Opinion: Friday Tickets: Aunt Janet, A. Specter, Elizabeth Edwards, Joe Biden

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Fridays are always good times to straighten things out with questions nobody knew needed asking:

First, as part of the new American protocol, have you washed your hands several times already today, as Auntie Janet, the director of Homeland Security, has instructed? You never know whether your mouse has been exposed to swine flu. We disrespectfully decline to use H1N1 virus; too labby.

Where flu flies

Swine is a really great word. So’s mollycoddle, an all-time favorite. “Toxic assets” was good while it lasted but now we’re handed “legacy assets.” As in, previously owned. Words are important in politics, as North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx discovered this week when she gratuitously threw in the word “hoax” while describing the brutal 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard.

Remember last year how excited everyone got when some Ohio radio host at a John McCain rally kept saying Barack Obama’s Muslim middle name, Hussein? Then Obama himself goes and uses it in his inaugural oath. Must be OK now. And radio talk jock and now MSNBC shouter Ed Schultz called former POW McCain a “warmonger” at an Obama rally and everyone yawned?

Now, who’s launching his own troop surge in Afghanistan?

A boil-brained scurvy knave

BTW, we’ve found the best website to generate original political insults with Shakespearean words. Click a button, which we’ll do right now to see what to call GOP defector or Democrat hero Arlen Specter. And it gives us “Thou abominable hag-born scut.” Again: “Thou artless beef-witted wrinkle-witch.”

Do you suppose swine worry about catching human flu? If anyone sees the family of....

... Joe “Spongy Idle-headed Mumble News” Biden in the subway, please notify security; they’re violating his orders to steer clear of any crowds during these ill-nurtured crusty days of flued-tedium.

Speaking of Specter, ABC’s nimble-minded aristocratic scribe Jake Tapper posted a blog item chronicling exactly what the soon-to-be-ex-Republican said at an April 15 Pennsylvania airport news conference: “The 41st Republican,” now-Democrat Specter said, “whose name is Arlen Specter, is vital to stopping tax increases, passing of card check and the Obama big spending plans.”

Oh, and that dread-bolted bugbear added, “I am a Republican and I am going to run on the Republican ticket in the Republican primary.”

And NBC’s goateed, burrito-biting Chuck Todd notes how unusual it is for Pennsylvania to have two Democratic senators at the same time; they’ve done that for only 24 months during the last 152 years, which is 1,824 months if you’re counting that way.

But who’s counting?

Only 98 days left, BTW, until the second wave of 200-day Obama stories. CBS’ Mark Knoller kept stats for the first 100, including speeches (115), meetings with foreign leaders (34), flights on Air Force One (36), proclamations (17), states visited (12), countries visited (9), Capitol visits (8) and Cabinet meetings (1).

Even on Day 102, the Obama administration still has a battalion of jobs to fill. According to Peter Baker over at the Caucus blog, Obama has formally nominated candidates for only 122 of 349 senior positions requiring Senate approval. Only 48 are on the job now. Bush had 75 at their desks on Day 100, but he didn’t sweep out as many Clinton staffers as Obama did Bush appointees.

So he’ll likely never pitch again

Republican Sen. Jim “White-Livered Strumpet” Bunning has reportedly given his blessing to Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson to launch his Senate exploratory committee.

That’s an almost sure sign that national GOP prayers will be answered and the controversial 77-year-old ex-baseball player is headed for retirement after two terms and even more troublesome statements.

They worry that Bunning was headed for near-certain defeat, which would give Harry “The Clapper-Clawed Rapscallion” Reid an even larger Democratic majority.

So we weren’t the only one

Elizabeth Edwards, who according to the N.Y. Daily News is terminally ill with cancer, has a new book coming out in a couple of weeks, “Resilience.”

She’s reportedly candid about many things, including the affair of her husband, the onion-eyed wagtail named John, with videographer Rielle Hunter. Mrs. Edwards says when he told her of his infidelity, she cried and screamed and went into the bathroom and vomited.

Her husband famously explained on TV that the affair occurred while Elizabeth’s cancer was in remission, which it isn’t anymore.

What were they thinking?

True enough, today’s youngsters are lucky enough to have no memories seared into their mind of 9/11 World Trade Center victims jumping from upper windows and sinking scores of floors to their death on the sidewalk.

But what were they thinking up in Minnesota and, until last week, on the FEMA website, to have a downloadable children’s coloring book titled “A Scary Thing Happened”? According to the Vote blog’s Jimmy Orr, it showed among other things one tower in flames while an airliner bears down on the other.

Santa Claus is one thing. And education in reality is important. But if you’re still asking for crayons at IHOP, you could probably go a while longer before getting immersed in the concept of mass murder.

There goes that dream vacation in Somalia

Contrary to the Internet rumor, an angry President Obama never exclaimed: “I did not authorize attacks on the pirates! I ordered a tax on the pirates.”

-- Andrew “The Knotty-Pated Hugger-Mugger” Malcolm

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