Short takes

1. Republican Senator Olymphia Snowe (R-ME), speaking to a group of supporters at a rally, lamented the extreme partisanship of the debt ceiling debate: “I’m embarrassed by all of us,’’ she said. “I’ve never seen a worse Congress in my whole political life."

2. Michele Bachmann is the anticipated front runner in the Iowa straw poll to be conducted this weekend. So she's probably going to be the target of several of her opponents in tonight's debate. Here's a good place to start, although you might need a Democrat or at least a courageous journalist to call attention to it: Bachmann got her facts exactly backwards in why S & P's downgraded our credit rating.

She said it was because we raised the debt ceiling. In fact, S & P was all in favor of raising the ceiling; and they said -- in plain English for anyone to read -- that it was the political dysfunction in Congress that concerned them, not the debt ceiling. And Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus was largely responsible for making the dysfunction as bad as it was.

Of course, neither she nor her followers care about the facts: just make up stuff that fits with their preferred "truthiness."

3. Sarah Palin, never one to let an opportunity pass to thrust herself into the spotlight, has announced that she will attend the Iowa State Fair this week. Just in time to rain on the parade of others who are seriously campaigning in the state, the day before the Straw Poll. Just a couple of months ago, after lying low for a while, she suddenly surfaced in New Hampshire the day Mitt Romney had scheduled his big announcement that he was running for president. And of course the panting media turned their cameras on Mama Grizzley instead of the Mitter.

This woman has morphed from out-of-her-element, political novice to crafty, despicable opportunist. She's not seriously running for president. She's just trying to keep her media popularity going so she can rake in the dough in speaking and writing fees. Even worse is the way daughter Palin has turned her out-of-wedlock pregnancy into a million dollar contract to promote herself.

As to these three Republican women -- Olympia Snowe is a giant of a stateswoman compared to the other two media hogs.

Ralph