Canada said to be amassing troops at the border…somewhere along the border…if we can find them…to invade in retaliation!

Okay, not really. But this does not bode well for US-Canadian relations. Making matters worse is the fact the USA is leading in the Canadian Olympics medal count.

How can this happen under an Obama Administration? That’s exactly what Republicans will be asking this week as they gather – reluctantly – under the klieg lights for another Obama Rodeo in which he will, no doubt, rope and hog-tie Congressional Republicans under the guise of getting agreement on health care reform.

Now, he has added incentive: holding off the Canadian invasion threat by trying to make our health care system look more like their health care system. The president will today announce a cap on health insurance premium increases – some of which have topped 31 percent lately – in an effort to appease the unruly and clearly agitated Canadians.

Republicans will be put in a tough spot. They will either have to go along or be blamed for not appeasing the Canadians and acquiescing to the looming invasion.

This is nasty business.

There is good news for Republicans, however. Texas Congressman Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll over the weekend. Paul, the Libertarian, captured nearly one-third of the votes cast by the nearly one-third of CPAC attendees who bothered to cast a straw poll ballot at all.

This means Paul, who waged an independent run for the presidency in 2008, beat out the ever-lovely and vapid Mitt Romney for CPAC prom king, an embarrassing turn of events for Romney and Massachusetts because “the Mittens” has won the last three CPAC straw polls.

Unfortunately for him, he could not this year get support from even 25 percent of the nearly 30 percent who bothered to vote. Let’s see…25 percent of 30 percent is…divide by three…carry the one…um…not very many people.

And for the record, Sarah Palin only got 7 percent of the vote while Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who spoke at the confab, garnered 6 percent of the vote…of the one-third who bothered to vote.

Oh well, the CPAC crowd is always much bigger on bombast and idle threats than on actual participatory democracy so votes and voting – not so much.

Meanwhile, some actually-elected Republicans are having a tough time ‘splainin’ why they so readily accepted money from President Obama’s initial stimulus plan when they railed so loudly against it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, more than a dozen Republican lawmakers supported requests for stimulus money while, at the same time, calling the $787 billion Obama program the worst thing since processed cheese.

Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, who called the stimulus, “the socialist way,” asked for $15 million in socialist cheese for his state’s cogongrass eradication program.

Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, who called the stimulus a “wasteful spending spree”, asked for enough socialist cheese to create 1,000 new jobs…perhaps in the Wisconsin cheese industry.

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn explained in a Tweet from his magic Twitter machine there is no hypocrisy in this at all: “No contradiction to vote against reckless stimulus but if majority hell-bent to spend the money anyway, make sure Texas gets fair share.”