Jack Abramoff is getting into the pizza business. I didn’t see that coming.

In other news, the Republicans have countered their cyclical advantage by nominating some really bad candidates. Take David Vitter, for example. He’s concerned about his aide.

A Vitter spokesman acknowledged the senator had concerns about the 2008 arrest, in which [Brent] Furer was accused of holding his ex-girlfriend against her will for 90 minutes, threatening to kill her, placing his hand over her mouth, and cutting her in the hand and neck.

His aide is also wanted on an outstanding DWI warrant in Baton Rouge. Why didn’t someone run and defeat the diaper-wearing Vitter in the primary?

Then you have Rand Paul. He seems to be a member of the Chickens-for-Checkups Caucus:

A Courier-Journal review of two-dozen public appearances by the Bowling Green eye surgeon since 1998 shows that Paul has condemned Medicare as “socialism;” denounced seat-belt and anti-smoking laws as “Nanny-state” paternalism; called for voluntary, rather than mandatory, accommodation of people with disabilities; and suggested using satellites to monitor America’s borders for illegal immigrants.

Zealously advocating for free-market economics, he also has criticized private health insurance, saying it keeps patents from negotiating lower prices with their doctors.

“We need to get insurance of out of the way and let the consumer interact with their doctor the way they did basically before World War II,” he said on Kentucky Educational Television’s Kentucky Tonight on Dec. 2, 2002.

Of course, Nevadans did reject the other member of the Chicken-for-Checkups Caucus. That would be Sue Lowden. But the woman that defeated her is even more crazy.

QUESTION: You have been in support of onshore drilling in the United States as well as offshore drilling, are you rethinking that policy with what is going on in Louisiana?

ANGLE: No. I think that what happened in Louisiana was an accident. They’re cleaning it up. We need to go forward and talk about prevention and not about whether we keep it out all together. We know that lot of the problems that have been caused for us with foreign policy and even with our own gas prices here domestically going up is our dependence upon foreign oil.

We have oil reserves and petroleum reserves that we should tap into. And that’s a policy that we really need to look at as a nation. How do we deregulate enough to invite our industries to come back into the United States and quit outsourcing their business?

Her answer to the gulf spill is to deregulate. And there’s this:

“Well it’s very difficult … to justify Social Security. As you know. FDR put it in as an insurance policy for those who were needy. My grandfather would not even take his Social Security check because he said he was not up for welfare, he had planned for his retirement, and he wouldn’t take it. But, since then we have gotten into this whole mindset that it’s an entitlement.”

And there’s, “We need to phase Medicare and Social Security out in favor of something privatized.”

Then there is Mark Kirk, who is running for the president’s senate seat:

After addressing the Metropolitan Planning Council Monday, embattled Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk allegedly ran from reporters and slipped out a back door–avoiding questions about the accuracy of his resume.

NBC Chicago reports that members of the media “chased” Kirk to ask him questions, but he allegedly ran through a kitchen at the downtown Hyatt ballroom, out the back door and hopped into a waiting SUV.

That doesn’t sound good. Neither does this, from New Hampshire:

Former attorney general Kelly Ayotte said she had no personal knowledge of the former Meredith mortgage company alleged to have carried out a massive financial fraud, though she regretted not having been told about it by her staff.

“I am all, as a leader, for the principal that the buck stops at my desk,” Ayotte told a legislative committee reviewing the state’s oversight of Financial Resources Mortgage. “But in order for that to happen, the buck needs to reach my desk. And, unfortunately, that did not happened here. I was a very active attorney general , I’m proud of the people I worked with, and in this instance I regret that I did not have the opportunity to address this matter personally.”

That ‘the-buck-didn’t-reach-my-desk” excuse would be pretty lame even if it weren’t a bald-faced lie. Ayotte still has to win her primary though, and a couple of even crazier Republicans are giving her a run for her money.

This seems to be the season for nominating loons. But even the establishment candidates don’t impress me. Retreads like Dan Coats (Indiana) and Roy Blunt (Missouri) are uninspiring. Rob Portman (Ohio) was Bush’s budget director. Nuff said.

Some of these idiots are probably going to get elected and become senators. We won’t be better off for it. But most of them are going to lose because they’re nuts.