In New York’s 23rd Congressional District, there’s a rightwing lunatic who doesn’t even live in the district running for Congress. The district’s been Republican for 138 years, but the Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, dropped out of the race, leaving Conservative teabagger Doug Hoffman running against Dem Bill Owens.

Scozzafava has endorsed Owens.

Hoffman has the endorsement of Sarah Palin and bunch of other know-nothings who are clueless about New York, the 23rd district and humanity.

Scozzafava was proof that there were moderate Republicans left, but now that she’s endorsed a Democrat, maybe not so much.

The GOP keeps going further and further over the edge, and nobody’s willing to stop the bleeding. Even moderates like Olympia Snowe and Sue Collins hang back and go with the flow, ignorant or purposefully ignoring the trend their party has set.

Sad. Doug Hoffman’s party makes a mockery of the very word “conservative,” unless of course we’re willing to concede the definition to those who would have all progress halted lest their “values” be offended.

And then there’s Joe Lieberman, recently dubbed Traitor Joe, and aptly so. Oh, he still holds a few more or less progressive social ideas, but apparently, the Connecticut independent, who used his state’s Republicans to defeat the progressive Dem who topped him in the Dem primary, owes a little too much to his state’s chief industry.

Insurance.

The Hartford’s favorite senator says he’ll filibuster a health care plan with a public option. Only one thing to say to that. Make him do it. And his Republican pals too.

Day whatever: Still no Republican health care plan. The party of no, the party of the status quo.

And by the way, did you know that the current generation of gay men was caused by the Golden Girls? Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. Some guy with the outlandish name of Stephenson Billings says those four girls living in Miami turned an entire generation of American boys into gay men.

These folks will say damn near anything, won’t they?

It was only to be expected that our lonely boys exposed to these conflicted times would succumb to the nagging Golden Girls agenda. These were slender, unathletic children who were left out of the fun militarism of the Reagan years. Skyrocketing divorce rates ruined their faith in traditional relationships. Rock groups like Duran Duran and Styx encouraged big hair and overactive libidos. The show lit a match which enflamed their intense physical urges. With the utmost cruelty and immorality, The Golden Girls seized upon this opportunity to cross the hormonal wires of America’s lost generation.

The results were disastrous. Our horny, lonely boys sought out intimate comforts with likeminded Golden Girls addicts who didn’t mind each other’s theatrical voices and touch-feely hand gestures. Together, these clusters of awkward teens and twentysomethings bonded over their favorite episodes and characters, mimicking the voices and gowns of their tv friends. When the rush of cheesecake and gabfests wore thin, these hairless boys needed a harder thrill. They were so desperate for the next big trend they turned to same-sex sexual experimentation. What woman would have them now, anyway? This led to the worse excesses of early homosexual visibility– the most enormous of drag queens, the dirtiest of leather daddies, the most enticing of twinkie boys, androgyny, overeating, public sex and the birth of “camp.”

I don’t know where Stephenson Billings was before the Golden Girls, but camp was alive and well and quite grown up long before Bea Arthur ever left Maude.

I bring these things to your attention because I want you to see just what is happening politically these days, on the off chance you don’t know already. The once proud GOP has been reduced to a bunch of whining rich white Christians, mostly men, who now claim to be put upon by the PC police. Oh please, Mary. Not yet. But that’s coming if they don’t clean up their act.

Hard to sell that argument when you’re in the majority. But what’s so freaky to these guys is that there are rich, white Christian mostly men who don’t agree with them. They used to have that market sewn up tight. But the funny thing about progress is that it happens to all of us. Even those guys.

They’re awfully scared, those guys. They see the end, and it’s not what they thought it would be. At least those who still use their minds see that. Other are so completely deluded by the bullshit they’ve been taught all their lives that they can’t even conceive that anyone in their right minds could believe differently.

So when their leaders, those rich white Christian mostly men, tell them progressives, liberal, Democrats, are evil, they buy right into it. And now, it’s all coming to a head.

I’m not terribly concerned with what Barack Obama is doing or not doing. The Republicans, or whatever they’ll call themselves by then, aren’t going to retake Congress in 2010. Sure I’m disappointed by some of what he’s done and not done, but he — and we — have plenty of time. At least the man thinks about things and doesn’t go off half-cocked because some dictator tried to kill his daddy.

But this culture war is on, my friends. We’ll win, of course, but it won’t be pretty. The Republicans say that government shouldn’t be taking care of its people, that the people should do that themselves. See that happening? I see liberals doing their best at it … and a few, moderate Republicans.

But I think government should be taking care of its people, and should be made up of people who believe that taking care of one another is the right thing to do, either individually or through government if that’s not doing the trick. Government should model that behavior for those of the population who lack those values.

Those teabagger types? To them, the only good government is a dead government. One that doesn’t make sure manufacturers don’t pollute the crap out of the air and water, one that lets insurance companies rip us off daily, one that lets bankers make billions by bleeding us dry.

Back in New York, Doug Hoffman wants to see America returned to a 1950s that never existed. Joe Lieberman wants to make sure his benefactors don’t feel the pinch of a fucked up economy. Stephenson Billings wants to blame a television show for homosexuality. Wonder what he thinks caused it before the Golden Girls?

And Republican leaders want to keep things the way they are — well, and repeal everything a Democrat ever supported. Doesn’t even matter if they supported it back before the black guy got elected president.

The teabaggers are the last gasp of an archaic and no longer useful form of government — the kind that lies to its constituents on a daily basis to convince them to vote against their own best interests. My own parents are scared to death about “Obamacare” taking their Medicare. Never mind that four years ago they were complaining that there was too much waste in the Medicare bureaucracy and they’d be better off if somebody cleaned it up.

The president proposes doing just that, but they’ve “heard” he’s gonna cut their benefits, government shouldn’t mess around with their health care, even though it’s government that provides it.

And god forbid government try to provide health care to someone else. That’s a sure sign they’ll be left out.

They shouldn’t worry. Whatever comes out of Congress and reaches the president’s desk won’t help much of anybody, except Joe Lieberman’s constituency.

Yet. It’s coming though. We’ll get the health care we deserve, and gay men and lesbians will be allowed to marry, and these insane wars will end, and the teabaggers will be seen for the fringe elements they really are.

Patience, grasshopper. Patience.