“As the presidential campaign season begins to get into full swing, radio host Rush Limbaugh is again raising questions about President Barack Obama’s personal background, wondering where all of his former girlfriends, classmates and students are.” [WND] “Limbaugh has been married four times and has no children.” [Wikipedia]

It’s not our place to be Shocked! by Rick Perry, mainly because we have standards for these things, and Deranger Rick is far from meeting them. (For the record, if you want to push our button, suggest that Barack Obama might meet Bobby Kennedy’s fate.)

So we’re still waiting to see how Rick’s act plays outside the Usual Venues, and it might be some time before we get an indication one way or another. Meantime, we are a little surprised that it’s not playing as well inside the Usual Venues as we had been led to expect. Here, courtesy of Salon’s Steve Kornacki, is the — pardon the expression — round-up:

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What is it about Republicans and thick juicy corn dogs?

Totally stolen from Joe My God. But since we still have a few nominally straight Stinquers I didn’t want to risk any sudden conversions by sending y’all over yonder.

“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home–but not for housing. They are strong for labor–but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights. They favor minimum wage–the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all–but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine–for people who can afford them. … They think American standard of living is a fine thing–so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.”

Find out after the jump:

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Meanwhile, from the other half of the Batshit Ticket:

On her victory lap of Iowa [Sunday], Straw Poll winner Rep. Michele Bachmann paid repeated tribute to her local roots, and repeatedly mentioned her family reunion that day, citing it as an excuse for her late arrival at a local party event in Waterloo.

But Bachmann’s mother and two cousins told POLITICO’s Emily Schultheis that Bachmann didn’t attend the reunion, though her husband and children did. Her spokeswoman, Alice Stewart, didn’t respond to two emails asking for an explanation of the disparity.

If only our political press corps would be more diligent about fact-checking substantial claims, we’d be a lot better off.

Bachmann skipped family reunion she cited [Politico, via Political Wire]

“What Perry did was make a thoughtless blunder, an unforced error; we’re now going to spend a couple of days discussing whether he was summoning violence on Ben Bernanke’s head or not, which is of absolutely no use to Perry. He is, or was, moments away from becoming the race’s frontrunner, and what is in his interest is to harness the excitement of his late entry with qualities of leadership and control that will rally the majority of Republicans unhappy with the choices facing them to his side. Rick Perry made that more difficult today; this was a serious rookie mistake on the national stage.” Thank you, John Podhoretz. [Commentary]

Our guest columnist is permitted to raise children by our overly lenient society.

My neighbor gave my 8-year-old toy dinosaurs.

I am a little shocked. She says she is a Christian, but the Bible doesn’t say anything about dinosaurs. Should I let him keep them, as long as he understands that dinosaurs aren’t real?

Even the PBS shows that he watches talk about dinosaurs and evolution, and how the scientists found these “bones” but the Bible doesn’t say that God ever created them, and the earth is only 6,000 years old, not old enough to have “bones” that they say are MILLIONS of years old!

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