In heaven there are no beards, that’s why we wear them here.

Not to talk about baseball or anything, because this is Hawkeye country, and all eyes are focused on the “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” (to take a line from Winston Churchill, but you knew that) that is the Iowa football team.

Not to compare it to the Soviet Union or anything. If the Hawkeyes were the Soviet Union, they would roll over the Badgers as if Wisconsin were Czechoslovakia. And everyone knows that Cedar Rapids is Czechoslovakia.

(Yes, Virginia, I realize that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country. You’ll note that Cedar Rapids is no longer a country, either.)

That’s just nonsense, Beau, you say. Cedar Rapids was never a country.

Yeah, I know; it’s nonsense, though I prefer to call it Dada.

It’s akin to the Republicans talking about Obamacare — which hasn’t wholly kicked in just yet, not least because the administration decided, in one of those Mickey Mouse moments that sweep over all of us from time to time, to cut costs and use 1974-era computers for the health-insurance exchange.

Cutting costs, we all know, has been all the rage in Washington since Reagan (who didn’t cut costs or the number of federal employees; the U.S. deficit soared into a stratosphere Americans hadn’t known even existed).

Or akin to Republicans talking about budget deficits — which are coming down dramatically, but to hear the GOP talk about it, we’re about to become Greece.

Well, that’s not going to happen anytime soon, because it’s hard to catch up with Greece’s history. (Or philosophers — no offense, Jessica.) And we will definitely not become Greece until Americans learn how to make spanakopita.

Speaking of deficits, and not Mickey Mouse, we should remember which administration slashed the deficit and created budget surpluses — that would be Democrat President Bill Clinton’s time in office. And which administration took those surpluses and turned them back into budget deficits — that would be Republican President George W. Bush’s tenure in office.

Though I’m not sure “tenure” is the right word. But Bush did make eight years seem like 10 years. Sometimes, it  all seems like Dada.                 

Sen. Ted Cruz went pheasant hunting in Iowa recently, which, of course, sparked speculation that he would run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. But of course. Or maybe that’s of coarse. Shooting heavily armed birds in the highly dangerous, if not treacherous, cornfields of Iowa certainly makes you presidential material.

Bu Cruz, a darling of the tea party (who has never served in the military, but in an attempt to be fair, neither has President Obama), did go hunting with Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. And King is famously known for not shooting straight, so hunting with him probably deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor. Well, except that, in order to receive that honor, one must have done valorous conduct while in the U.S. military.

Maybe Cruz could receive some other honor. I mean, hunting with King ranks up there (or down there) with hunting with Dick Cheney, another  famously dead-eye shooter. On a more somber note, rock icon Lou Reed passed away Sunday. If you haven’t heard him yet, you haven’t lived yet. At least not fully.

Take a stroll on the wild side, even if it’s short, brief, or whatever.

After all, short, brief, or whatever is the motto of these days.