NBM: "Y'all cuttin' the fool up in here again? (to Pat): "I told you this triflin' heifer was gonna be the death of you ... ."

Gina: "Why you old ..."

Pat (separating the two): "Join us next time when Mama shows Gina how to clean the oven by sticking her head in it with the gas on. Mama, you sure that's safe?"

NBM: "Oh, yes, honey. It's the only way."

Everybody always says that marriage is such hard work but I don't believe that. All you need to get along through any disagreement is this Marriage-Saving Blueberry Pie, courtesy of my friend Jana. One bite and all will be forgiven.

I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DID, JUST GIMME SOME MORE OF THAT PIE, PIE Crust: 1 and one-half cups graham cracker crumbs

2 tablespoons sugar

Pinch salt

1 stick b.u.t.ter

Melt the b.u.t.ter in a heavy saucepan and add the other ingredients. Blend with a fork and press evenly onto the bottom and sides of a greased 9-inch pie pan. Bake 8 minutes at 325 degrees. Cool completely.

Cream Cheese Filling: 8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

Combine cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add eggs and beat well again. Pour into pie sh.e.l.l and bake at 325 degrees until filling is set, about 30 minutes. Remove and let cool completely.

While that's cooling, mix up this divine and simple Blueberry Glaze 2 cups blueberries

cup water

1/3 cup sugar

Combine in saucepan; bring to boil; reduce heat; simmer, covered 5 minutes, stirring once. Remove from heat and add 1 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with 2 tablespoons cold water.

This will thicken things up nicely. Bring back to boil and cook 1 more minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; let cool until tepid. Spoon blueberry glaze on top of cheese pie. Chill at least 1 hour. Enjoy!

24.

Politically Correct: A Palin/La Toya Ticket Ever since I first watched them join hands high in the air together at various stops on the campaign trail, I pictured the Obamas and the Bidens as the Ricardos and the Mertzes.

They're a congenial foursome but it's not always a blissful relationship. One gets the distinct impression that if they went to Hollywood on vacation, the Bidens would somehow end up being the ones to accidentally land a cream pie in William Holden's face at the Brown Derby and the Obamas would be apologizing for it while making it very clear that there would be no talent night at the Babalu for either Jill or Joe. Everybody say, "Waaaaaaahhhhhh."

The Bidens remind me of the Mertzes. He tends to shoot off his mouth; she tends to rush to his side and defend him. Together, the Bidens have a vexing "Did I just say that out loud?" quality about them.

I wonder if Obama has ever second-guessed asking Joe Biden to be his veep. A jolly, tail-wagging foil for Obama's crisp demeanor, Biden occasionally seems Lucy-like. Some of the stuff he comes up with (remember how he told us he'd never let anyone he loved board an airplane during flu season?) makes it sound as if he's been hitting the Vitameatavegamin pretty hard.

When Biden commits a gaffe (which would make a pretty terrific drinking game) you'll see Obama maintain a steely gaze and discreetly pinch his elbow. It's the same gesture that Ricky used when Lucy was about to make a pure-T fool out of herself in front of Milton Berle. (Ask your parents.) And it's the same gesture that every mom uses during a church service to get her squirmy kid to be quiet and sit up straight.

Biden doesn't have any trouble sitting up straight, but being quiet is another matter. Not as hard as packaging candy on an a.s.sembly line with a broken conveyor belt, mind you, but still pretty hard.

Biden is a yappy and irrepressible sort. It wouldn't surprise me to see video of him and first dog Bo happily romping and yelping amongst Mich.e.l.le's freshly planted lemongra.s.s. Mich.e.l.le, who seems elegant but somewhat boring, would rap on the kitchen window and shake her head "no" to get them to stop. Yes, there would be lots of splainin' to do later.

And while we're talking about first ladies, wouldn't it be wonderful if we had one who we could really relate to? A gal pal for us all? I get so sick of the monotonous do-gooders that we've had in the past. Just once, I'd like to see a sweats-wearin' redneck first lady. Feet on the Lincoln coffee table while she's interviewed by Family Circle Gardens Bazaar or whomever.

"My outfit? Oh, yeah. It's by Hanes. Want some more boiled peanuts with your saltines?"

"My beauty regimen? Two words: Oil of Olay."

"My legacy? Well, let's see, Lady Bird had beautification, Betty Ford had rehab, Laura Bush had literacy, Rosalynn Carter had houses for poor people ... hmmm, is free lottery tickets for kids under twelve taken?"

We tend to focus on the Obama presidency because it seemed as if the Bush years would never, ever end. And now they have and so we celebrate, sort of, with a lot more kitsch than Bush ever had. I'm remembering the Obama Inauguration Genuine Embossed Champagne Bottle that came complete with your name in script as a "witness to history." Never mind that the only witnessing you did was to look up at the overhead TV at Applebee's during 50-cent wings hour on Inauguration Day.

You could pour that "elixir of hope" into a limited-edition commemorative wine gla.s.s etched with the faces of Obama and Biden before enjoying a rousing game of table tennis using your officially sanctioned Obama inaugural Ping-Pong paddle.

All the commercialism did chafe a bit, but probably not as much as the Obama Age of Hope thong. There were even, for a short time, Obama condoms which came with the advice to "Use good judgment" on the side of the box. And don't forget the Yes, We Can! (opener).

The election was big news for anyone with a marketing idea and a decent connection to a Chinese factory. I was pondering Hope on a Rope myself, featuring forty-four's smiling face carved deep into a bar of soap. Who wouldn't pay $14.95 plus tax to shower with a president every morning? No? Well how about $4.95?

I still think it could work. As someone, I forget who, once said, you can't misunderestimate the American appet.i.te for presidential paraphernalia.

Obama, who hasn't been able to quit smoking yet, shouldn't be surprised if people try to sell his b.u.t.ts on eBay.

And while we're on the subject, I wish everybody would leave him the h.e.l.l alone about his occasional cigarette sneaking. If the leader of the free world wants to unwind with a cigarette after another day of listening to Republicans accuse him of everything short of bowling with the severed heads of their grandmothers, it's fine by me.

My sweet Lord, he's not firing up a crack pipe. I get that it's not good for him but I think Obama needs a few stress reducers. The man lives with his mother-in-law, for G.o.d's sake.

You think your boss is a jerk and your job at the widget factory is a stressful b.u.mmer? Try dealing on a daily basis with psychos like Kim Jong II and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Neptune). Not so easy now, is it?

It's not like he's grinding out the b.u.t.ts with his heel on the presidential seal of the Oval Office. Let him be. The man was awarded the n.o.bel Prize after approximately twenty seconds in office. Yes, yes, I know it's just because the n.o.bel folks hated Bush. They would've given it to The Situation if they could have gotten away with it.

Thanks to Obama's election, even the French are being nicer to Americans, although they still think we're too fat and spend way too much time carping about how much they smoke. In elementary school.

Obama never gets to truly relax. Not even at his own parties. Remember those goof b.a.l.l.s who lied their way into the fancy state dinner for the prime minister of India?

What was the Secret Service doing? Talking into its shoe? Was it trapped in the Cone of Silence? What?

It's not Obama's fault that he was even photographed shaking hands with Tareq and Michaele Salahi. Everyone who's watched The Princess Diaries knows that the way this highfalutin political party stuff goes is that someone stands beside the fancy folks and whispers the names of the approaching guests. Unfortunately, the Salahis should've been introduced as "two a.s.sholes who have crashed your party by pretending to be on the list because they want to be on Real Housewives of DC, Mr. President. And, no, I'm not making this up."

So we now know that the Secret Service, for all its s.e.xy portrayal in the movies, basically has the technology of Laura Ingalls' chalk slate in Little House on the Prairie.

At a checkpoint, the Secret Service had a clipboard with the names of all the invited guests on it, but the gruesome twosome schmoozed their way in anyway.

A clipboard? Are you kidding me? This isn't the South Georgia debutante ball at the Ramada we're talking about. A clipboard? In this age of terrorism threats, the only thing we have in place to make sure POTUS isn't dusted with anthrax is the same thing they use for call-ahead seating at Red Lobster? h.e.l.l, even Costco demands a picture ID at the door.

Because I'm a political junkie from way back, I'm already looking ahead to 2012, when I'm hoping for a pop-culture dream ticket: Sarah Palin and La Toya Jackson.

Palin/Jackson is my fantasy ticket for the sheer hilarity of it. La Toya could point out perceived enemies ("Barney Frank murdered my brother!") and Say-ruh, as we say here in the South, could mow 'em down with her moose musket. ("I gotcher!") Problem is, I'm not sure if La Toya Jackson is a Republican or a Democrat. My best guess is that she's a Martian. No matter. It's a simple change of registration.

Why Palin/Jackson? That's easy. These are power women who know how to generate a ton of ink. When people stopped talking about Palin after the 2008 election, she got right back in the spotlight for "ya know, doin' the quittin' thing because it's the ones who, ya know, stay in office and things like that, which erode our, ya know, values and stuff." And La Toya is fond of conspiracy theories which are, to borrow from the old Addams Family theme, "creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky, altogether ooky."

Which is a great, underused word by the way.

La Toya Jackson on the ticket would accomplish the unimaginable: She would make Sarah Palin look like the sensible, articulate one. La Toya would be the wind beneath Palin's mounted bald eagle wings, as it were. Ooky.

La Toya would bring her own cabinet without even having to step out of the gene pool and put on a towel: Secretary of State t.i.to, Secretary of the Treasury Marlon, Secretary of Yo-Yo Dieting and Occasional Fitness Janet, and Secretary of All That Is Germane Jermaine.

And, yes, I know Say-ruh has smart-girl gla.s.ses and her caribou Manwiches are enough to make Greta Van Susteren swoon, but I'm not sure she's interesting enough by herself to be president. Which, make no mistake, is where she's headed.

It has been said that the only way Sarah Palin can triumph is if good people do nothing. OK, I'm paraphrasing there. But do we really want to see first dude Todd doing doughnuts in his snowmobile on the White House front lawn, crushin' his empties on his big, vacant noggin, and refusing to recycle?

OK, maybe that does sound kinda cool now that I think about it.

If Palin gets elected, we can expect more shenanigans on the order of the Republican National Committee's now-famous fund-raising appeal that suggested that Democrats wanted to overhaul health care to deny treatment to Republicans.

Well, that's just nuts!

But then these are the same people who like to spread the rumor that Obama wants to personally suffocate Palin's precious special-needs child in his sleep and he will pay ACORN workers to peddle "kill Grandpa" pills door-to-door like copies of The Watchtower.

Remember how the Republicans whined about the Dems vilifying Bush? Oh, it was so awful, so disrespectful, so un-American. But things are different with Obama in the big house. Now, to quote the always acerbic Bill Maher, the far right believes Obama is so core-evil that his favorite hobby is beating nuns to death with truckloads of dead puppies.

But back to this notion that Dems will play favorites at the doctor's office. Really? Is there anyone besides those frumpy, red-eyed wailing women who show up at town hall meetings with their hair combs and prairie skirts (surely, the sister-wives are back at the compound) who could honestly believe that?

Although I seldom agree with Republicans, I'd never withhold medical care based on our political differences.

I believe Republicans are absolutely ent.i.tled to any and all medical treatments that they need and desire. In due time.

Kidding! No one seriously believes that doctors are going to check voter registrations before treating patients, do they? That would be a violation of the Hippopotamus Oath. Which I'm not sure they have in Kenya, our president's true birthplace according to the frumpsters.

How would it even work?

Doctor: "Hmmmm. Bill, I know you and I go back a really long way and that I delivered all five of your children but, well, goshdarnit, it says here on your chart that you voted for Nixon in '72 so it seems to me that your appendix is just going to have to explode while we leave you for dead. Nurse! Go out in the waiting room and see if any Democrats are waiting out there. And make sure they're getting the good magazines, too."

Waaaaaaaahhhh.

25.