GOP criticizing party, not actions

I’ll give you two things to ponder, one serious and one not. Which is which is up for debate.

• A friend invited me to her birthday party two Fridays from now. I demanded to see her long-form birth certificate, and said I couldn’t in good conscience give a gift when I didn’t have proof of her birthday.

I got a press release from the White House last week, announcing the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins were visiting. I immediately texted friends, fearing President Obama would be attempting to indoctrinate them to play basketball.

It’s all in the name of being a good patriot. And in the name of sarcasm after the over-the-top reaction to Obama giving a nationwide speech to schoolchildren.

The fear is Obama’s using the speech to push his political views on young minds, something a Republican president would avoid. Except when Ronald Reagan went on C-SPAN to give school children his views on taxes. Or when George H.W. Bush touted his education plan from an elementary school on the eve of the 1992 election.

I’ve heard ’80s children tell me they don’t remember those speeches, which are available online. Maybe it was because not every classroom in those years had cable television, but there’s another factor.

It’s the same reason why Alan Keyes got arrested for protesting Obama’s presence at Notre Dame’s graduation for the president’s pro-choice views, but apparently had better things to do when pro-choice Republican Rudy Giuliani spoke at Loyola College, another Catholic institution.

It’s not the action that’s being protested. It’s about the political party of the actor.

Republicans realize their best chances in mid-term elections come from opposing anything the Obama administration does, and run an “I told you so” platform.

That’s their prerogative, but searching for non-existent Kenyan birth certificates and protesting a “stay in school” speech might have been good places to draw the line.

• I’ve always lived by the phrase that the unexamined life is one not worth living. But I really think I’ve taken it too far this time.

With a free weekend, I decided to take a little too much time deconstructing movie sequels. I decided “Legally Blonde 2” should retroactively be called a straight-to-DVD release, and the New York Newspaper in “Home Alone 2” is in disarray.

The first “Home Alone” was set in Chicago, where Kevin McAllister’s family left him in a rush to the airport, and he foils the Wet Bandits home burglary team by turning his house into a cavalcade of Rube Goldberg-style booby traps.

In the sequel, Kevin boards the wrong plane and ends up in New York with his dad’s wallet. And the fictional New York Newspaper has informed us the Wet Bandits broke out of jail.

Question: What was the editorial staff thinking in the daily budget meeting? “Our New York readers will want to know everything about these guys who committed non-violent crimes halfway across the country and couldn’t outsmart a grade-school kid.”

Another coworker told me there was another plot hole I missed. A 10-year-old boy lived in New York for a week on a stolen credit card. Yep, missed that one.