by Berry Craig

President Obama, bless his heart, evidently thought the nation would have a
reasoned and respectful debate on health care reform.

Oh, ye of liberal faith.

Anyway, I'd been waiting for some Democrat to turn the tables on the
shrieking, swastika-sign waving yahoos who show up at the town hall-style
forums to demonize the president and the Democrats who want to overhaul our
health care system.

For weeks, we got grin-and-bear it from hard-pressed House and Senate Dems
at the town hall food fights.

Finally, we got some Frank Talk.

The Nazi stuff proved too much for Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank,
who is Jewish. His response to a wacko woman holding a picture of Obama with
a Hitler moustache has become an instant You Tube classic. It was at a town
hall shindig in Dartmouth, Mass., part of his district.

Frank, as we say in Kentucky, "opened up a can of ass-whup."

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" the feisty Frank replied
when the nut job asked him why he favored Obama's "Nazi" health care plan.

"You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler
and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis," Frank added,
setting her up.

Then he lowered the boom: "Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you
would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest
in doing it."

Maybe Frank's verbal broadside wasn't the Shot Heard 'Round the World - that
was in a Beantown 'burb long ago. But it echoed in my old Kentucky home.

I cheered the first time I saw it on the TV news - almost as loudly as I
whooped it up when my Yankees swept the Sawx a few days ago.

My guess is Congressman Frank is a pretty ecumenical guy. Most liberals are.
So I hope he will welcome this dyed-in-the-pinstripes Bronx Bomber fan to
his booster club in Sawx land. This unapologetic left-leaning, union-card
carrying Bluegrass State born-and-reared history teacher has been a Frank
fan since the voters of the Bay State's 4th CD had the good sense to send
him to Congress in 1980.

Give 'em hell, Barney.