Sally Jessie Rose, a 52-year-old stripper who works at the Bare Elegance Lounge in Washington, D.C., was blasted yesterday by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike for her horrible dance routine and shocking disregard for quality adult cabaret entertainment.

"This stripper is just terrible," said Rep. Jackson Peyton (D-Idaho). "I mean, it's OK to tease, but it's not a tease anymore if it lasts for, like, four hours. At what point does she just take it off?"

"There is no inspiration in her moves at all," said Jefferson Potlach, a Republican representative from Wisconsin. "It's like she can barely be bothered to take off her clothes in front of us."

Rose did her strip routine some four hours after the Senate agreed to pass a bipartisan bill extending unemployment compensation, legislation that passed in a highly polarized political atmosphere in which gridlock has become the order of the day. However, the jobs bill and Sally Jessie Rose's horrible and chafing lap dance were encouraging areas of bipartisan consensus, said President Barack Obama.

Though we have differences about execution, both Republicans and Democrats agree that unemployment is a top priority, and that Sally Jessie Rose's feather boa routine was lackluster and hostile, just the sort of negative, 'I don't care' attitude that brings us all down."

Senator Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, had threatened to hold up the jobs bill because he thought it would add to the deficit.

"This is a free market economy," said Rep. Jim McAllen of Utah. "At some point, the market must sustain itself, and the market will take care of those who are responsible and those who are irresponsible. This Sally Jessie Rose person, for instance, is not getting any sort of tip from me. The market knows what to do with her drag-ass, low burlesque routine."

Washington, D.C. (API) As he hoped to keep the country united and uplifted among partisan strife and economic difficulties, Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address Wednesday to the embattled Congress, seeding his speech with all sorts of double entendre, ironic asides and innuendo in hopes of achieving the impossible and somehow telling everybody in the fractious and polarized republic what they think they want to hear, according to their own level of understanding.

"My fellow Americans," the president said, "One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. But today Americans stand larger than ever."

Obama took the lectern at a time when the political discourse has been as hostile as ever--when America continues to face two wars, rising debt and economic uncertainty. In such critical times, Obama said that Americans will not abide by political mudslinging in Washington.

"We've reached a level of public discourse where we're warm only in the breaches," he said.

Obama has been accused this year of political miscalculation, however, and he admitted that his Republican challengers have vigorously questioned his health care policies at a critical time.

"With the failure of health care, however, our hearts are truly in question," Obama said. "Before he died, Ted Kennedy said he wanted health care for all. I wish the Republican leadership would join him now."

But in a nod to conservatives' call for fiscal responsibility, Obama said, "We have tried in the past year to curb Wall Street indulgences, but we haven't had the right tools to fight. I concede that there are many tools on the other side of the aisle this evening."

Obama said that experts from across the political spectrum warned last year about a second Great Depression, and that his administration acted immediately and aggressively.

"The worst of the storm has passed," said Obama, "but the recession still blows."

Obama said that all politicians, including himself, hated the bank bailout.

"Americans don't understand why they are unemployed when they've played by the rules but Wall Street bankers are rewarded for bad behavior. What does that say to the next generation of Americans getting reared?"

Obama at one point said that the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to spend an unlimited amount of money on political campaigns would harm democracy, a statement that drew rebuke from certain court justices sitting in the hall.

"Now that the Supreme Court has let corporations and possibly foreigners fund the politicians they favor, you can expect a new kind of crony politician to come in your face," Obama said.

Obama went on to say that he's cut taxes on most Americans, a statement that drew applause from several Republicans.

"I'm just want to hear about tax cuts," said Rep. John Boehner, (R-Ohio). "I wasn't listening any closer than that."

I have often promised that I wouldn't ever turn my blog into a strictly political forum. I hate to sound shrill, even when I'm right. Among other things that I don't do on this blog anymore are post my poetry, blast my home-made music, or post pictures of Dallas star Victoria Principal naked. Well, I would do the last one, but I don't own the copyright.

And yet I must say that I feel a bit sad about what happened in Massachusetts last night. There are a lot of people who think that with the state's election of Scott Brown, a conservative Republican now ironically representing the bluest of states in the U.S. Senate, the political center has turned against President Barack Obama, and my friends on the other side of the political divide insist that I have to take their grievances seriously.

I don't. Much of what I hear about Barack Obama from his opponents after his first year in office is still bullshit. You may argue with some of his political miscalculations--such as his pursuit of universal health care in the middle of a recession. But that just leads to more questions I would ask of the inquisitors: When is a good time for health care? When is it a good time to raise taxes that are ridiculously and dangerously low, especially when taxes are not what got us into our current financial crisis but unfettered globalization? I am reminded of Bert and Ernie arguing on Sesame Street about when it's a good time to fix a hole in the roof--you wouldn't when it's raining out but then why would you when it's not raining and you don't need to.

At some point, somebody has to fix the hole.

Democrats seem to have this unwarranted reputation that they "tax and spend." That argument is easily eclipsed by the more venial image forming of Republicans in the last 20 years--that they simply spend. No, not just spend. They borrow truckloads of other people's money, mainly the money of the Chinese and Saudis, so that they can do their big, big spending. They have easily outspent Democrats when their great heroes Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were in office. By comparison, taxing and spending is starting to look pretty responsible. Taxing and spending allows you to balance the budget, like Bill Clinton did. Just spending allows you to run up monstrously high deficits, like Bush and Reagan did.

So what's got me so steamed about the seemingly Blue State of Massachusetts suddenly turning red in an off-election year?

Let's start with some insights from a biz conference today (I do write about finance, as some of you know):

A former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, not exactly a bomb-throwing communist, said that the problem with populist outrage like the sort seen in Massachusetts last night is that it tends to discount all government activity, whether it's useful or not, helpful or not, wasteful or not, necessary or not. Many of those "independent" voters of Massachusetts who voted for Republican Scott Brown likely do not make more than $200,000 a year and probably haven't looked at the tax rebates and incentives they're getting from the federal government this year. Instead, they're listening to fire-breathing demagogues and end-of-the-world types. Exit polls found that voters were simply unhappy with everybody in Congress and so they masochistically took it out on themselves and voted for somebody whom they disagree with on most issues. Cutting off your nose to spite your face much?

Then we get to the elephant in the room, and in this case, it's a raging male elephant suffering from a case of musth:

Unemployment is at 10% and is probably going to stay high. This is not a result of George Bush's or Barack Obama's stimulus packages in the last 13 months. If these two had not responsibly come to the rescue of the economy, most economists would agree that unemployment would probably be a lot higher, since, after all, our financial system would have collapsed. Twenty percent unemployment? Thirty? Fifty? How ambitious are the Tea Party Republicans feeling? My friend Gene used to wear an anarchy jacket, and I wonder if he would like to hand it over to the real anarchists of today: Dick Armey, Grover Norquist and Glenn Beck.

Our recession, in terms of business productivity, is over, something Obama didn't talk about enough with the good people of the Bay State. But globalization is amplifying the unemployment problem: When the labor comes back on line, this time it's going to go to China and India, where it's cheaper. U.S. wages for low-skill labor are going to drop in this environment (they are already) and they're not coming back up. Meanwhile, capital is flowing back to the U.S. in the form of reserve currency, causing interest rates to dip and asset bubbles to form. The only thing that's really going to help American employment in this global economy is to boost exports. Which ironically means we need foreigners to buy our stuff and our services. In other words, we need the Chinese to turn into Americans.

All of this has nothing to do with the health care bill or taxes or Obama. It has to do with free enterprise, which I thought we had all signed on for (most of us). Any Reagan Republican who tells you otherwise is giving you a reach-around.

The idea that Obama exacerbated unemployment (not globalization) or that somehow it's high taxes that have hobbled the American economy (not globalization) is so laughable on its face that it sends you into a kind of denial about people and what they will believe. I say this because we're in an age of total government irresponsibility brought on not just by too much spending but too much borrowing. Taxes right now are irresponsibly low and have been since Bush II and maybe even Reagan, the first and best Republican liar on the subject. You can't start a $2 trillion war without raising taxes. That's a fact any economist (or historian) worth his or her salt will tell you. Maybe the health care bill was ill-timed, but since people had the political will to start a war with money they didn't have, Obama gambled that they would also pay for universal health care--something the majority of Americans have INDISPUTABLY wanted for years. I still have a hard time sympathizing with the widespread antipathy to the current health legislation since its opponents lied about it constantly in a highly flashy campaign sponsored by the insurance industry and voters ate up the misinformation like it was all-you-can-eat night at Mr. Spriggs.

So to recap: Obama was slimed by the people of Massachusetts for letting the free markets be free on one hand (not creating government jobs himself) and then for being too interventionist on the other (stopping a catastrophe with bailouts). Yes, the voters were mad. If you mean crazy, I agree.

One of my friends said today that we Democrats are obviously in denial today. I'm not in denial about Massachusetts. We've seen bullies and liars get their way a lot in the past 10 years simply by bullying and lying. When so many so-called centrists get rope-a-doped into a bullshit argument because of a timorous inability to fight off these bullies, you can only weep.

So that is all. Tomorrow expect poetry, and perhaps some of my rockin' music.

On Tuesday night, the voters of Massachusetts voted to replace the late Sen. Teddy Kennedy, a longtime liberal stalwart and ardent health care reformer, with a conservative upstart cheered on by the Tea Party movement, a candidate who has vowed to vote against health care reform in the Congress. His nay vote could destroy the Democrats' plans for reform and lay waste to Kennedy's signature issue by breaking the party's filibuster proof 60-seat majority.

Why did the people of Massachusetts, which is a long-time liberal stronghold, suddenly decide to go with Republican candidate Scott Brown?

--*Brown has done everything he can to give the people of Massachusetts universal health care, and he even loves them so much he's going to go one step further and deny it to everybody else.

--*He promised them change, any kind of change. Waterboarding kind of change.

--*Massachusetts is home to a large number of independent voters who hate politics, lies and game playing. Most of all, they hate the game of "Got yer nose." They always fall for that. Not this time. They will not fall for that again ... d'oh!

--*Independents pride themselves on their skepticism. Which is why they have believed everything Glenn Beck has told them all year about communist infiltration of our bodily fluids. And you can take that to the bank.

--*The people of Massachusetts are fed up with high unemployment and rightly blame the Obama administration for causing the recession when he took office eight years ago or something like that.

--*The people of Massachusetts understand that it is not the government's job to interfere with the free market. "And by the way," they ask, "why hasn't the government given me a job yet when communist renegade leader Pol Pot already would have by now?"

--*The people of Massachusetts understand that employment is a lagging indicator and usually starts to increase at the tail end of a recession, after market rebounds like the one we're seeing now. No wait. They don't understand that. Never mind. Throw the bums out! Faster, Pussycat! Kill, kill!

--*There were many reports of light snow in Massachusetts on election night. Only a crazy jackass would drive in the snow.

--*The Democratic candidate, a supposed shoo-in named Martha Coakley, was widely thought to have run a lackluster campaign and pundits complained that her message was little more than "I'm a Democrat." Coakley's defenders were obviously too hopeful that, weak as her message was, it stood a good chance against the whole "I want to waterboard Arabs again" message.

--*Massachusetts is a hotbed of political independents and they want to take a chance on Brown, hoping that he, like them, has their rugged iconoclastic streak: after all, he is against cap and trade; he believes in cutting taxes during a huge budget crisis; he opposes amnesty for immigrants; he opposes gay marriage; he opposes a tax on banks that have recorded huge profits after taking government stimulus money to stay afloat; and he has the Tea Party seal of approval. In fact, he's so independent he doesn't hold any of the beliefs of the people he's representing.

--*Bay Staters are all sure that the first thing a young Republican Senator with no friends in Congress is going to do is start playing by his own rules and burning bridges with Republican leaders just to show everybody how politically open minded he is. Yeah, <em>that's</em> really going to happen.

--*They were drunk?

Washington, D.C. (API) Shelly McAdams, a 9/12 protester from Barnwell, South Carolina, was marching along with thousands of others last Friday to protest what she saw as the overreach of federal government when suddenly a reporter asked her a question that made her blood boil.

"Don't go there," she said to a reporter who asked her if the health care legislation currently in the Congress might bring affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. "I was a nurse for 20 years. I had people puking on me. There was blood and vomit and brain and skull and kneecaps all over the place. Don't even start talking about that."

McAdams had come exhorted by Glenn Beck to fight the creeping threat of fascism and socialism and communism. When told that many of those political philosophies were incompatible and stemmed from different schools of economic and social thought, she raised a big index finger in the air covered with acrylic nail polish.

"Now you just stop right there," she said, as her nostrils briskly dilated and the hair on her ears stood up, "You don't want to bring up that stuff with me because my step-daughter came from Korea and she ate out of trash cans. You can't even say the word communism to me because I might start spitting blood right now if you ever remotely decide to go there. That is an off-limits topic for me because I know first hand that pain she felt when when she told me about it second hand."

McAdams, who was holding a sign up that said, "Sean Hannetie [sic] for president," was then asked if other government actions by the previous administration, like the invasion of Iraq, codified approval of torture and illegal wiretapping, might have merited more of a protest than a simple change in health care policy.

"Now you just wait one minute!" McAdams said, a yellow-purple phlebitis jumping around from her neck to her face. "I don't know if you know who you're speaking to, but my grandfather was on the beaches of Normandy and he fought for this country. So I hope I'm just deaf and you didn't even dare bring up something army related. If I thought for a minute you were putting down my grandpappy's service on that sandy hell-hole, making the ultimate sacrifice for those Frenchies, well I'd be so angry that I might start sneezing pink-colored phlegm through my eye sockets!"

McAdams went on a stammering tirade about several other things having to do with taking her country back and bailouts and Ted Kennedy.

"Oh boy, you do not want to talk to me about Ted Kennedy. My second cousin Maybell drowned in 1962. I take that very personal that Chappaquiddick business. If you even bring that up, it's like you're hitting me in the genitals with a shovel and I'll have no choice but to fight back."

McAdams was also wearing a shirt that said, "We want a Christian president, not a Muslim."

When asked whether she thought the libertarian message of Beck was possibly at odds with the demand for a Christian president, McAdams' eyes rolled back in her head, and a sap-colored fluid started to come out of her ears.

"You did not just attack the Baby Jesus I hope. Don't deny you did it. Oh my God ... if you were even for two seconds to go near the topic of the Baby Jesus, well I'd be fully justified in pulling out a gun because that's just a personal, off-limits topic. I'd be so angry that I'd go blind and a little alien creature might just start coming out of my stomach with sharp teeth and that creature would eat all of you alive."

When asked if her grandchild was enjoying the nice weather, McAdams dropped down on all fours and said,

"That's it. You elite liberal media types have gone too far when you bring my special needs baby into this. Oh my God I'm having a stroke or an aneurysm. I swallo ma ton....floffle floflle bizzle bozzle mum mum mum mum....."

When asked if maybe she was not understanding the true nature of the debate she was having or what exactly she was protesting, McAdams jumped down in the mud and began rolling and whining and kicking with her 12-year-old dachshund Joe.

What were some of the highlights of President Barack Obama's address to Congress Wednesday night?

8:15 p.m. Obama thanks the health insurance industry for making the 111th Congress possible.

8:20 p.m. Obama name checks a distinguished pantheon of Americans who have so far totally failed to bring you decent health care, including Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy Kennedy, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, George Bush and Alan Alda.

8:25 p.m. Obama stops and smokes a cigarette.

8:30 p.m. Obama excoriates those who have tried to kill reform altogether by spreading lies about the health care bill. Though he doesn't name them personally, those people pretty much admit their guilt by sitting down and not clapping for this statement. We thank those people for telling us who they are.

8:40 p.m. Obama stops briefly while the field crew sweeps the floor and dances to "YMCA"

8:45 p.m. Obama stops to remind people that the Bratz dolls still dress like sluts

8:50 p.m. Obama suddenly inserts orders for American children to kill their parents according to plans laid out in his Tuesday speech to classrooms. "You know where the forks are. Like we talked about. On three!"

9:00 p.m. Obama is heckled by South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson for the "take her home like a six pack" joke.

9:01 p.m. Wilson yells "You lie!" after Obama says that illegal immigrants are not covered by the health care bill, after Obama says Teddy Roosevelt was president, and after Obama reads the list of specials in the Congressional cafeteria

9:10 p.m. Joe Biden still has something in his eye

9:15 p.m. Obama says that amid the health care debate, America has seen Congress at its worst (when it does nothing) and at its best (when it does nothing).

9:16 p.m. Rahm Emanuel eats a severed human hand.

9:18 p.m. Wow, after three beers ... Nancy Pelosi man ... I'm just sayin'.

9:20 p.m. Obama thanks the pharmaceutical companies for making Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh possible.

9:25 p.m. Obama wonders aloud why such strident political ideology is hindering progress. He just can't imagine why influential Republican swing voter Sen. Charles Grassley, for example, would be so ideological about this health care bill.

9:30 p.m. Obama makes some controversial statements about how much his health care plan would cost, saying a lot of it was money already being spent anyway. This rankles Republicans who insist that only they be allowed to run up crippling deficits, because they do it for good reasons, after all.

9:31 p.m. Katie Couric says Obama shouldn't kiss so many people what with swine flu running rampant.

9:31 p.m. Actually, kissing up to pigs happens a lot in this business.

9:32 p.m. Republicans several times fail to get up to clap, showing that, as an abrasive and loud minority, they are not afraid to use their thumb-sucking petulance as a weapon.

9:35 p.m. In response to Obama's remarks, several Republicans hold up copies of a booklet which, given their complete lack of interest in reforming health care, is probably a copy of the new "Harry Potter."

Washington, D.C. (API) As President Barack Obama gears up to deliver an address aimed directly at the nation's schoolchildren on Tuesday, critics are already blasting away at the idea, which they say might have the unintended adverse effect of encouraging more black children to run for president.

"This speech to children is just a travesty," said commentator Glenn Beck. "I can't believe he would try to talk directly to our children. Barack Obama is a racist."

Many opponents of the speech, including the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Jim Greer, said that Obama's speech was meant to "indoctrinate" students, clearly meaning that young black children might take the wrong example by having a black president speak to them from such a large and impressive pulpit. One of the most powerful positions in the world. One of such considerable prestige, influence and responsibility that it stirs great tremulous fear in every soul.

"I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology," said Greer, a thinly veiled but obvious reference to Obama's skin color, which is black.

Many Republican leaders agreed that there could be little positive outcome from such a speech, as there had been in the past when Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton spoke directly to children about their liberties and responsibilities as citizens of a free nation. The innocuous text of the speech itself, which opponents forced the White House to publish on the Internet, explains very clearly that children should stay in school and be good citizens, a message that has left no doubt in the mind of detractors: Obama is a black man speaking to children.

"I am just speechless with rage," said Mary Worthington, a shopper in Concord, New Hampshire. "The absolute appalling arrogance of this man to manipulate the media this way and try to bend pliable young minds with his 'I am a black man talking out loud' message--that's just too much for me to bear." Worthington said she was so angry she just couldn't talk about it anymore.

Political analysts, pundits and talking heads were keeping their index fingers to the wind Monday night to gauge how much damage Obama might have done to himself by eliciting such an outpouring of rage.

"It's too soon to say whether Obama has buried himself politically," said Dane Zweibel, an analyst at the American Business Institute. "I know he thought he was doing a positive thing with his message. However, I don't think he realized the unintended affects it would have on black children watching. Now any of them think they can run for president. I think it's important that Americans have stood up this way to show the nation's black children once and for all exactly what they can expect if they try to express themselves in any way, shape or form."

What factors led to the end of our marriage and/or the end of health care reform legislation in Congress?

--*We failed to articulate our goals to each other.

--*We kept fighting over money.

--*There was a lot of mutual suspicion about what the other side wanted.

--*We turned to outsiders for help and they turned out to have their own selfish interests.

--*One side didn't know how to think for him or herself unless Glenn Beck told him or her first.

--*...or Oprah.

--*We weren't sure how to handle the necessary abortion issue.

--*Every time we tried to talk about things reasonably it deteriorated into shouting matches.

--*Each of us accused the other of patronizing and sabotaging the other in public.

--*There was a lot of increasingly nonsensical, paranoid and loony right-wing talk coming from one side.

--*"I don't need another mother."

--*"I don't need another father."

--*Turns out one of us was a racist.