Apparently the President started another war this week and it has Republicans playing the role of hippy peacenik — not to offend hippy peaceniks.

This isn’t a war of bullets, missiles, known knowns or known unknowns. It is a war of words. Well, two words to be exact.

Class warfare.

When President Obama took to the White House Rose Garden to articulate his vision for reducing the Republican budget deficit, he advocated a combination of steep spending cuts, tax increases on the extremely wealthy, and tax cuts for working families and small business all while protecting Social Security benefits.
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“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” reads the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service.

I guess no one ever thought it would be the Republican Party finishing off the Postal Service when those words were borrowed from the ancient Greek and chiseled in granite over the entrance to the James Farley Post Office in New York City on Labor Day in 1914.

Our postal system is quite remarkable if you think about it for a minute.

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At this week’s debate of 2012 Republican White House hopefuls at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the former movie actor and president was name-dropped like a top Hollywood agent during awards season.

I guess you could say the endless Reagan-worshiping is the modern GOP equivalent of praying to a false golden idol.

Since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January following the midterm elections, we’ve been treated to the endless, tired mantra of “now isn’t the time to raise taxes,” “we can’t tax the job creators,” “government jobs aren’t real jobs,” and “what we really need are massive cuts to government spending.”

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You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans. They’re doing a heckuva job when it comes to their political posturing on emergency response and disaster preparedness. You know, like Michael “Heckuva Job Brownie” did as George W. Bush’s FEMA chief during Hurricane Katrina.

At least Brownie had an excuse. Before Bush tapped him for the big leagues his last gig was with the International Arabian Horse Association — not exactly the best training.

Of course, today’s Republicans have no such excuse — other than heartlessness and a belief in the powers of Libertarian magic dust.

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Earlier this summer, Michele Bachmann took to an outdoor podium in front of her “friends and family” and entered the race for President telling those assembled, “It’s great to be in Iowa and even better to be in Waterloo where I was born.”

The fact that Bachmann was born in Waterloo has become something of a go-to talking point for the Minnesota Congresswoman whenever she campaigns in the Hawkeye State. In fact, it probably had something to do with her win at the Ames Straw Poll.

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Let’s face it — Iowans do little to prove their sanity when it comes to these Republican straw polls. It is as if they go out of their way to give lift to the most extreme, unelectable nuts among their ranks.

Before the straw poll in Ames became a Republican tradition it was showing early signs that it hadn’t a hope of identifying the eventual nominee. It was 1979, and Ronald Reagan would go on to lose to his future Vice President in the first Ames Straw Poll. Reagan eventually won Presidency and currently serves as the right’s golden calf.

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He has the Tea Party charisma of Sarah Palin, the thoughtless Lone Star swagger of George W. Bush, and the secessional political instincts of Jefferson Davis. Meet the man who very well could be the GOP standard bearer for president in 2012: Governor Rick Perry of Texas.

Before much of the country gets to know Perry, Republicans in the early primary and caucus states — places like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — will have the first dance. And with such a large GOP field of candidates, these voters are likely to encounter an image of Governor Perry far different from the one he’d like to project.

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For much of the last century it was common practice across the southern United States for politicians to impose poll taxes, literacy tests, and other absurd laws designed to keep African Americans, Native Americans and poor whites — all legal citizens — from voting. That was life under Jim Crow.

President Lincoln may have freed the slaves but the newly emancipated and their kin were hardly free for generations to come. In fact, it wasn’t until 1966 when an “activist” Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that such laws violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause that access to the polls became just a little bit easier.

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Remember the collective sense of loss and outrage we all felt in 1999 after the Columbine High School shootings that claimed the lives of twelve students and one teacher?

Those same emotions have settled upon the people of Norway.

Just hours after a bomb blast tore through a government building in Oslo last week, Anders Behring Breivik, who has since been linked to the bombing, opened fire on a Labor Party youth camp. Between the two attacks, at least 76 have lost their lives, all but eight during the youth camp shooting spree.

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This week, Rupert Murdoch’s long history of journalistic malpractice and hubris finally caught up with him.

The ongoing scandal surrounding the widespread phone hacking of thousands — including Royals, celebrities, slain soldiers, victims of the horrific 2005 terrorist subway bombing, and even a murdered child — by his since-shuttered News of the World, had Rupert looking more Murduck than Murdoch during testimony before a British parliamentary committee.

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