A photo of ‘Puter’s Mom, circa 1967. Not really. ‘Puter’s Mom was too busy working to hang out with the rich kid, self absorbed hippies smoking weed and dodging the draft.

‘Puter’s going to let slip some ‘Puter family secrets. Both Mrs. ‘Puter and ‘Puter’s Mom are registered Democrats, the former in deep blue New York and the latter in equally if not more deep blue Maryland.  ‘Puter loves both women dearly, though he suspects that at least one if not both women remain registered Democrats to get their husband’s goat.

These two women are exactly the sort of female voters who made up President Obama’s binder full of women in the 2008 Election.

Both are white, well-educated suburban women and mothers.  Both had or have government jobs.  Both live in states where conservative governments are something most people have heard exist in far off lands, but really don’t believe it.  Both vote religiously.  Most importantly, both rarely, if ever, pay any attention to politics whatsoever.  They are exactly the voters Obama needs to win in 2012 to keep his day job.

Mrs. ‘Puter is an early forties chemistry teacher with an undergrad double major in biology and psychology.  Mrs. ‘Puter, by virtue of her choice to teach in public schools, was able to stay at home with our biological output until both biological experiments gone awry were of full-time school age.  Mrs. ‘Puter is now back at her gig as a chemistry teacher, and thanks to New York’s closed shop laws, is a reluctant member of her local public employee union, a chapter of New York State United Teachers.  Mrs. ‘Puter is a moderate in all things political.

‘Puter’s Mom is a late sixties stay at home Mom (after 1972 or so, when she already had two kids in fewer than 13 months).  She is also a college graduate with a math major who, before taking on the far more important task of raising four children (all successful adults with full time jobs), worked programming computers at Federal Government Employer Who Shall Not Be Named at the height of the Vietnam War.  ‘Puter’s Mom, too, is a political moderate, at least by national standards.

Mrs. ‘Puter has watched all three debates to date, mostly because ‘Puter, ‘Puter Jr. and Spawn insist on watching wall-to-wall coverage on MSNBC for its sheer Schadenfreude-liciousness.  ‘Puter’s Dad reports that ‘Puter’s Mom has also watched the presidential and vice-presidential debates this year.

Both Mrs. ‘Puter and ‘Puter’s Mom had the same reaction to all three debates.  President Obama doesn’t seem to want the job of president, and Vice President Biden is a scary man.

As Megan McArdle is fond of reminding us, the plural of anecdote is not data. But if ‘Puter’s correct that his wife and his mother are typical moderate women voters, their viscerally negative reactions to the debates, the first time they’ve paid real attention to the President and Vice President since 2008, would explain Obama’s downward spiral.

Cherchez la femme, pardieu! cherchez la femme!

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.