Healing laughter.

I'm sorry, but every now and again a girl just finds it necessary to lay her head down on the table and howl with laughter. I wrote a column warning that USA Next, a Republican astroturf (meaning "fake grassroots") group was going to attack the AARP. The senior citizens' lobby does not support the privatization of Social Security, and so clearly incurs the wrath of all God-fearing, true-believing, highly paid Republican public relations firms. But I have to confess, even I did not see this one coming.

USA Next's first salvo was to accuse the geezer lobby of being against our troops in Iraq and in favor of homosexual marriage.

A charming Internet ad showed a muscular hero of the desert in combat fatigues with a big X across his picture, and on the other side are two guys in tuxedos getting hitched with a big check across their picture. Under these two pictures it says, "The REAL AARP Agenda." I haven't laughed so hard since President Bush informed us that we have had a close and enduring friendship with Japan for the past 150 years.

Yes, our old friends from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--the very people who told you that John Kerry didn't deserve his medals from Vietnam, who said he testified before Congress that American soldiers were all war criminals--are back again, attacking the AARP, a group largely known for advocating afternoon naps for the elderly.

Disclosure: I once wrote an article for the AARP magazine Modern Maturity, and not only did they pay well, but got the jokes too. Despite this happy one-time experience, I am not an AARP fan. I consider their support of the abomination that is the Medicare prescription drug coverage bill the most ill-advised sellout since the memorably awful 1996 telecommunications deregulation bill. (Enjoying that one, everyone? Your bills gone down lately?)

USA Next has the same address as O'Neill Marketing, although Charlie Jarvis, head of Next, says he's three floors down. O'Neill is a list company, it sells lists of names, and its clients are various branches of the Republican Party. So subtle. Hi, Karl.

Speaking of healing laughter, the President provided all of Europe with chuckles. After he denounced the idea that the U.S. would attack Iran as ridiculous, he then promptly added, "No option can be taken permanently off-the table." So they laughed, apparently on the polite assumption that the man must be joking. Not being veteran Bush-listeners, they were unaccustomed to the fact that he often contradicts himself, sometimes from one sentence to the next. They have also failed to master the key element of Bush-listening: You must understand that George W. Bush is never, ever wrong. And if he is against something one day and for it the next (see the creation of the 9/11 Commission and the passage of the corporate reform law brought on by the Enron scandals), he is still never wrong. He's not a flip-flopper like you-know-who. And if something he says turns out to be completely untrue (hard to think of such a case, but the letters WMD somehow float to mind), it is never his fault and best to ignore it. If you do not pretend to believe everything Bush says, then you are unpatriotic, against our troops, and probably support gay marriage.

P.S. After I penned the above screed, I chanced across the Luntz diaries now on the Internet, a 160-page compilation of Frank Luntz's advice to Republicans on how to talk about the issues. He sets up a dichotomy between "good guys" and "bad guys," America lovers and America haters, Republicans and Democrats. He advises the R's to "resist the temptation to use facts and figures" when discussing the economy. He advises reminding people of 9/11 at every opportunity, including as an explanation for why the economy and the federal budget are a mess. Thank heaven the R's are above exploiting 9/11 for political purposes.

Molly Ivins, co-author of "Bushwhacked," writes in this space every month.