The Republican Candidates for President: Worst to Best........

We gather that it's entirely possible that folks in Ankara, Turkey, and Tel Aviv, Israel may have been watching the Republican debate on Fox News from Cleveland, Ohio, on Thursday night, even though it was 2:00 a.m. when the debate aired in Turkey and Israel, two countries which are both seven hours ahead of Cleveland, Washington DC, and New York.

Here in America, 24 million people were watching including Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the most liberal Democratic candidate in the face, who was followed and retweeted by more people than anyone else during the GOP debate that he was watching live.

While everyone from David Letterman to Garry Trudeau was rightfully lampooning Donald Trump, whose candidacy seems like a joke, given that he has zero political experience and a reputation for insulting people for the sake of doing just that, there are actually three candidates who are worse than Mister Clown.

These include Rick Perry (pict. top) the notorious former governor of Texas who left years of scandal and probable wrongful executions behind him when he ran for president for the first time four years ago, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas,pict. center) a darling of the Tea Party movement who is probably less progressive than members of the Iranian Parliament, and Mike Huckabee (pict. bottom) an evagelical former governor of Arkansas who dropped a Nazi Germany reference against President Barack Obama.

Here are the candidates from worst to best, to be 'fair and balanced,' we have the candidates listed from best to worst on our sister blog http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

1. Rick Perry, Texas

2. Ted Cruz, Texas

3. Mike Huckabee, Arkansas

4. Donald Trump, New York (currently first in the field)

5. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania

6. Bobby Jindal, Louisiana

7. Scott Walker, Wisconsin

8. Ben Carson, Maryland

9. Jeb Bush, Florida

10. Rand Paul, Kentucky

11. Jim Gilmore, Virginia (currently the last field, the only candidate we have met in person)

12. Marco Rubio, Florida

13. John Kasich, Ohio

14. Carly Fiorina, California (the only woman in the GOP field)

15. Chris Christie, New Jersey

16. George Pataki, New York (at 72, the oldest Republican in the race)

17. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics

http://www.politico.com

http://www.thehill.com

http://www.nationalreview.com (A conservative journal)

http://www.thenation.com (A liberal journal)

http://www.theonion.com/politics (A satirical site)

Know Your Congress Reps and Senators (Entry 11 of 21)

Today, we focus on Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as he was a vocal supporter for his friend John McCain even before he became the GOP nominee and he is known for being more cooperative than some of his Republican counterparts, including Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) from his own state.

Graham was born in 1955 in Central, SC, and his father owned a liquor store!

His parents died within a year of each other when Graham was in his twenties. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps and attended the University of South Carolina.

Graham is the only senator who served as a reservist in both Iraq and Afghanistan where he helped with legalities.

He was elected to Congress in 1994 in the third district, and he was elected to the Senate in 2002 as he filled Sen. Strom Thurmond's vacated seat.

Graham became The Palmetto State's senior senator when Sen. Fritz Hollings (D) retired in 2005.

Before being elected to the Senate, Graham got recognition for his efforts during the impeachment hearings for Bill Clinton, which allowed him to help McCain when the Arizona senator first ran for the presidency in 1999.

Graham is also one of the few members of the Senate (well, perhaps the only one) who is a confirmed bachelor.