Roving around Mars the other day, Curiosity accidentally killed a couple of Martian cats.

(What is Curiosity? you ask. It’s the new Mars rover; where’s your mind been? Lost in Iowa? Lot of that going around.

(I mean, it’s not rocket science. Well, OK, it actually is. Details, details.)

It’s sad about Curiosity and the Martian cats. Unless, of course, you’re one of those who hates cats. In which case, good luck with that schnauzer-sized brain.

I mean, who wants to travel millions upon millions of miles (more in kilometers, which is how everybody except Americans, including Martian cats, measures such stuff) and use all that hyper-technology just to kill a couple of cats? (Outside of my old pal Higgs, the former Navy bosun whom nobody seems to be able to find, except me.)

On the other hand, that’s what Curiosity does.

(You ever wonder whether the proverbial other hand is the left or the right? Me, too. All these philosophical questions yet to be answered, after all these many geological minutes since Plato and Aristotle.)

Which brings us to Republicans. They’re everywhere, like pollen. Even in Bettendorf.

Speaking of which, last week in Bettendorf, Mitt Romney — he’s the presidential candidate with the dog strapped to his head, as opposed to the presidential candidate who engaged in a Byzantine conspiracy going back more than 40 years (when he was still in his mother’s womb, that’s how diabolical he is) to fake an American birth certificate — anyway, the Good Ship Mitt promised to protect American workers from labor unions.

 Well, thank god somebody’s courageously standing up to protect us from the dictatorial whims — and clenched-fist might — of labor unions.

(Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He’s probably homeless — look at his clothes, probably from some secondhand place, muttering some nonsense about labor-union membership falling off so precipitously in the last four decades that unions are going the way of dinosaurs. What do homeless people know? [And how do they know the word “precipitously”?] I mean, dinosaurs these days are extremely popular.)

The Republicans are assembling this week in the Tampa/St. Pete area (that’s in Florida, for those of you who are geographically challenged; the state is famous for its imaginative way of counting votes). Also, a hurricane might be on the way, which some could see as Mother Nature’s way of displaying her view of the GOP platform.

Not me, of course. But some.

The Republican platform is a true work of art, if you’re into that sort of thing. As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post points out, it includes such items as “a study of whether to return to the gold standard, a call for auditing the Federal Reserve, positions denying statehood to the District but seeking to introduce more guns onto its streets, a provision denying women a role in combat, and others calling for a Constitutional amendment that makes tax increases a thing of the past and for a spiffy new border fence …”

I particularly like the no statehood for D.C., but you got to have a lot more firearms roaming the streets. (Full-disclosure alert: I was born in D.C.) The Republicans basically seem to be saying, You don’t get to be full American citizens, so why don’t you just go kill each other off?

Then there’s abortion. The GOPers (which I pronounce gopp-ers), according to Milbank, want no abortions, no exceptions. Never mind that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. Never mind that some women’s lives are threatened by continuing their pregnancies. They’re just [bad word] out of luck.

This in the wake of Todd “legitimate rape” Akin. Yeah, that was a good one.

“The platform appears to be the most conservative platform in modern history,” said GOP platform-committee member Russ Walker, Milbank reports.

Welcome to the 17th century, GOP. Kind of makes you long for the days of Curiosity smashing Martian cats.