"You're very, very good at a great many things, but thinking, hon', just simply isn't one of them."

There are many memorable scenes in "The Manchurian Candidate" (I refer to the good version).

This morning I'm reminded of one involving a breakfast conversation between Sen. John Iselin, the somewhat dim McCarthyesque anti-communist who is attempting to leverage his trumped-up investigations of communist influence in the government into a spot on his party's ticket at the upcoming national convention, and his iron-willed wife/confidant/chief political advisor:

It's hard for him to remember the number of Communists he's supposedly found in the Defense Department, the Senator complains, because the number she gives him keeps changing.

Mrs. Iselin: I'm sorry, hon'. Would it really make it easier for you if we settled on just one number?

Sen. Iselin: Yeah. Just one, real, simple number that'd be easy for me to remember.

[Mrs. Iselin watches her husband thump a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup onto his plate. Cut immediately to the floor of the Senate.]

Sen. Iselin: [addressing the Senate] There are exactly 57 card-carrying members of the Communist Party in the Department of Defense at this time!

I was reminded of that scene by this scene:

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) puts the number of socialists in the House at 17.

"Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists," Bachus told local government leaders on Thursday, according to the Birmingham News.

Bachus gave the specific number of House socialists when pressed later by a reporter.

Seventeen, eh? I wonder what Rep. Bachus had for breakfast that morning?