On Monday, two professional bloviaters, much more accomplished than myself, founded and set the proverbial Gold Standard for the new NPA or National Panderers Association.

Each targeting their specific audiences on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, they both bled, emoted, raised their arms to the sky and did their level best to pitch ridiculous themes that, unfortunately, their respective audiences thirsted to hear.

First, the nation’s most overpublicized and least thoughtful mayor, Ray Nagin:

Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put stress on this country.

Surely he doesn’t approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We’re not taking care of ourselves.

It’s time for us to come together. It’s time for us to rebuild New Orleans — the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. This city will be a majority African American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans.

Now imagine, if you will, the absolute hue and cry, not to say the state and federal lawsuits that would have erupted had, for example, the mayor of Minneapolis said “it is time for us to rebuild Minneapolis — the one that should be a vanilla cream Minneapolis. This city will be a majority caucasion and white American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have Minneapolis any other way.”

Pandering, Ray. Pandering. Good job!

Let’s also consider the beatific Albert Gore who said yesterday, in Constitution Hall:

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

Let us do what I again call the “logical extension” — at its most base, Gore is calling the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a terrorist. A terrorist. The NSA has been tapping the phone conversations of terrorists. Not valid civil rights leaders. And this is 2006, not 1965. Gore received thunderous applause for his comments from — Democrats.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

A longtime believer in the basic tenets and mores of the NPA (but not an actual member), Hillary Rodham Clinton likewise became the late-day third founding member with her comments from yesterday’s Martin Luther King Day celebration at Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network:

We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism we have incompetence I predict to you that this administration will go down on history as one of the worst that has ever governed out country.

I need you to tell us what distinguishes Democrats from Republicans right now. When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation and you know what I’m talking about. . .

Perfect. The Race Card on MLK Day. You’ve certainly sussed your audience well, Senator.

Welcome, all, to the NPA!