THERE are many admirable things about the USA - the can-do attitude and its written constitution being just two of them.

There are, however, many others which should make us fend off any attempts to be culturally assimilated by it.

Take, for example, the new Barbie doll being feted as the doyenne of the Republican party.

Thank goodness that Sarah Palin, aka Moose Killer Barbie, announced her retirement from national politics - though I suspect that the animals of Alaska will bear the brunt of her frustrated ambition with their pelts.

So what do the Republicans do next? Do they look for a heavyweight candidate to play the long game and wait out Barack Obama's honeymoon period?

No. They line up Minnesota Mad-Eyed Mom Barbie Michele Bachmann as her replacement. Equally right wing, equally a loose canon and equally likely to stuff up at a key moment in their campaign.

Like Palin, Congresswoman Bachmann also has the rictus smile of the Stepford robot wives, plastic-perfect hair and looks great on right-wing talk-shows.

And what does Bachmann think of Obama's plans to help the 43 million Americans who do not have proper access to healthcare?

"What we have to do today is make a covenant, slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass," she preached.

Hope you have enough private health insurance if your wrist-slitting goes wrong, Mrs Bachmann. But then, I'm sure your job as a congresswoman has a great health package, even if family riches wouldn't cover it.

Strange how all these right-wingers who oppose basic healthcare for the poor are all such avowed Christians...I vaguely remember something from Sunday school about a rich man and the eye of a needle.

Example number two - the white US justice of the peace who refused to issue marriage licences to mixed-race couples.

Keith Bardwell, of Tangipahoa Parish in Louisiana, has denied racism but said mixed-race children were not readily accepted by their parents' communities.

Mr Bardwell said: "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

One couple he refused to marry is now considering filing a complaint about him to the US Justice Department.

Mr Bardwell is, however, happy to marry black couples, or white couples.

Good of him, isn't it? And they say doctors like to play God.

Example number three - the Louisiana couple who allegedly gave a woman a cockatoo in exchange for a boy of five and girl of four. Need I say anything more?

AND finally...

Gordon Brown dodged a tricky question during a live webchat last week - what his favourite biscuit is.

Being a Scot, some might assumme it's shortbread. I beg to differ. I believe the PM has a secret soft spot for the Jammy Dodgers baked at Cwmbran's Burton's Biscuits, a smell which wafts across the A4042 every day as we drive to work. Torture.