never whistle while your pissing...

if you don't know that quote go here right now and buy the book. no questions, just go buy it. and then have fun reading it. i'm sure that the only more difficult book in the world to get used to when you first pick it up has got to be As I lay Dying by Faulkner. Only because Flannery's Wake is impossible to read. Maybe it's time to try.

So many thoughts are buzzing around today, and I've got plenty of time to write. The show doesn't start till 10:30 so we won't even be packing up until around 9:00.

First, though, I want to talk about how in the hell Howard Dean has apparently locked up the DNC Chair. Call me crazy, but I've never subscribed to the notion that the Democrats, and by this I mean the Party, not their constituents, are morons. And I mean complete and total morons. I've never believed that. I believe that there exists a substantial number of Democratic Party officials who sincerely believe that their way of bettering America is the way to do it, and they are determined to implement their policies and reward their constituents as much as they possibly can given their minority status. But I refuse to see how nominating the man who must have sobbed himself to sleep the night he screamed his way to the back of the nomination race would make an effective DNC Chair. All the Republicans would have to do to discredit is play a little five second snippet of his speech that night where he screamed his way through the list of the next Democratic primaries. That's it, over, done with. Nothing left for Chairman Dean to top his previous performance by entering the ring with some wrestler, Hulk Hogan, the tall guy whose supposed to dead (the Undertaker, you see how much I know about wrestling), or maybe even Andy Kaufman's corpse, reanimated for the evening and actually looking quite well compared to Dean, whose jugular suddenly explodes in a burst of blood, ending the match.
This is the guy the Democrats want chair their party?

Garance Franke-Ruta, who wrote sympathetic Dean pieces in the
American Prospect during the campaign, spoke with several former Dean staffers.
One called the candidate "a horrible manager" and added, "I wouldn't trust him
to run a company." Another called his management style "just a disaster."Dean,
remember, raised about $50 million by positioning himself as the most anti-Bush
candidate, but blew through it so fast that he was nearly broke by January. This
represents the sort of financial acumen you associate with deluded,
flash-in-the-pan celebrities — cue the narrator for VH-1's "Behind the Music":
"But the good times and lavish spending couldn't last for M.C. Hammer" — not
with chairmen of major political parties.

And if you've seen that "Behind the Music" about good ole Hammer, well, then you know what the Democrats are facing. Dean will have a personal entourage of no less than about sixty, probably several dieticians and physicians to help him keep that blood pressure in check, at least ten personal assistants, who knows how many times Dean ask the same question to each of them every day and how many of them have to ask their personal assistants. Personal assistants who have assistants. It just goes to show you. If you don't know what you think about something, having more people talk to you about it is only going to make you more confused and less able to come to a decision about it. The Kerry campaign had many many many many many many many (do you feel that typing certain words over and over and over and over and over again can actually be kind of fun?) many many, I think they were called advisory groups, groups focusing on all the various minuatae that concerns policy makers, such as where should I build this bike path?

On the other hand, Dean's takeover of the DNC certainly does make somebody look good. In fact, it makes her look not just like the sanest of the Democrats, but the only Democrat who might actually be able to convince a majority of Americans to vote for her (it's important to keep in mind that no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has won an outright majority of the popular vote. Not one. Jimmy Carter couldn't win an outright majority, and Bill Clinton didn't either). And that person is of course, Hillary Clinton. And to add injury to insult (to Dean of course) Hillary fainted the other day. I almost fainted when I read this:

Religion is now so central to our politics that every candidate
prays like Voltaire on his deathbed just to cover his bets. This comes easily to
Hillary, who's naturally self-righteous and a sincere, lifelong Methodist. For a
while, she's been a regular at the Senate's weekly prayer breakfasts, clutching
her own well-worn Bible, sometimes even holding hands with Sen. Lindsay Graham
(R-S.C.), chief among her husband's tormenters.

And then I did, actually faint when I read this:

To get right with the military, which never forgave her husband
for his "don't ask, don't tell" doctrine, she chose to be on the Armed Services
Committee. On weekends, instead of hanging around the house in Chappaqua, she
visits bases.

All of this convinces me that Hillary is out to promote herself not just as the most uncompromising wartime President in US history, and if she does in fact win, Hillary may wind up being the most hawkish President ever--because she knows, if she's as good a politician as everyone says she is, she knows that the only she'll ever convince enough red-state voters to trust her on national security issues, that she would have to advocate positions that many Republican officials don't. For Hillary to win the Presidency all she has to do is push three (or maybe four, we'll see how this goes) positions: close the borders and enforce strict assimilation policies upon the immigrants already here, construct enough nuclear reactors so that we don't have to import any oil from anybody except maybe Canada and Mexico, and break the backs of the municipal and teacher unions by making all government jobs contractual and by allowing vouchers and school choice to be implemented where they are desired. Doing so would position her to right of the Republicans on three very sensitive political issues, and it would make her a serious candidate because those are big ideas. Notice how Hillary hasn't said virtually a word about Social Security? Look for her to come out for large personal accounts soon. And, look for her to start pushing for tighter immigration policies and for her criticizing the Bush government for not enforcing current laws.

One good thing about all of this though: if Hillary does actually win the Presidency, then she'll do more damage to the national Democratic Party than even Bill did during his eight years, and Bill did a whole lot of damage. See, the Clintons are not really Democrats. Really, the Clintons are the same people who are now Republicans throughout the country who either once were or their families were Democrats for generations. Liberals who have been wacked in the face by reality. And I imagine that being married to Bill Clinton wacked Hillary in the face pretty quickly. The final touches were put on her wacking job when the Co-Presidents first arrived in Washington, and the final touches of her what I call "but it should be this way" liberalism, were eradicated during the impeachment proceedings. Hillary, and this is an important point to make, has changed, or more aptly, she has managed to begin to change the public perception about her. Whether or not she really has abandoned her desire to nationalize one seventh of the US economy, or whether she actually believes the things that she has begun saying over the past years is irrelevant. Again, if Hillary is really a smart politician, then she knows that in order for her to win the Presidency, she must say these things, and she must advocate these positions, and she must follow through on them, or she will never get to be the 44th President of the United States. And that is why I will gladly support a Hillary for President if it means that the Democrats truly become a national party no more--uberhawk terrorist thwarting rogue state attacking people liberating Hillary who closes the borders and allows school and ends foreign dependence on oil versus watching the Democrats die slowly, as the Conservative Party in Britain appears destined to do. Hmmmmmm.......the shitty thing in life is realizing that all choices, are, well, basically crap.

And this one is no different.