what the hey?!? paul who?

I've gotta admit that I understand how alot of political insiders would have had me tabbed as a long shot.  A long shot, that is, to get the call from presumptive President-Elect Mitt Romney to fill the #2 spot on the GOP side of the November ballot.   But I'll tell you, it still hurt like hell to wake up this morning and see Paul Ryan's name smeared all over the Firefox homepage.  And then, as if to salt the wound, to have NBC cut away from its coverage of my beloved Olympics (USA! USA!) to go live to Virginia for Mitt's anointing of the soon-to-be Vice President.  And in the long shadows of the battleship Wisconsin's big 16" guns, no less.  Talk about dragging a possibly unconsulted and unwilling Navy into the political limelight.  Mission accomplished!

Miz Susan called me on the phone from upstairs (how pathetic has our life gotten?) to ask where in the hell her coffee and the newspaper were and the floodgates opened.  I cried like a baby.  I'd really counted on the Veep job to drag us up out of the financial mire that we've spent ourselves into.  I've heard that the Executive Branch's second fiddle job is a pretty decent paying gig.  And the meal money alone on the campaign trail would have likely been enough to keep up with the mortgage payments here at the Laurel Avenue estate.  There might have even been a little side income in renting out a basement suite at One Observatory Circle to  Norm Coleman for when he blows through town.  Oh well.

I didn't even have the consolation of finding out that my Minnesota homeboy Tim "T-Paw" Pawlenty was going to be moving to Washington.  For sure I'd have been able to count on him for a lucrative and low effort federal job.  I suppose that Tim could still land the Labor seat on the cabinet (being's how he's always been a friend to labor); that or Education (ditto the friend thing above to education).  There might still be some beltline swag out there for me.

But for God's sake.  Paul Ryan?!?  He's a young T-Paw on stimulants, full of a cloying phony charm and smarm and condescension.  I used to think that Pawlenty led the world in that stuff but that was before I started to see Paul Ryan making stops on the Sunday morning politico talk show circuit.  Ryan makes Pawlenty seem genuine.  And that takes some doing.

Well, Senator Joe McCarthy and Governor Scott Walker have got to be doing some kind of victory dances right about now.  Joe in his grave and Scott in the Governor's mansion in Madison, in between boning up on GED sample test questions.  Makes a guy proud to have Wisconsin as a next door neighbor.

It is possible that one other Minnesotan will pick up some part time work in the wake of the addition of Ryan to the GOP slate.  I'm thinking that with a little bit of a transplanted widow's peak to his hairline, Chip Cravaack of the Eighth Congressional District might just make a damn convincing stunt double for Paul Ryan.  Hey, think about it.

Is this a helluva country or what?