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When I was young, my dad was a traveling salesman and he'd bring us little gifts when he returned home at the end of the week. One I particularly recall was a little wooden postcard that asked why there were so many more horses' rear ends than horses. I'm reminded of it as I observe the political shenanigans around us.

Some outrage me. Like MSNBC, which condones bigotry by bringing us Pat Buchanan, a valiant defender of accused Nazi war criminals and the man who praised Hitler as a man of "great courage, a soldier's soldier." Pat's latest complaint is there are too many Jews on the Supreme Court and it doesn't need another (Elena Kagan), who would raise the number to three. However, Pat doesn't seem bothered that all six other justices are Catholics -- like him. He's also not that happy that American voters have elected so many Jews to the Congress.

Then there's Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. He complains that Kagan lacks judicial experience. Could that be because he and other Republicans on the Judiciary committee blocked her nomination by President Clinton to the Appellate Court; could it be because he forgot that several other distinguished justices also lacked bench time (Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Charles Evans Hughes, Earl Warren, William Rehnquist, and fellow Alabaman Hugo Black); or is it because Sessions' own federal court nomination was rejected because of accusations that he had made racially insensitive jokes and that he criticized the NAACP's cooperation with Communist groups?

There's a special place in the stable for all those "family values" politicians who apparently have a hard time valuing their own families.

Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House and leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton while having an affair with his own staffer, and his would-be successor, Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), resigned when his own infidelities were exposed.

Democrat Rep. Eric Massa (N.Y.) quit after finding himself in a ticklish situation, accused of sexual harassment of male staffers.

The latest is the once and possibly future congressman from Staten Island, Vito Fossella (R), who left Congress after a DUI arrest led to revelations that he had two families. He's running again.

Last week, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), an Evangelical advocate of abstinence education, quit after being forced to confess he was having an affair with a married staffer.

Hating Washington is this year's campaign theme in both parties, with politicians spending tens of millions of dollars, some out of their own pockets (to get a job that pays $174,000 a year), so they can get here to join the Washington establishment they detest so much.

Also running to keep their seats are those critics of big government who voted against the stimulus bill and vilified those who supported it -- and then went home to take credit for the money the law was sending to their recession-hit districts.

The Gulf oil disaster has exposed a lot of sliminess, starting with all those conservative advocates of shrinking government and less regulation who complain the loudest that the government isn't doing enough to plug the leak.

Rush Limbaugh says the Sierra Club should pay for the cleanup because it is behind excessive regulation that "forced" BP to drill in such deep water.

But, hey, this whole thing is no big deal, says Rand Paul, the Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky. The administration's criticism of BP is "un-American" and it's wrong to play the "blame game," he said, because "sometimes accidents happen."

Some of the others in the stable include Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, who tried to dismiss his false claims of Vietnam service as "a few misplaced words"; Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) who said he has a list of 17 known socialists in the Congress; Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), who wants her colleagues investigated for un-American activities; and freshman Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) who compared Republicans to members of al-Qaeda.

Gingrich, an erstwhile history professor, appears confused between socialism, communism, and Nazism. He says President Obama has a "secular socialist" agenda that "represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."

Glenn Beck is also befuddled. He can't decide how to label this president. He has called him a racist with a "deep seated hatred for white people," and variously likened his administration to socialists, fascists, Nazis, and communists. He told the NRA that the Obama administration and the congressional Democrats are "revolutionary Marxists."

With so many horses' derrieres galloping around there's scant room in the barn for the real horses. Someone should call the SPCA -- Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Americans.

Douglas Bloomfield is the former chief lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.