs to work on those slips of the tongue like “Corporations are people.” By the way, we have a special request from the canine community for a resolution promising that anytime one of them is taken on a Romney family trip, he rides in the car, not on it. Don’t bet your $10,000 on any of these.

Rick Perry has two or three resolutions, he can’t remember which, but first he’ll have to make sure they meet the approval of the Texas corporate puppeteers who control his every move. That certainly means he won’t resolve to protect any pristine land or coastal waters from drilling, and he definitely will not divert business subsidies to pay for badly needed social services in his state. How about this one: He promises to stop one execution in Texas. That ain’t happenin’. Maybe he can try to pronounce the letter “g” at word’s end.

Ah yes, Ron Paul. Perhaps he can resolve to come clean about his extremism. It’s a new year, Ron. What better time to be honest about the hate that underpins his so-called libertarianism. And then he can seek therapy, as well as anyone who believes that he was completely unaware of the bigoted newsletter that went out under his name. They were the dark workings of insanity. Buying his explanation is also downright crazy.

There are so many other characters, the Palins, Trumps, Bachmanns, but why would they change anything considering how very far they’ve come with so little substance?
And let’s keep this bipartisan by including President Barack Obama. He should resolve to have some resolve. He’s had a problem with that, which has made it possible for all those other characters to even have a chance at taking his job.

As for the rest of us, we need a resolution promising we’ll study hard and take intelligent action, such as examining the issues and knowing all about the positions and character of those politicians who control our lives. We should resolve to control theirs. It’s what we call a democracy. It took a revolution for it to be created. With that resolution, we can make sure we don’t fritter it away