If Marco Rubio is the Republicans savior, maybe he can just skip to Rome  to replace the pontiff.

Ah yes, the pope jokes were flying on the twitters this morning.  But there’s really nothing funny about this pope who has turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse of young boys by his priests.  So, I figured I’d steal the headline from the not funny No Soap Radio non-joke. 

Unfortunately, Marco Rubio will likely be around a lot longer than the Benedict…  Not only did Time magazine declare him the GOP savior, he’ll be delivering the Republican response to tomorrow night’s State of the Union address… in both English and Spanish.

I called on my friend and old colleague Jim DeFede – my favorite source for all thing Florida politics – to tell us a bit about Rubio.  To be continued….

As for radio… talker Peter B. Collins wrote the sad but true tale of the saga of progressive talk radio.  I read it on the show, but promised you the link.. Do read and share, as it’s real life for him, me and many others in our sinking boat.

As I said on the show today, I know I’m on the right track.  I just hope we pick up speed before the track runs out…  so, follow these words of wisdom, as they apply to your truly too:

As someone who took substantial personal risk in syndication and station ownership, I can tell you that progressive talk has not panned out as a viable business. Clinton’s 1996 deregulation of broadcasting and the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 didn’t help. I do think the FCC should require some balance of viewpoints on the stations it regulates, through the license renewal process, but there is simply no interest on the part of Obama and his appointees in regulatory reform – even as the president is pilloried by right-wing radio on a daily basis. Air America’s parade of management blunders produced the downward spiral that brought us to this tipping point for progressive talk radio, and most station owners, rightly or wrongly, see that failure as an indication that audiences won’t support liberal talk radio.

In radio, we always like to end on an upbeat note. Here’s the best I can muster: if you want to help keep the surviving progressive talk shows alive, subscribe to the podcasts of your favorite progressive hosts – it’s a critical stream of revenue as these programs fight for survival.

And finally, if it’s Monday, it’s Fools on the Hill.  Nicole Belle and her colleagues at Crooks & Liars watch those Sunday talking head shows so we don’t have to.  Here’s what she brought us today:

There’s a famous phenomena in psychology known as “Flashed Face Distortion”. When a pair of perfectly attractive faces are flashed in front of a viewer, aligned at the eye level, all their dissimilarities are heightened and distorted to the point of being perceived as grotesque.

There’s a similar parallel in politics. When liberal ideas are merely flashed out to audiences, they appear distorted and unnatural, because we never get a good look at them. I blame the media in this, because for all their talk of “both sides doing it,” they rarely give us any more than a cursory glance at liberal ideas, thus distorting them completely to their viewers. I’m convinced that if most Americans got to take a nice long look at them, they wouldn’t find them grotesque at all.

But there is no shortage of conservative ideas given full coverage on the Sunday shows. Would that they appear as distorted as the short shrift they give liberal ideas.

Speaking of liberal ideas, Paul Krugman was on Up with Chris Hayes, which is enough for a liberal fangirl to start squealing in delight. But as if to reiterate the point I made above, Krugman reminds Hayes that nothing that he advocates is that radical. It is literally Macroeconomics 101. But they are completely alien concepts to the insulated Beltway Bubble.

On the other end of the spectrum, Eric Cantor tells David Gregory that he doesn’t know what the DREAM Act is any more, but he thinks we need to work on a pathway to citizenship for children. Psst….Cantor, that is *exactly* what the DREAM Act addresses.

To hear Republicans talk about immigration at all is an exercise of “Who do you want to believe? Me or your lying eyes?” Case in point: John “Build the dang wall” McCain challenging Republicans to not block giving undocumented workers a pathway to citizenship: “What do you want to do with them?”

McCain’s BFF Lindsey Graham never misses an opportunity (or a Sunday, come to that) to play partisan politics and criticize the president. Ignoring completely the infamous 7 minutes that George W. Bush read “My Pet Goat” while the worst terrorist act on our shores occurred, Graham accuses President Obama of being “disengaged” on the anniversary of 9/11 and therefore, personally responsible for the deaths in Benghazi.

And finally, the Rand family is feeling quite testy of late. While Daddy Ron is now appealing to the UN (which he doesn’t believe in) to help him take away the RonPaul.com domain name from his supporters, baby Rand is feeling that Ashley Judd hasn’t got the gravitas of a self-certified ophthalmologist to run for the Senate for the state of Kentucky.