The Oil Crisis

Little Fish, Big Fish Swimming In The Water

I was forced to listen to commercial radio for several hours today.

All I can say is, for one thing, thank god for XM. Also, I had not realized it, but there is an oil shortage going on. No, no. . . not the crude oil shortage, the one that is driving gasoline prices up to nearly $4.00 a gallon. There is, in fact, a fish oil shortage. Bet you didn't know about that one.

The way I know is, the FM classic rock station I was made to listen to today ran a commercial at least ten times for “Omega berry” fish oil. The spokesman, the president of the Omega Berry Fish Oil Co., said U.S. citizens are woefully behind their European cousins in the consumption of fish oil. I know I must be, unless fish oil comes from somewhere other than fish; because I pretty much gave up fish after Lent. Anyway, because of this dietary deficiency, me and a lot of other Americans apparently are missing out on the health benefits of fish oil. That’s right, fish oil. That nasty shit you wash off your hands as soon as you can after it gets on you. It apparently has health benefits. It is good for lowering cholesterol, it improves joint function, and I am pretty sure, either directly or indirectly, it improves your sex life. Assuming you have one to begin with, of course.

But this particular fish oil is even better than regular, every day fish oil, because it is fortified with Omega berries. I don’t know what an Omega berry is, and the dude on the commercial didn’t say. It sounds impressive, though. I am guessing it is something akin to the bio-engineered corn one is always hearing about on The X Files re-runs and elsewhere. He also said his fish oil contains no mercury; so we know for sure his fish aren’t coming from anywhere in the Sabine-Neches watershed.

The guy said he was so concerned about Americans’ health, he wanted to give a jar of his fish oil to every American to try out. Every single one. Wow. That is a lot of fish oil, if we all take him up on it. Probably not, though. This guy knows fewer and fewer people are listening to commercial radio, and nobody listening to XM or Sirius is going to hear about it because, oh yeah, they have no commercials.

What I think is, the Obama campaign ought to get ahold of this. They have been trying to organize voter registration drives around the country, to get people signed up who have not participated in the process in awhile, or ever (some of them for good reason, like being dead.) They should go door to door and offer everyone a vial of Omega berry fish oil if they will agree to register and vote.

Hell, for free fish oil, I know I would.

Looking In

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

With the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries out of the way, it is high time for a quick and facile look into the 2008 presidential race so far.

Hillary Clinton saved her ass in NH, or rather older female voters did. According to polls, that group carried her to victory. Ms. Clinton was on the run after losing in Iowa, and really, really needed to win New Hampshire to get her groove back. Which she has done. In interviews she is confident again, even cocky. That is her at her most natural. The sort of humble persona she adopted after Iowa did not fit her well. The times I like Hillary best is when she is supremely confident. Glowing even.

One of the oddities of the primary season is that a guy like Barack Obama can be riding so high after Iowa, then get edged out in New Hampshire - not exactly a surprise - and so be put in a position where he almost has to win in the upcoming South Carolina primary, just to maintain a creditable candidacy. Weird. If you want to know the truth, I don't think Obama has the legs to make it all the way through the long, withering process leading up to the conventions this summer. One of the reasons I think Clinton has remained so confident is that she knows there doesn't appear to be a lot of substance behind the very pleasing up-front image Obama projects, and that the lengthy primary process will, in time, expose this. She (and I) may be dead wrong, but I would be very surprised to find it out.

John Edwards is a nice guy, has a nice family, has a few nice ideas, some very nice hair. . . but he creates zero excitement that I can see. Substance is very important, of course, but if you do not excite people to any degree, especially after eight wearying and acrimonious years of an us vs. them Bush administration, you are - in technical terms - royally fucked. Edwards has to win in his neighboring state of South Carolina, just to stay alive.

**********

John McCain winning New Hampshire on the Republican side is sort of like when some old '80s hair band reunites and has a big hit. You are thinking, well, it is nice to see they still have it in them, but. . . Who the hell is going to take this nomination, though? Mitt Romney seems to be faltering. I don't have any feel for Mike Huckaby, I need to pay more attention. Rudy Giuliani has something of the same problem Barack Obama does on the Democratic side - his "Remember 9-11" message was stirring at first, but it gets old after awhile, and then one begins to realize he has no real plan for what to do if, by some miracle, he gets elected. And, unlike Obama, Rudy appears soulless otherwise. I don't expect him to be around much longer.

The dark horse out there is Michael Bloomberg, Giuliani's successor as mayor of New York City. Bloomberg is rumored to be exploring a late run, either as a Republican or, more likely, an independent. He has no national recognition at this point, but shitloads of money. And money talks, of course. A run by Bloomberg might actually help Giuliani, in that it would throw things on the Republican side into even further disarray, which is the only scenario under which I can imagine Rudy reviving his moribund candidacy and making a real run at the nomination.

**********

How will all this turn out? Fuck if I know. You will just have to stay tuned.

A Mitt Full Of Shit

from The Heretik

Campaign 2006, Part 1: Talkin' Out The Side Of Your Neck

I saw an interview with Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney last night on FOX News. Apparently Romney, who is a lame duck in Massachusetts, is about to announce that he will be running for President in 2008. At this point one should assume he will be just one of many, many candidates to throw their hat in the ring in the time leading up to the election itself.

Romney has an interesting biography. His father was George Romney, former governor of Michigan and CEO of American Motors in Detroit. For anyone too young to remember, long-defunct American Motors gave us legitimate 1970's muscle cars like the Javelin and AMX, as well as some of the worst looking and running vehicles in the history of the combustion engine; like the AMC Gremlin, or the awesomely designed AMC Pacer.

A side view really doesn't do the Pacer justice, except to emphasize just how low to the ground it was. A man of average height standing next to one would find the top of the roof coming up to midway between his belt and his chest. From above one would notice the car seemed exceptionally wide, and also that it probably had more square inches of exposed window than any other car on the road at that time. I knew a couple of sisters who shared one when we were in school, and they called it their "rolling terrarium."

My best friend in high school, Jimmy S------, lived just down the street from me. All through junior high school, and our freshman year and part of our sophomore year of high school, we had to get up before dawn each morning in order to catch a school bus that came by our stop at 7:00 A.M. but most days somehow only managed to deliver us to our school (about 5 miles away) right around 8:00, about the time the first bell rang.

We would often talk about the day we turned 16, and how we would drive to school instead of having to stand around on a busy street corner with a bunch of other kids at an ungodly hour, waiting for a bus. Instead of listening to a bunch of puerile high school gossip and dumb chatter, we would turn up the stereo really loud and meditate along our way (neither of us were big talkers, especially prior to 8:00 A.M.)

I would turn 16 first, and prior to that my dad had been letting me drive him everywhere (with my 'learner's permit'.) He was real laid back about it, didn't criticize anything I did on the fly or harangue me or anything. Truth is, I was a pretty good driver from the start. If I did anything seriously wrong, he would mention it after we arrived wherever we were going, in even tones.

"You might try squaring off your left turns instead of cutting across the bow of the car in the opposite lane. Just go straight forward for a second before you begin to turn the wheel to the left."

"OK, dad."

"You'll be fine."

He had a friend who sold cars, and we had picked out a 1969 Chevrolet Impala for me. A real tank, with solid chrome bumpers that weighed a couple hundred pounds each. I wouldn't officially get it until my birthday, but I was able to have it repainted (white) and have a stereo installed, AM/FM and an 8-track player, beforehand. In other words, I was all set.

My buddy and I decided I would drive him to school each morning, and then when he got his license and his own sled a few months later, we would take turns driving each other to school and back weekly. It was a good plan, and it worked for awhile. On his 16th birthday, Jimmy got a used AMC Gremlin, metallic green with white racing stripes. He put in an 8-track player as well, and I'll never forget our inaugural commute to school in that glowing green monument to 1970s American engineering and design, Styx blasting on the 8-track, Jimmy and I passing a spliff back and forth. . . either that weed was really strong, or maybe it was just the rewarding feeling of knowing we had achieved a dream and had been delivered from the scheduling idiosyncrasies of our greasy-haired and mostly toothless bus driver. Whichever, I had a buzz all day long that day.

Of course, we were both driving cars that were pretty well used up by the time we got them, so there were problems here and there. I never could get the heater in my Impala to work properly, for one. In this part of the world, that is not a major problem most of the time. But I do remember during the one or two weeks a year when it was really cold driving to school while literally freezing, rubbing my hands together when I could, wiping the inside of the fogged-up windshield with a rag, blowing hoary frost with each breath. . . and I was inside the car.

Jimmy's Gremlin broke down after the initial few months, and basically never ran for more than a week at a time after that. It turns out that aside from being one of the oddest-looking domestic market cars I'd ever seen (it looked like the designer was working on his model, got the front half of the body done, and then set it down to go to lunch or somewhere and never got back to it) , the Gremlin was well-known for running poorly, if at all. My friend nursed that thing along for a year or two, until he finally decided to hit the silk and take his losses. He traded his AMC rolling piece of crap in for a black Grand Am that ran (and looked) much better. Still, I kind of remember that Gremlin with fondness. Of course, I didn't have to own it.

**********

Somehow I have gone far afield here. I do remember Mitt Romney's dad vaguely; George Romney was a fixture in mainstream Republican politics for some time in the 1960s and 1970s. Recognition-wise, he was something akin to what John McCain is now, maybe a bit less well-known nationally. He ran for president in 1968, as a moderate, and had his ass handed to him by Richard Nixon in the Republican primaries. Romney pere was also a devout Mormon who was born in northern Mexico, where his parents had fled after Utah outlawed polygamy. Despite his faith, he was known for getting down and dirty with the auto unions, especially the Mafia-run Teamsters, at contract time and for usually coming away with a deal favorable to the car companies.

His son went to Brigham Young and Harvard and then got into selling investments. Mitt Romney founded an investment firm and got rich, and decided to run for the Senate in Massachusetts in 1994. This was in the middle of the famous Republican takeover of the Congress, the Contract with America, etc. Romney figured his opponent, Ted Kennedy, was a flaming liberal and long-time bogeyman to conservatives everywhere, and would be at his most vulnerable at that point.

In a way, Romney was right. Kennedy rolled over him 58-42, yes; but it was the smallest margin Kennedy had been re-elected by in some time. Romney licked his wounds, and came back to be elected Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He has been making noise since 2004 about running for president.

Romney has some allure because he is basically unknown and an outsider nationally, and he has also acquired a bit of the aura of an enlightened conservative - not moderate - Republican. I do not know how he got the latter, because he is anti-everything right down the line, and appears to be edging more to the right as he gears up his campaign. Still, I was interested to see his interview on FOX, because I don't know that I'd ever heard him speak about anything before, and I was curious how he would 'come off' on camera as opposed to any prior impressions I had from simply reading about him.

Right away, the interview was a letdown. Romney may be an upstart or an outsider, but he has been around politics long enough to master the "good looking guy with not much substance" approach. The soon-to-be candidate was impeccably dressed and groomed, wearing an expensive suit and power tie; he is youngish-looking for his age (he is actually 59, and I am guessing colors his hair) and clear speaking. The initial visual impression is a strong one, and I suppose Romney and his people are hoping this will cause voters to overlook the fact that the candidate answers reporters questions in the slickest, most condescending, evasive, mealy-mouthed, talking-a lot-but-say-nothing style we have seen in some time. It took about ten seconds to form the impression that the man is not overburdened with deep thoughts or reflection or substance.

When asked about his Mormonism and if that might not affect popularity with voters, Romney seemed to be trying to align himself somehow with the religious right, saying to the reporter, "The full name of my church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, you know?" This was said in a very condescending way. I am surprised the reporter did not reply, equally condescendingly, "You are aware that the religious right considers Mormonism a non-Christian cult, aren't you?" But then, this was FOX News. Too bad.

It is entirely possible my initial impression of Romney is wrong. I hope so, because I have been looking forward to 2008 for awhile now. With Bush gone and no clear heir-apparent type in either party, the campaign and primaries leading up to the general election should be fascinating, with all kinds of new faces bobbing up here and there on both sides, giving our national politics and injection of new people and dare I say new ideas it really, really needs. I hope Mitt Romney and his handlers figure out neither the 'bullshit your way through the primaries' strategy nor the 'outsider come to clean up Washington' strategy will likely work too well this time. I hope Romney comes into this with something to add, rather than just looking for something to take away for himself. By now, none of us should be too picky about where the answers come from or who is the bearer of them, as long as we get them from somewhere. Even after being monumentally turned off by him last night, I guess I still harbor a hope that Mitt Romney will be worthy of playing a part in the great show that the 2008 elections are shaping up to be.

In other words, let's hope Mitt Romney is a Javelin. And not a Gremlin.

The Way It Is

Smiling From The Ruins

With nearly a week to digest it, I believe I have by now mulled over the Democratic beat down of the Republicans and in particular President Bush and his policies last Tuesday long enough to have come to terms with it. I guess that is what you could call it.

Any elation over this slap in the face to the more reactionary faction of the American political spectrum – and there was quite a bit of elation, as far as I could tell, just about everywhere – should be tempered by the realization that now the Democrats are in charge. Or rather, by which Democrats are in charge.

Nancy Pelosi will be running the House of Representatives. To be honest, I have not studied her record closely enough to decide if she is really the liberal “San Francisco Democrat” the right says she is. Most sane people seem to think she is somewhat more of a centrist; but as I say, I am not sure. I am fairly certain she is not nearly as much of a zealot for the left as Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were for the right, though. Which is a good thing, in my opinion. Zealots can be interesting from a sociological point of view; but they are worth fuck-all at getting anything done once they are put in charge.

Harry Reid, who will be the majority whip in the Senate, is to me a more interesting case. He’s hardly a leftist; he is a Mormon from Nevada, for starters. He is pro-life, a strong death penalty advocate, and basically pro-gun, though not entirely along the lines of the NRA. On the other hand, he has called measures to make English an “official language” racist, has openly questioned policy with regard to Iraq from fairly early on, voted against a federal marriage amendment (against the fervent wishes of his church, and his own belief that “marriage should be between a man and a woman”), and has called the first George Bush a “great man”, but the current one “a loser.”

Reid converted to Mormonism from Judaism, and is known at home as a tough, two-fisted brawler, who has brushed up against corruption (in Nevada, I wonder who hasn’t) but has kept his public record basically clean, to this point. A character in Martin Scorcese’s movie Casino was partly based on him, and he had a cameo role in Steven Soderbergh’s drug epic Traffic.

An interesting, politically sensible fellow, then. However, unlike supposed liberal firebrand Pelosi, who has been conciliatory toward Bush so far, Reid has been far more ambivalent when questioned about how things will be between the White House and a Democrat-run Senate. Reid appears to be very much his own man, which can be either a good or bad thing, depending.

Reaction to the election results from the right have been interesting in some cases, predictable in others. Conservative demigod Richard Viguerie, in a brief appearance on C-SPAN, said that President Bush and the Republican congress have betrayed conservative values, and have dragged down conservatives with them. He bitterly proposes the conservative movement no longer allow themselves to be an adjunct of the Republican Party, and even suggests they start their own independent movement.

FOX News pundits point out that since a good many of the incoming Democrats are rather conservative themselves (relatively speaking?), the election was actually a victory for conservative values. That’s a sunny view of things.

Personally, I will wait and see. Aside from the partisan political considerations, my encouragement here comes from this idea I have that the real force behind the upheaval the elections have brought is partly the Iraq situation, okay; but on a deeper level I think people have grown weary of the sort of exclusionary and cynical maneuvering and political machination this administration is increasing identified with. Its one thing to be in power; it is entirely another to make moves to try and entrench that power beyond reasonable means; to regard a large percentage of the U.S. population as “them” instead of “us”; and to systematically rape the Constitution and in general operate in a manner more akin to a military dictatorship than an elected administration, all for petty partisan political gain. Most of us understand that, winners or losers, it is not meant to be a permanent situation; that we all have to come back in two or four years and be judged again, because in our system everything is up for grabs.

This is sometimes cited as a weakness, but I rather think not. The weakness in our system is not left-wing loonies or conservative wing nuts or a sometimes unpredictable electorate. The weakness in our system is that there are people like George W. Bush and his acolytes – who think they should always have it their way, that compromise is akin to political and ideological treason, and that any opposition to them is not only unprincipled but maybe even unpatriotic and not worthy of Constitutional protections – and that they can sometimes be put into power. Well, the fact they get voted in is not a weakness, per se; that it is like exterminating roaches to try and get them out once they are in, is.

I don’t know that the new Congress will be any better than the old one, or will last any longer than two years. To the degree that they represent an impediment to Bush and Cheney and Karl Rove’s wildest dreams, though, they will be a service to their country, and will have a longer and absolutely more positive legacy than the man currently in the White House and his minions ever will.

Jones-ing for Willie C.

After another desultory week of watching and listening to amoral Bush and the hoodlums, strongmen, and fixers he has hired to run the country, I hope I can be forgiven for slipping a bit into nostalgia.

I miss Bill Clinton.

There, I said it. I don't miss him so much for specifically political reasons. I miss the person. If I'm going to have to put up with one anyway, I think I'd prefer a president with a real sense of humor over one with a self-interested smirk; I prefer a complicated man with a perhaps fatal taste for the wild side over an overgrown frat boy who had it all handed to him every step of the way.

I dug this up somewhere, and the most interesting thing about it to me is that as late as the summer of 1998, George W. Bush apparently wasn't even on the radar yet as far as the 2000 election goes. Well, it wouldn't be his style to start with everyone else and labor through the whole process of lining himself up as a candidate, would it?. Why do that when you can wait around until your attention wanders in that direction, then call up a bunch of your dad's friends and get them to do the work for you, and pay for it all?

Anyway, from the dustbin:

*****

THE CABLE PIPELINE VOL. I, NO. 30
May 4, 1998

THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY (OR THE LAST TWO-EIGHTHS OF IT)

EVERYBODY'S EVERYTHING. After another dreary week of watching CNN and MSNBC, I am driven once again to comment, against all my better judgment, about the abounding legacy of President Bill Clinton, and all the surrounding hoo-ha thereof.

After watching the aforementioned news networks, and reading this week's Time, which has four consecutive articles in the national news section concerning various aspects and angles of all the investigations going on at this point into the Clinton administration, it occurred to me, once again, that all this was just a bit too much to digest for the average citizen. You know, it seems like the Whitewater investigation (which is still ultimately, after all the tangents and blind alleys he has run down, what Kenneth Starr is supposed to be investigating) began almost as soon as Clinton was sworn in, and here we are, five and a half years and roughly sixty million dollars of public money later, and what do we have to show for it? However one comes down on the question of Kenneth Starr himself, whether one considers him a cheap-jack thug and inept investigator with a hard-on for Bill Clinton, or a human sump pump of taxpayer dollars, or an avenging angel come to rid the country of the single greatest scourge on man since Satan - or, if like most of us, one falls somewhere in between on the question - it is still hard to look around and not wonder just what has been accomplished thus far. What positive results has Kenneth Starr brought us? What started as an investigation into an allegedly shady land deal back in Arkansas way back when, with perhaps (allegedly) peripheral involvement of the President's (then Governor of Arkansas') wife, has mushroomed into what? Webb Hubbell, Vince Foster, David Huaing, Gennifer Flowers, Jim and Susan McDougall, Vernon Jordan, Susan Willey, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Winkin, Blinkin and Nod, and Bullwinkle Moose. And on and on and on.

Starr strikes me as the truest definition in a long time of what a loose cannon really is. The term is a long overused adage by now, and trite, but think of Starr, rolling around wildly on the deck of the ship of state, firing off indiscriminately in whatever direction he happens to be facing at the time, doing irreparable damage in some cases, but with absolutely no regard for that, as long as he gets to keep reading his name in the papers every day, as long as he is assured a spot on the evening news each night, as long as they are holding that plum spot on the faculty of Pepperdine U. for him out in California, with the school financed million-dollar bungalow with the majestic view of the Pacific Ocean. Being a loose cannon is Kenneth Starr's reason for being, actually, and you and I are sanctioning it. Because every dollar Starr has spent so far in the six years he has been investigating the Clintons without coming up with a single indictable offense has been public money. Kenneth Starr's employers, while he has jumped at every hint of impropriety like a bass jumping at a Gig-olo lure and has completely lost his grip on his investigation and himself, are you and I and anyone else left reading down his or her paycheck stub each week or two and seeing the big chunk come out of the middle before one gets to the bottom line of what is "take-home" pay. We pay Kenneth Starr. We employ him; and I for one am ready to say, to continue the angling metaphor for a moment, "Hey, Ken, fish or cut bait. Unless you can come up with something prosecutable in the next three months, you are off the job; and you will have to reimburse us for all the money you wasted along the way indulging your personal distaste for Bill Clinton and his subordinates and friends." Whaddya say, fellow taxpayers? I say we hire a lawyer and start an investigation into Kenneth Starr, and none too soon, either.

Clinton has remained cheery through all this, no doubt at least partly because for some odd reason not even his supporters can really adequately explain (though many pundits, both pro and con, have tried), his poll numbers and popularity have remained high, and even increased in some cases. The conservatives and Clinton-haters are going crazy at this; which almost makes the whole sorry mess worth it to someone like me, who enjoys watching the reactionary Nazi element of the American political spectrum go nuts every time it cannot figure out why the rest of the country will not go along with it's thinking. It is almost as fun as it was watching the left- wing nuts go crazy every time Reagan's numbers went up after he said something particularly ill-advised and patently stupid, which was practically all the time.

I tend to think that, politics aside, Clinton is a lot like Reagan in some, no many ways; and people just liked the both of them, and did not particularly care what all else went on, as long as we did not get steered into some stupid war, and as long as the economy stayed booming. And there you have it. It is tempting to write off the whole mess of Kenneth Starr's administration-long and apparently fruitless investigation as just a low-ball, sleazy (albeit expensive) sideshow to what has otherwise been a pretty great eight years, if you look at it from the narrow view that we have fought no wars and our economy and markets, against long odds, according to a lot of "bears" lurking out there, have just kept booming and booming.

I am personally a little more sanguine about all of this. For what we are reduced to now, and apparently will be for the rest of Clinton's term, is marveling at his ability to again and again face the firing squad of public scrutiny of his most personal and morally ambiguous – to say the least – doings, and to walk away each time unscathed and smiling and more popular than ever before. This is great theater, as they say, but kind of takes us away from the reason why we get together as a country every four years and elect a President in the first place: To get things done, to make changes or to keep things the same, but at any rate to have a vision for where the country is going and to do what is possible to get us there. We do not elect someone to publicly dodge bullets to amuse our most base and prurient interests, which is about the only function Bill Clinton serves nowadays, and it seems all he will do for the next two-and-a-half years, while serving out his lame duck term. And it is a shame. And one cannot blame Kenneth Starr alone for this (although in my personal opinion Mr. Starr deserves to be beaten in the kidneys with sticks, to have lumps pounded on him, and then to be thrown into the bottom of a deep, dark sewer somewhere, left to the fat green flies), or the "moral degeneration" of our society, as it seems to be popular for network commentators to point out lately. Bill Clinton's own dark heart and moral shortcomings are contributing factors to the circus that has now been made of his administration, and why he will never be able to pursue some of his really brighter ideas, like reforming our public health system, or trying to make public education something more than a rat hole we throw money down and a politicized, politically correct mess that has little if anything to do with what should be it's primary focus, educating our children. Because of his personality flaws and peccadilloes, Clinton will not get to do any of this, and because of it, we all lose. And that is the saddest aspect of this whole thing.

And what will the future bring? I mean, what happens after Clinton? I do not think many of the pundits have thought much about this, but I have. Because Clinton has to leave after 2000, regardless, and I for one look at the prospect of a Clinton-less future more or less like a stone junkie dimly views the news on the street that the DEA is about to crack down big time on his neighborhood, and heroin will be extremely hard to come by from now on, and what he does get will be a pale imitation of the stuff from the "good old days." All these Geraldo wannabes and cheap Mike Wallace imitators better brush up their resumes, because once Bill is gone, so too goes the fun.

Think of it. Let's look at our current prospects for the race in 2000. On the democratic side, we have Vice President Al Gore. Earnest, boring, plodding. . .morally a bit shady, we find out, after he was caught fund-raising from his VP desk and (I thought) after he shamelessly used his dead sister as political fodder in his anti-tobacco speech at the 1996 convention. . . but I do not think you will find much sexual contretemps in his past (or present). Dick Gephardt? Well, call me prejudiced, but I never thought a guy with no eyebrows could be much fun (not to mention trusted). Republicans? Newt Gingrich? Give me a break! Lamar Alexander? Pleeease!

Republicans do not have sex, anyway. They are not known for it. They are too interested in policy, I guess. Picture a guy like John Kasich, alone in a darkened room, stroking himself over some position paper on supply-side economics he just read.

Anyway, whatever happens after 2000, no matter who or which side wins, it will be extremely dull as compared to now, and I think all these people who so earnestly want to run Bill Clinton out of the country on a rail ought to think about that a little, before they start constructing little altars to Kenneth Starr in the corners of their living rooms.