A BUNCH OF THOUGHTS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
- The scumbags who did the ad comparing W. to Hitler - not to mention the sponsoring organizaition who let it slide - are no compatriots of mine. They shame liberalism and demonstrate that the price of free speech is that idiots get the same rights. I'm no W. fan, but a Hitler comparison?!? Kiss your credibility good-bye, assholes (whomever you may be). That's the President of the USA and even if you don't respect him, respect the office. Sheesh.

- Dean, though he has not received a single vote yet, is going to get the nomination. That will be clear by February 4th. Barring a calamity in Iraq or the domestic economy, Bush wins. Get over it Dems and start to plan for the future. Don't cling to polls during '04 that tell you about how Dean is over 45% and approaching 50% of the popular vote. Remember a hapless candidate named Gore? He won the popular vote - and lost. The White House is won by winning the electoral vote, not the popular vote. Dean won't win a single southern state and little if any of the west. He gets the N. East (minus N Hampshire again?)and the left coast, and a few of the battleground states. No otherwise plausible scenario gets him a majority of the electoral college. My fellow Dems: Time to plan for wound-licking and re-grouping and coming back to the center. The whacko-right-wing-social conservatives are the group to contrast yourselves with in '06 and '08. They have some support, but they turn off the middle. Regain the center and you are back in business. Ignore it and you are all the further out to pasture. Get out of denial. You are out to pasture now. Only a centrist named Bill Clinton forced you back for a while. The operative question is was he an anomale or not? Will you have to sink farther before realizing this?

- Nothing federal about this review: Pete Rose is scum. One of the greatest players in the modern era, yes, but scum nonetheless. He should be banned from the Hall until after his death - or at least for another 14 years. That's how long he lied to us all about betting on baseball. He even bet on the Reds - his admission is that he never bet AGAINST them. No doubt a lawyer helped parse those words. Don't let him make millions on this book AND get into the Hall. His baseball achievements warrant his eventual place in the Hall, his crimes and lies warrant his ban until after death. There. I said it. Flame me.

- Bush's Medicare bill was beautiful (ugh!) Morrisian triangulation. Great politics, but extremely costly policy. He set himself to the left of the fiscal conservatives, but to the right of the ultra-liberals and cut the knees out from under a potential Dem issue for '04. He does whatever Karl Rove tells him to do on domestic policy and whatever the neo-cons want on foriegn policy, and believes it was all his own idea. He understands the benefit of this sort of Clintonian chameleon-on-plaid political play, once Karl explains it to him. I shake my liberal head in awe and disgust. I accept the that democracy brings this sort of maneuvering, I just find it easier to accept when I can stomach the outcome better. As someone (Winston Churchill?) said, and I paraphrase, "democracy does not work well, just better than anything else."