Thank you. I was getting real tired contemplating the same old mugs and thugs you clowns have been torturing us with — SpongeBob Squarepants, Crazy Sarah, Perfect Mitt, Boring Mitch, Moe, Larry, and Curly — but all of a sudden you’ve given those of us on the left a fresh new extremist face to hate. With his dorky haircut and jug ears, he looks like a refugee from a John Hughes movie, the earnest geek who’s carrying a torch for Molly Ringwald but winds up with Ally Sheedy and grows up to be Judge Reinhold. You know who I’m talking about…

Paul Ryan. What is it about Wisconsin lately? All of a sudden we’re afflicted with an epidemic of cheeseheads, nobodies we couldn’t have picked out of a secret-police lineup until a couple of months ago, but whose faces are sure going to be up on post-office walls from the People’s Republic of Cambridge to the People’s Republic of Berkeley from now on. Who knew flyover country was breeding such subversive extremists? And don’t even get me started on Justice Prosser and that stolen Supreme Court election. We ought to be keeping a closer eye on them, but who among us would want to live there?

Things have come to a pretty pass when an obscure extremist congressman from a state that’s located somewhere between the Iowa caucuses and the North Pole can send a goofy guy like Ryan to Washington with a blueprint for a roadmap to a path for prosperity for winning the future and have anyone take him seriously. And yet here he is, brandishing nearly $6 trillion in extreme budget cuts like Leatherface wielding his chainsaw in a reboot of the old horror franchise – The Wisconsin Chainsaw Massacre: This Time, It’s Personal – and threatening to derail the FDR/LBJ memorial gravy train in one cheesy swoop.

Consider the carnage if this extreme plan gets put into extreme action. Old people lying dead in the streets like extras in a Monty Python movie, Dickensian children begging on every corner, housewives being forced into prostitution at the next Republican convention, with only a lone, heroic, non-extremist regular Joe like Chuck Schumer to act as the conscience of a nation.

And for what? To stave off a, quote, looming financial disaster, unquote. I ask you: Since when has that ever been a problem? For years, we’ve been rolling merrily along, bribing a substantial part of the electorate with our unfunded goodie mandates, secure in the knowledge that the Mint’s printing presses need never fall silent. More Medicare, more Medicaid, prescription drugs for seniors (yes, I know that was yours but it might as well have been ours) — we’re from the federal government and we’re here to help!

So what if our compassion made more and more folks dependent on the government? So what if it robbed them of self-reliance? So what if it drove them onto the dole or into a public-employee union? (Same thing, when you stop to think about it.) That was the whole point! If it wasn’t the full monty of a Cloward-Piven strategy, it was certainly the next best thing, bleeding you heartless plutocrats dry while making you feel guilty about your abject lack of sympathy for those less fortunate than your own rotten selves. And if we had to wreck the country financially in order to save it from its own worst impulses and corrupt history, that’s a small price to pay for social and economic justice.

Which is why this extremist Ryan has us worried. When even our own apparatchiks Jacob Weisberg and Ezra Klein both write admiringly of his “courage,” you know it’s time to bring down the hammer and sickle, hard. After all, we lefties are nothing if not Stalinist in our diversity; no premature anti-deficitism will be tolerated, especially by the tolerant Left. As that great crypto-Democrat, Barry Goldwater, once said, extremism in the defense of fundamental change is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of trillion-dollar deficits is no virtue.

Already, I’m hearing noises about a possible veep slot for Ryan on your ticket, but if you think we’re going to sit still while somebody tells the truth about our parlous fiscal condition to the suckers — excuse me! I mean “the American people” — you’ve got several thinks coming.

Therefore, what follows is a list of candidates we hereby deem unacceptable on the grounds of their extremism, and whose presence on any national ticket in the 2012 elections — assuming His Serene Highness the Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II, Lord of the Flies, Keeper of the Hoops, Master of the Greens, Bringer of Kinetic Military Action, Vacationer-in-Chief, and Protector of the Holy Cities of Honolulu and Chicago, permits them — will not be countenanced:

Paul Ryan: too smart. Would make Obama uncomfortable. Extremist. See above.

Michele Bachmann: too female. Tough and tenacious. May not know Lexington and Concord from Thief River Falls and Bemidji, but then Obama doesn’t know how many states there are, so we’re even. Having to attack a woman would make BO2 uncomfortable, since Hillary didn’t really count. Plus, she’s hot for a mother of 30 or so children. Extremist.

Marco Rubio: too Hispanic. Would threaten our chokehold on the fastest-growing segment of the population, although luckily for us he’s Cuban, and Cubans don’t vote for Communists, so what do we care? Would make Bambi uncomfortable with his superior command of Cuban anthems. Extremist.

Eric Cantor: too Jewish and too smart. What’s he doing caucusing with the Republicans, anyway, much less leading them? Would knock Barry off his game and make him uncomfortable. What’s the matter with Virginia? We demand a recount. Did I mention extremist?

Col. Allen West: too African-American; would make BHO uncomfortable with his Dunham half. Military background. Fought in Iraq. Fearless — the kind of man in uniform who frightens us metrosexual, conscientious-objector types. If he’s on the ticket, I’m moving to Sweden on account of his extremism.

Chris Christie: too fat; would make the former Soetoro look malnourished by comparison. Pugnacious, likes to get in people’s faces. Last time somebody got into the Hoopmeister’s face, he came away with a busted lip and stitches. Not a good omen. Extremist.

I hope this helps. You want my advice, you nominate any two of these on your ticket and you can’t go wrong: Newt Gingrich. Lindsey Graham. Joe Lieberman. John McCain. Donald Trump.You do want to lose, extremely — don’t you?

— David Kahane is proud to announce that he is partnering with David Axelrod in the campaign-consulting business, with the proviso that he’s only going to deliver news that Democratic candidates want to hear. In other words, not a word about Hillary ’12! You can send him confidential tips at [email protected] or bone up on his disinformation manual, Rules for Radical Conservatives, and then come to the aid of the party on Facebook.