At what point to political speculations go beyond mere amusement and bet-fodder to outright spooky? It’s one thing to have predicted Obama to take the nomination nearly a year before he throws his hat in the ring but that’s nothing next to predicting McCain in early December of ’07 (in the now epic The Republican Candidates are the Most Unelectable Gang of Freaks in American History). But then to go on and nail down Senator Joe Biden as Bama’s Veep in late May of this year? I know what you’re saying: who is this iSenseChange and how is he so dead-on-balls accurate for this election? How can we reward this latter-day NeoNostradamus for the sheer prescience involved in these utterly uncanny picks of his? What glorious accolades can we lay at his freshly oiled feet, what leafy laurels around his surely massive skull? Judging from the lackluster response to my admittedly weird entries thus far, I’m guessing a handful of reads and less than ten comments. Half of which are my own. Fuck it, says I. Ignore me at your peril. I am the Kossack Kreskin. And I have massive nuts.

Alternatively: Obama Would be Smarter to Eat His Own Face than Pick Hillary Clinton for V.P.

As opposed to whatever you'd say Cheney's doing, in your far more traditional ‘top-down' styled administrations your VP really has one function and one function alone: Get your Presidential nominee elected. The flipside of which being some kind of cause-no-harm/don't-fuck-up kinda thing, which changes little once actually elected. That having been said and with out further ado I hereby present your 2008 Vice Presidential Short-List

Cutting edge (and still totally FREE!!!) political analysis and predictions below the fold.

THIS JUST IN!!!: alot of talk about Wes Clark (which I find unfathomable), Gore (unlikely he'd go for it), Sibelius is coming up alot, there's some good points on Kaine and there's an awful  lot of Edwards talk...

According to Ray McGovern these NeoCons of yours were known throughout Washington, well before they got elected not once but twice, as the ‘crazies’ and at this phase we can all say rightfully so. Name a nuttier group in history. I know you’re gonna say it was the Nazis and yes, they had their own particular vision of how the Earth should be dominated by the Nation they served and yes, they did nutty, awful things because nobody was able to stop them, but would you say they were nuttier? Have you read "Project for the New American Century?" Maybe not the same game but certainly in the ballpark. You know, 'the Global Domination/Damnation' ballpark?

What if the only significant structural differences between Neocon and Nazi was that Adolph Hitler was but one man, whereas the PNAC were MANY of the most powerful men on earth?

I’d hoped, like the news, to be unbiased and fair
And I want you to know that I desperately care
So am I unjustly dragging the Bush name through the mud?
Well, that name ain’t so pure, in fact evil’s in his blood!
But don’t take it from me, Citizens, take it from the Record:
The Bush family past is quite heavily checkered!
Here’s a genuine evil tale, hideous yet true
'Bout Granpappy Prescott Bush during World War Two.

OneForce gets you established in the proper lineup, tells you to hold the spot while he rustles up some beers and then cuts an eye-watering silent fart, entirely unbeknownst to you. As soon as it hits your nostrils you know precisely what he’s done to you. You look around. Only an old woman behind you and you're blessed to be witnessing the very second OneForce’s SilentButDeadly strikes her awareness. A widening of the eyes and a shocked covering of the mouth. Everything in an ever widening circumference smells like dirty diapers and rotting vegetables. Damn you, OneForce, you’ll pay for this. You’ll rue. You shake your head disparagingly at the old maid beside you. As far as you’re concerned, she’s the offender, and the whole scene disgusts you. It’s all you can do.

I can believe you guys run elections like this. It’s amazing. I’m utterly agog. What the Christ is all this? How much does all it cost? Are you NUTS?!? They’re eating each other alive out there! McCain’s crew is just laying back, dropping long-range YouTube bombs and laughing their arses off! Hill’s junk is strewed all over the tarmac in Bosnia and the media’ll pump it up like it’s freaking WhiteWater even as it replays the latest and greatest from Obama’s Reverend buddy who just happens to be an angry Black man. Jesus wept! So freaking what?!? After Katrina, I’m an angry Black man and I’m not even Black!!!!

Dear [XXXXXX]

Will blog a response to this eventually (no names, no need for it. I represent the one side of what is becoming one of the dominant issues of our time and you the other), but have one thing I'd like some clarification of. It's certainly not shocking to me to hear someone from the status quo side use a term like 'Great Climate Change Religion' but it is when it comes from an intellectual like yourself and especially from someone with something of a scientific background, who actually knows what a 'theory' is, what 'peer-review' means etc.

I can’t tell you what of the BlogWorlde is or isn’t Gonzo anymore. It’s all Gonzo. And Gonzo, it turns out, appears to be the style that will best encapsulate this latest Fall of Empire. Or is it the Impending Apocalypse. Or Renaissance? What? You don’t know? Take heart. No one does. Which is precisely the point: a situation changing as rapidly as ours coupled with the wildness and weirdness of it all requires writers on the cutting edge, 'grit', or sand as my great Grandpappy probably never used to say. The form is the style is the lifestyle, and in the end, the Gonzo form, as the Good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson knew very well, may well be the only way to effectively encapsulate this, perhaps the Wildest and Weirdest of Ages, where the American Dream either chokes itself to death with Greed, Corruption and Madness or else pulls itself out of the biggest collective faceplant in history. Where else you gonna get yer news? The Press? HAH! PART OF THE PROBLEM! FINKS, ONE AND ALL! AND NEARLY EVERYBODY KNOWS IT!

I awaken to a pounding on my hotel room door. Angry pounding. Authoritative pounding. When you hear it, you know it. I’m in no shape to deal with it. Head is fuzzy. Sweating. Sprawled out on a floor, eyeing a vicious red wine stain on what looks like a very expensive carpet. Why do I drink red wine, knowing as I do how volatile a substance it is, coupled with my propensity to slosh the stuff around while pontificating? I pause to consider for the first time what brand of misanthrope would put a white carpet in a hotel room, knowing full well that irresponsible ‘guests’ like me would be staying here. I’ve always been powerless but to get pissed when staying in hotel rooms. All responsibilities seem suspended when you have a maid coming. Like they’d touch this mess. Torch it more likely.

"It seems my pal the preacher thinks the terrorists attacked because of foreign policy during the last half century. George Bush thinks its because they 'hate freedom' and that we should go shopping. Maybe you, Keith, think it was culture-envy and maybe I think it was for all of these things. And more, like I'd throw in the part about how cultures often degenerate towards evil ways when immersed in poverty, inequality and tyranny. What if it's all those things? What if it's a few more reasons that you and I haven't even thought of yet?"

"See what I'm getting at?"

Alternatively entitled "the Inherent Dangers of the One Night Stand"

Bloody head is killing me. Been following the Israeli-Lebanon (or Israeli-Hezbollah if you’re into MainStream news labels) situation for so long it’s like there’s nothing else I’m supposed to do. I switch on CNN on sheer impulse power alone. Volume down. Pink Floyd up. Fill up a massive glass of water. I will drink several during the day in the hopes that the liquid will facilitate the transfer of the soft yolk that is my mind from the side of its cranium cage and float it somewhere closer to center, to what normalcy there be.

Hungover. Why do I do this to myself? Not a drop of water last night. My brain is a bulbous yolk fastened hard into the left side of my skull. Equilibrium shot to hell. Each movement, agony. Awoke beside some nameless, snoring, mass. I don’t know who she is, having only the vaguest recollection of OneForce clapping me on the shoulder and telling me to go for it. And go I did, apparently. And here we are. I don’t want to talk to her. Do I have to? The mere thought of it fills me with horror.

Your opponent shows up in a coffin, nailed up tight but for one or two empty slots, for which you have both nails and hammer in hand. What do you do, what do...you do? If you're Barrack Obama in the 20th Democratic Nomination Debate, nothing apparently, or at least not enough. For which I don't blame him specifically, I quite like the fellow and think him vastly superior to his hawkish opponent. But his staffers should be boiled and eaten for not making him tee up on the obvious, easy ones. Don't you think? Is it just me? I mean, I understand the 'taking the high road' but man, give somethin' to the fans, would ya?

UPDATE: Changed the title of this little blog 'o mine due to massive and quite justifiable protests against the very idea that these same staffers that have obviously worked very hard and played no small role in taking 'Bama to where he is today, poised to capture the Democratic nomination, could possibly be idiots. I withdraw the assertion without reservation and in my own defense all I can say is...well...don't blog angry, people! I was told it's too late to change said title yet did it anyways. Apologies to all involved, where applicable, have a nice day

Sure, we all talk about getting out of Iraq. Don't get me wrong. I knew the whole thing was going to hell in a handbasket the second I heard Dubya bluster at a world that was at the time scrambling to help America any way they could, "you're either with us or against us." It wasn't long after that me and a few billion of my friends hit the streets in our many lands to protest the war as it approached, wherever, whenever and however we could. Many of us found our literary voices blogging against the war, tyranny and fascism and made friends, shared concerns, fears, hopes and a collective sense of massive impending change (hence, by the way, the name). But where does it all lead me? Simply this: As for getting out, I mean, totally getting out of Iraq, none of you reeeeeeeeally think that's going to happen, do you? You understand that it doesn't matter even slightly who you vote for in this regard? That it's simply not going to happen?

From: XXXXXXX XXXX (XXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com)
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 5:09:47 AM
To:  letters@msnbc.com
Subject: Celebrity Free News TV

To the good folks at the MSNBC,

Can somebody (anybody) explain to me why a smart fella with such a smart show like Olbermann and his ‘Countdown’ has to routinely devote his Number One Story to infotainment news crap? I betcha it drives him crazy. Prob’ly makes him puke in his mouth every time he has to mention the latest round of excruciating minutia involving Paris Lohan driving drunk or Britney Hilton chuggin’ dick. At least, I hope that’s the case.  Any chance you cats can get rid of the infotainment crap and keep Olbermann focused with his generally lazer-like intensity on the politics, universal deception and other affairs of state and global importance?

Inre: Iraq
Declare victory and blame whatever stinks on the Iraqis. Tomorrow. And you get...the...fuck...out. Worked just fine in Vietnam. It's that easy. Sure, the World will know it’s a load but most Americans probably won’t. At most, in time, a generalized and vague recollection of some kind of confusion followed by some kind of victory and all will be bliss once more in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Distracted. The argument will go ‘Yeah, but we won.’ With the obvious response: ‘Won what? How?’ Righty and Lefty will argue about it for years, forever, like IranContra and ultimately, BullGoose Loonie Lefty and Religio-Redneck Righty agree to disagree, and so it goes. And you’re out. Right? Right. What's the problem?

Three reasons not to pay attention to anything Britney Spears ever says or does:

1. If this latest round of weirdness means she’s genuinely sick then this necessarily makes the ongoing coverage of what is obviously some kind of mental illness genuinely sicker and you, for following it but probably pretending to others that you’re not folowing it, sicker yet.

See also: depraved, see also: pathetic, see also: ghoulish

2. If she’s doing it for attention this necessarily makes her smarter than both the press and far more smarter than you, which I would hope you find very troubling. I do. Know why? You are the one that gets to decide who will become the next leader of the free world. The press has an excuse: you.  

3. Celebrities don’t matter even one bit unless they not only decide to do something important but actually carry through with it and accomplish it. Until then, stop. Just stop. It doesn’t matter who’s dating whom, not even a bit. Put your little magazines away. Forever. And get a life.

I have for the last few years had much time to reflect and write upon the many awful ways in which mankind is doing many awful things to himself, his neighbors and his planet. On many occasions (and not just to pick up chicks but I won’t say never) I’ve been known to say that I was more than happy to offer my full-throated support to any woman that felt like giving global leadership a try just because Man has been just so consistently stinking awful at it. I felt (and feel!) that women absolutely must be better equipped to organize life in a sustainable way from an evolutionary perspective if nothing else. And you just have to believe that, also from an evolutionary perspective, they'd be (they would generally be. Be careful, Sense!) less likely to throw their sons and daughters into the godawful maw of war and even apocalypse. That's the hope, at least, and without you ladies stepping up I have a strong feeling the whole human experiment is utterly doomed.

Having said that, when Oprah Winfrey decides to run for President of the United States of America she can of course count on my unreserved endorsement and whatever support she asks of me. But Hill the Hawk? Not on your freaking life, buddy, but glad you asked.

I’ll match your former President with a Kennedy and raise you a few more. Whatchu got now? The Kennedy name is to the democratic party what Shakespeare is to English literature, what Mozart is to music, what Hogan is to pro-wrestling.  And Obama just fired a few of ‘em over the bow of the Good Ship Clinton. BOOM! Comparing him to ol’ JF! Whew. That seals it for me. Not one, not two but three Kennedy’s endorse him on the very day of the SOU, including John’s daughter? Most important event in this election thus far, period. Makes what would have been an otherwise utterly meaninglessness SOU to being all about Obama. And the Kennedy name. Hills, you can only imagine, must have absolutely freaked.