HILLARY TO OBAMA: CHOOSE ME OR I'LL BURY YOU

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

When it comes to a spot on the Democratic ticket, that’s no signal Hillary is sending to this upstart who dared to defeat her. It’s a Mafiosa-style message. Put me on the ticket or your presidential campaign will sleep with the fishes.
A signal is something you send out privately. But Hillary broadcast her demand in a conference call with a group of congressional Democrats, which is like shouting it out on the Larry King show. The purpose was to communicate with her supporters, especially the zombies who'll follow her across the River Styx. Now they know what she wants, so she can drive them into further fits of rage when she doesn’t get it. If Hillary can keep them from pulling the Obama lever in November, she can set herself up for 2012.

But here’s the clinker, the true Clinton-esque twist. If Obama gives in, he’ll appear weak to the independents and wavering Republicans he must have to beat McCain, which also sets Obama up for defeat this November and gives Hillary a boost for 2012. The mantra would then be, Well sure we lost. That 2008 ticket was upside down. Obama’s too black, too untested, and worst of all, he’s not even a Clinton.

Meanwhile, Bill has already signaled he’s going to stick to his foundation from now on. The implied promise to Obama is that if he gives Hillary the Number Two spot he won’t have to worry any of those red-faced Bill outbursts will soil the campaign. But anyone who believes that is naive enough to believe Hillary really wants an Obama victory in November. Narcissist Bill never saw a TV camera or a microphone he didn't love.

Obama and his strategists understand all this. The question now is, what to do about it. What they have going for them is they've grown used to figuring out the Clintons, who've succeeded in making themselves the biggest impediment to a Democratic victory in the fall. That's been their purpose ever since they realized months ago that their 2008 campaign was a walking corpse. Defeating a 71-year-old mini-Bush ought to be relatively easy for Barack, but not when a couple of Doberman Clintons have their teeth sunk in his ankles.

FORMER BUSH SPOKESMAN CASHES IN, SEEKING CREDIT, BIG BUCKS

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Prince George's former press secretary Scott McClellan, who now proclaims himself a truth-teller in his soon-to-be-released, tell-all book, ought to have his head placed in one of those eighteenth-century stocks so passers-by could throw apples at it.
"Bush is plenty smart enough to be president.” McClellan wrote in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, according to the Washington Post. McClellan, in his capacity as White House press secretary, was supposed to be a word wizard. The fact that he defends a man’s intelligence with an ungrammatical splotch of junk English that closely resembles the way his boss murders syntax, language, and reason tells us just how reliable his judgment is in such matters.

But McClellan also writes that the Iraq war didn’t need to be fought and that the administration used propaganda rather than facts to justify it, and of course that's what the general news media are jumping on, thereby giving McClellan a jump in sales. In his media marketing blitz, McClellan, unused to dabbling in the truth, often contradicts himself within a single sentence, telling us Prince George is an honorable and intelligent leader served by honorable and intelligent people and that all of them routinely lied and deceived to get what they wanted.

Now here’s the problem: wasn’t he obliged to share this hugely important inside information about the war with his employer the American public before the tanks went in? Now, more than five years later, after several hundred thousand people are dead, millions are terribly wounded, homeless, and in exile, McClellan cashes in with a multi-million-dollar book deal to reveal what he knows.

Somebody pass me an apple, a really rotten one.

CLINTONS FORM THIRD PARTY

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," Hillary Clinton said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, she cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. There's a pattern emerging here."

WASHINGTON -- Hillary and Bill Clinton shocked the world yesterday when they mounted the steps of the Capitol and declared Mrs. Clinton will run for president in November on the newly formed Hard-Working White Americans ticket.

Asked whether they were implying blacks don’t work hard, Bill’s face turned redder than a radish as he proclaimed, ‘I was America’s first black president and I've worked hard all my life. That’s why I’ve got so many damn houses I can’t even remember all the addresses. I’m rich, see? Richer than you."

Hillary patted him on the hand as she nodded to his handlers to take him somewhere he wouldn’t hurt himself.

"Look,” she continued, “the name of our ticket has nothing to do with whether we believe black people work hard or whether Obama is a Muslim, which he isn’t, as far as I know. We’re just saying white Americans who work hard now have a place to go in November, a party that will be working every day for them, from Day One. But we still count Barack Obama as a dear friend even though everybody knows an untested black person can't possibly win in November.

“Also, the new Hard-Working White Americans Party, which was formed in response to the Democratic Party's unwillingness to give hard-working white Americans in Michigan and Florida a voice in the process, won't like certain parties I'm too polite to name, ignore the votes of hard-working white Americans in Michigan and Florida."

At this point she paused to bite off a huge chunk of a Krispy Kreme doughnut that she washed down with a swig of Bud, after which she wiped her mouth with her sleeve, nearly scratching her face with her $80,000 wristwatch. "And," she continued, "you won’t see anybody on our ticket who attended a terrorist madrasa, either."

Exactly, what, she was asked by George Stephanapolous, was she trying to imply? She leaned down from her makeshift podium, petted him like a spaniel and said,“I’m implying nothing. I’m just saying, is all. You didn’t see me planting terrorist bombs with the Weathermen either. At the same time, notice that our party is inclusive. We welcome the support of white Americans who've been to college so perhaps aren't as receptive to our message as hard-working white Americans. "

“But Senator Clinton," said Miss Alabama 2007, CBS’ new news anchor, “aren’t you afraid your new message is explicitly racist and that you’re also helping John McCain by trying to drive Democrats apart?” Miss Alabama 2007 read this from a script placed in her hand by another dumpy woman who'd attended Wellesley.

“Let me explain it to you,” Bill said to Miss Alabama 2007 as he broke away from his handlers and led her toward his limo. At that point Hillary let loose a fake smile that cracked several camera lenses, but news people weren't paying attention because they scurried after Bill and his new friend so they wouldn't be cut out of the new sex scoop.

“Wait,” Hillary hollered. “I haven’t finished my statement! . . . Damnit, I’m still a big story!!!”

GAMES VS. LITERATURE IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
The newest version of video game "Grand Theft Auto" comes out Tuesday, and experts say it should sell at least 6 million copies the first week. Amazon lists the game at $49.99. Most copies will be purchased by young adult men, some of whom will line up outside stores Monday night.
If they decide to vote, their vote is as good as yours. So is the vote of the 10 percent of Americans who think Barack Obama is a Muslim and the millions of Americans who voted to re-elect The Decider in 2004.

Fact: If you can sell thirty thousand copies of a novel within a few weeks -- that's one-half of one percent of 6 million -- you'll almost certainly hit the best-seller list. Hardbacks sell for about $25. Find the right literature and it can change your life forever. You'll relive that awakening over and over with delight and understanding. Did you know that back in Dickens' time thousands of readers waited at the New York docks for the latest installment of his novels?

Short stories are dead, buried alongside poetry, and literate novels are expiring. The stuff is being written and sometimes even published, but readers are dying off and younger minds prefer to anesthetize themselves with video games, sitcoms, and sequels to films written for the least aware minds in the Western world..

The link between literacy and clear thinking was mapped out precisely by George Orwell in his great essay "Politics and the English Language." The spike in the games industry, the ascendancy of moronic political ideas, the American Idolization of the news media, and the deterioration of schools well serves global corporations that buy what they want from our politicians without being asked too many questions.

TAKE CLOSE LOOK AT CLINTON DYNASTY ISSUE

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HILLARY'S FOUND CLEVER WAY TO GET NOMINATED AFTER ALL

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Anyone else notice in the last Pennsylvania debate that Hillary's angling to be McCain's running mate? How else do you explain her strategy of trying to spray Obama's candidacy with such heavy toxic poisons that no one will ever touch him again?
Who'da guessed that Barack's a Weatherman who hates America, white people, and especially White Americans? Served on a board with a Weather guy? Gimme a break. Anyone ever check out who served on the union-busting, small-business-destroying, Communist China-loving Wal-Mart board with Hillary for 15 years? She stepped down only when hubby ran for President in '92.
ABC even assigned one of the Clintons' favorite pooches, George Hairball Stephanopolous, to chew up the black man along with one of George's hyena friends. While they're at it, why not resurrect one of Bull Connor's police dogs? You can't let major news media "moderate" these debates. They're deeply entangled in Medici politics and peculiar corporate angles. They're out to create phony explosions, not explore real issues. Did they ever examine the fact that an oil guy and a defense industry guy ran on the same ticket and started a war that benefited nobody but the oil and defense industries (plus al Qaeda and Iran, but whose counting?)?
I used to think Hillary's running her '12 campaign against old man McCain now, figuring that even though everyone will hate her for wrecking the Democrats' chances in '08, she can make them all forget that in '12 by completely distancing herself from the '08 Hillary the same way she's distanced herself from the 2003-06 Hillary that was crazy about invading Iraq. Now I see the truth. She's looking to run on McCain's ticket against Commie Mau Mau Obama who's gonna hand us over to the Muslims.

DISSEMINATING THE TRUTH: SO WHAT?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
I used to think it was vital to communicate to the public just how much harm our Iraq adventure is doing to this country, not to mention Iraq. But after five years of madness seventy percent of Americans and seventy percent of Iraqis want our forces out fast. So changing attitudes doesn’t appear to have any effect on the lack of any policy because the “surge,” at least in a mutated form, goes on even though the Army is having a nervous breakdown and all the generals minus Patraeus say this just can't go on. Clearly there’s a systemic failure within our democracy.
Multi-millionaire John McCain, the son and grandson of admirals, married to a beer heiress, and working hard to destroy the middle class while making the rich richer, calls self-made Barack Obama elitist. Corporate news media, failing to notice the irony, act as though there’s some substance to Bittergate. What about McCain's Let-Them-Eat Cake-Gate?
And it’s pretty clear that neither Obama nor Clinton would pull out of Iraq, not really. Try to pin them down and they talk about “trainers,” use the word “residual,” and recite a “withdrawal” rate, that, if pursued, would leave many thousands of U.S. troops there for many years to come.
Meanwhile, the dollar has collapsed, and Americans failed to notice.
Our educational and news-presentation processes are so broken that politicians and their corporate employers can get away with just about anything they want. The immigrants that Lou Dobbs and his ignorant legions scream about are actually key gears that keep our wheels turning.

CATCHING UP

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
No, I don't mean I think Hillary will catch up. I'm talking about what's going on in my life. But as long as people are actually for some reason asking my opinion on some of what's going on in these politically tumultuous times, it's this:

Hillary knows she has almost no chance to win the nomination but hopes to damage Obama to such an extent that he'll lose to McCain and she can run against the 100-year warrior in 2012. A dangerous strategy, because it will increase the number of Hillary-haters, but she figures she has nothing to lose because if she can't be president then what does anything matter? So what if the Republicans put a few more crazies on the Supreme Court who won't even hear the case of the lady brain-damaged by a truck accident who has to pay Wal-Mart back its $400K for her medical bills? It's of no consequence compared to achieving the dream of restoring the Clinton dynasty to the throne.

And while I'm rambling, allow me to point out that I'm in Costa Rica for 2 weeks and like lots of turistas I sometimes turn to CNN in my hotel room, where I see it repeats the story over and over of Hillary uttering a line written by her handlers that likens her to Rocky Balboa. Plus we learn -- wow! -- 2 people and counting have asked Princess Chelsea about Monica!

Meanwhile there's nothing on, for instance, the terrible descent of the Republican Party into right-wing lunacy thanks to crippled campaign reform laws that have put Republicans officeholders on the side of their paymasters -- the minute slice of Americans who can grab $100 million parachutes and bid for Picassos. And screw health care and the more humane practices of the Western democracies minus our schizo-monarchy that loops around from Bushes to Clintons and back again. The rabble can wait in emergency rooms if they need help with their ongoing illnesses. If they need pharmaceuticals, they can always turn to Christian Science. And CNN is supposed to be the moderate 24-all-day-and-night news channel. Hey, in all those 24 hours can't they dig up and interview the political scientists who have no doubt researched what's really going on in the world and why our republic is crumbling as we speak?

I heard Lou Dobbs pronounce the domestic policies of Clinton, Obama, and McCain as practically identical. The man's out of his fucking mind. Don't they have executives over at CNN who can at least demand he read a book once in a while? He spoke with a maddening combination of ignorance and assertiveness. Where did they get this sonofabitch? Kick his ample butt over the border with nothing but ten bucks and a serape. Maybe it would educate him.

Anyway, back to catching up. I haven't been around my own blog because I'm concentrating on writing fiction. My novel The Barfighter will be out from Permanent Press in April '09. It will be followed around December or January by my novel Exit Blue from Black Heron. They're both small but respected publishers. The first deals with Vietnam, boxing, remorse, the power of love, and of course other issues. The second is a political satire set in the near future. Both these novels make excellent presents. Send them instead of Christmas cards.

Meanwhile, I haven't forgotten the cheated families tossed out of their homes, the hopelessly indebted unemployed who are no longer able to declare true bankruptcy, the disabled veterans who go home to nothing, the service people who get stop-lossed into the funeral pyre of our Iraq policy, the hungry semi-employed citizens who aren't eligible for food stamps because they've managed to hang on to their homes or cars. I know you haven't forgotten them either.

Peace.

LAURA BUSH CALLS FOR DEMOCRACY -- OH BOY

BULLETIN: Laura Bush Calls on Burmese Junta to Allow Democracy

As Channukah comes to a close, it appears our darling First Lady has been eating LSD-laced latkes. As First Lady of all the people she has developed Chutzpah, and now if she and her hubby will step down and stop stealing elections, maybe we can return to some form of democracy in the U.S. too.

Also, take notice that Venezuela's sanity-challenged Hugo Chavez nevertheless obeys the voters when he loses a close one, as opposed to some people who call up their daddy's pals to put in the final fix.

WHEN WE GET TO MARS MAYBE WE CAN FORGET ALL ABOUT IRAQ

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Maybe you're wondering why all those members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats both, are preparing to give Bush the funding he needs to continue the war. Well they just might feel everybody's being too demanding of a President who's been forced to spend much of his energy putting together the glorious trip to Mars he promised us in 2004. Did you forget all about that? Well, he didn't. He's just not that kind of guy, and Congress knows it, even if the rest of us don't.

So Congress must figure that as soon as he gets the space thing out of the way, he'll solve these little Iraq glitches with his usual flair and incisiveness because the fact that we have no mission there and Iraqi citizens overwhelmingly say it's OK to kill U.S. troops and our people are dying and being maimed and crippled for nothing and the average Baghdad family is sitting each night in the dark without running water or a working sewer system, and gangs of freaked-out gunmen are running around outside abducting and torturing people and this Maliki government we're supposed to root for is closely tied to the murderous, psychotic Mahdi Army that's been bombing and shooting our troops for year is dwarfed by our glorious leader's ability to take care of the whole mess as soon as our astronauts set up a Martian golf course.

I guess it turns out when they voted Bush permission to go into Iraq and seize the WMDs these people in Congress also voted to garrison the place forever, all of which apparently makes terrific sense to Democrats like Diane Feinstein who routinely give Bush everything he asks for in Iraq and then complain about his policy. I'm growing a bit weary of the Feinsteins of this world, but I'll just try to focus on how great everything's going to be when we get to Mars.

BEYOND THE SURGE -- A TIDE OF BULLSHIT

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Reality Weather Service put out a bulletin today warning of a surge of bullshit sweeping out of Washington. Residents around the globe were told to wear raingear, particularly when digesting media interpretations of this astonishing weather pattern, which had conventional meteorologists baffled.
CBS, CNN, et al were preparing to inform us the bullshit surge smells like a rose, making it terribly dangerous for anyone who still hasn’t developed some kind of bullshit detector.
Don’t panic. Stay in your homes unless you have the gumption to take to the streets because enough is fucking enough.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress already slavishly accepting the surge as a successful strategy even though the doctoring of the statistics have already been unmasked, were preparing to surrender to this bullshit without a fight. Bush’s’ revived threat to withhold supplies from troops in the field gave them their clearest path to his impeachment and removal from office, but they lacked the brains, imagination, and guts to make the journey.
If Congress refuses to fund the war and our chicken hawk-in-chief leaves our troops out there without supplies, Congress should of course exercise its constitutional authority to send him packing within 24 hours. So Congress would lose a little sleep. Big deal. The seven U.S. troops killed in Anbar during one day last week gave up more than that. Then it would be Deferement Dick’s turn to pull the same crazy bullshit, and then Speaker of the House Pelosi would be president. She’s a craven Pelosi, but at least she knows the difference between Australia and Austria, making her a big improvement over what we’ve got. Besides, impeaching and jailing her predecessors just might light enough of a fire under her ass to prompt her to do what’s right.

I know the accompanying photo is upsetting. It upset me too. But we should all understand what they're doing with our tax dollars as we continue to let the same people who got us into this mess -- the same people who've never been right about this war -- tell us what to do next.

QUESTIONS ON WAR, PEACE & HILLARY'S BUTT

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Consider me still on a blog break, but here are questions I've been asking myself, and I wondered if anyone out there could help me answer them:

The Democrats won control of Congress, and very quickly we had 30,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq, our casualties increased, and Democrats continued funding the war. So what did we get out of it?
If Hillary and Obama really opposed the war, wouldn’t they spell out when they’d pull our troops out?
If all the Sunni states in the Mideast know Maliki is just a stooge for Iran, how come the U.S. government doesn’t get it?
Isn’t there a law anywhere that says Dick Cheney can’t continue fixing no-bid contracts for Halliburton while he hangs on to its stock?

Why aren’t all those administrators at the FCC who took free vacations from the corporations they were supposed to regulate in jail?
Why do all those people in Congress get away with accepting “donations” from fat cats and then letting them write legislation like the Medicare prescription clause that fixes into law the concept that drug companies will wholesale their products to the government at retail prices?
Does Bush still consider himself a compassionate conservative while throwing $8 billion a month at his war to nowhere and promising to veto $7 billion a year for a children’s health care program that's proved its worth a hundred times over?

Nancy Pelosi took Bush’s impeachment “off the table” after his administration had already admitted tapping phones and intercepting mail and email without warrants. He and Cheney are still repeating the same lies about Iraq that were refuted years ago. His avalanche of signing statements tell us plainly he refuses to enforce acres of law. What’s a guy have to do to get impeached around here?

After the Bush dynasty hands the presidency back to the Clinton dynasty will the throne have to be retrofitted to handle Hillary’s butt? (That's her on the right in the accompanying photo)

GOLDMAN BEGINS HIATUS -- WORLD DOESN'T STOP

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Hi Readers. I started this blog not so much because I was enraged by the everyday actions of this criminal regime in Washington. What really got to me was the reaction of our citizens -- or the lack of it. About 28 percent are hardcore fascists who'll follow Bush into the gates of hell, and almost all the rest are strolling through the mall and watching American Idol.

Also, I was personally pinpointed by these ongoing horrors because I have a son in the Army who's already done one tour in Iraq and is set to do another. The worst predictions in 1984, Brave New World, and a host of other fantasies are being realized, and most people don't care enough to react as long as no one in their family is being sent to Iraq by the likes of Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, and their Washington entourage.

I'm not so egocentric as to believe that those people not reading my blog are automatically wretches. But I've sold non-fiction commentaries to some pretty substantial publications over the years as over-the-transom submissions, so I know my stuff can't all be substandard. But the New York Times, L.A. Times, etc, and even publications like The Nation are operated by jealous cliques and impose certain rules and boundaries I found increasingly tiresome. I really haven't figured out this Internet marketing thing, and I've had fewer than 2,000 "unique visitors," according to the free service that measures this stuff for me.

I don't want to put crappy stuff on this blog under my name, but right now I don't have the time or the inclination to put up polished stuff for such a small audience (for the great people like your who are reading this).

I recently sold my novel The Barfighter and am working on another, and will continue to focus more of my attention on my novels because oddly enough you can write more about the truth as you see it under the umbrella of fiction. I'll also continue doing boxing commentary in The Ring magazine because it's still a joy -- except when I'm on deadline. The accompanying photo is fairly recent. I'm eating free grub supplied by Shane Mosley. If you don't know what Shane looks like and so can't figure out which of us is which, he's the one with lots more money and a great attitude.

For now I plan to put stuff up on this blog from time to time when I come across something that I believe is really worth your attention. But I'm told if you don't put up new stuff all the time you lose your audience. We'll see. I'm also going to Europe pretty soon -- just for a few weeks -- and I'll see how I feel about this blog when I return. Maybe I'll find some magic formula to build a bigger audience. Thanks for sticking with me.

Best wishes & up the ass of the ruling class,

Ivan G.

BRIT LOOKS AT BLOOMBERG

[This is neither an endorsement nor a declaration against Bloomberg's possible independent candidacy. The idea of another Republican creepoid in the White House due to a replay of Ralph Nader's 2000 bid is frankly terrifying. But it's interesting to look at this topic from the perspective of a canny British observer. -- I.G.]

By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington
New York City is frequently derided as being too eccentric, sophisticated and "European" to belong to the real America. Michael Bloomberg has billions of dollars and is willing to spend them

When it comes to elections, it has always been the stage for lavish fundraisers, mined for cash by both sides, but largely ignored as a source of coveted votes because New York tends to vote Democrat and hasn't swung - in electoral terms - for decades.

So wouldn't it be funny if the three names on the presidential ballot in 2008 all hailed from the Empire State?

Did I say three?

Here's the imaginary list: Hillary Clinton, the junior senator from New York in the Democratic corner; Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, in the Republican corner; and current Mayor Michael Bloomberg somewhere in the middle, hovering as an independent candidate, an antibody in Washington party politics, stealing disaffected voters from both parties.

The rumour has been tickling Washington's political gonads for months now.

It goes without saying that the mayor himself continues to deny any intentions to run for the White House, which is bread-and-butter Beltway rhetoric.

But the blogosphere went into high gear this week after Mr. Bloomberg took it upon himself to announce that he was quitting the Republican Party with the stinging rebuke that "every successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles".

This may be less of a slap in the face than it appears, since he only joined the Republican ranks in 2001 when he wanted to become mayor of New York. But why announce the divorce at all?

Moreover Mr Bloomberg was speaking not on his home turf but in that other bastion of coastal sophistication, California, on what looked suspiciously like a campaign tour.

The mayor himself may be denying presidential ambitions but his friend, the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has given him the thumbs up.

"He would make an excellent candidate for the White House!" Arnie yodelled and then smiled like a split watermelon.

Mr Bloomberg's own entourage has been feeding the cyber beasts with quotes about a candidacy, quashing previous rumours that the mayor may want to run as a vice-presidential candidate.

"He's an alpha male," his friend and adviser Professor Mitchell Moss recently told reporters.

The 5ft 7in (1.70m) alpha male, who comes from a family of Polish Jews and was the son of a book-keeper, certainly has a lot going for him.

He has been elected twice as mayor of New York and his Midas touch, first as a partner at Salomon Bros, the investment bank, and then as the founder of the Bloomberg financial news and data service has pocketed him, according to Forbes Magazine, no less than $5.5 billion (£2.75bn).

He has the cash and, as his campaigns in New York have shown, he is ready to spend it. He laid out $73m (£36.6m) to win City Hall in 2001 and another $80m (£40m) to do so again in 2005.

As an independent candidate, he won't need to run in the party primaries and so he can lavish a whopping half a billion dollars on the presidential campaign at the very least, without spending more than 10% of his money.

Echoes of Perot

At worst, that's a handy tax write-off. And that brings to mind another short candidate who disliked the Bush family and ran as a loner.

Ross Perot split the Republican vote and cost George HW Bush dear

Do you remember Ross Perot? He was the independent candidate who ran in 1992 with a face like an extra-terrestrial and a voice like a duck.

He hardly spent any of his own money and had no message beyond his loathing for Beltway politics.

But even he managed to get 19% of the vote in the presidential ballot.

Since most of his support defected from the Republican camp, he split the right and thus cost George HW Bush the election.

So imagine what Mr Bloomberg could do. Thanks to the war in Iraq and a corroded faith in the ability of politics to fix America's ills, the country is far more disaffected now than it was in 1992. The mood is ripe for an independent. Mr Bloomberg has more money than Mr Perot and, crucially, is willing to spend it.

Michael Bloomberg even rides the New York subway to work. He has managed the world's grittiest and whiniest city for more than five years and still enjoys a 70% approval rating.
And he has a message: Mr Bloomberg was against the war in Iraq and he is for gay rights, gun control and abortion.

He is where many moderate Republicans, Democrats and undecided voters are. He is in that place where that other mayor, Rudy Giuliani, would probably like to be if he didn't have to undergo the contortions foisted upon him by the Republican primaries.

And Michael Bloomberg, the Master of the Universe, takes the subway to work.

Political Viagra

At this stage you might be tempted to change the monograms on the White House face towels already. But not so fast!

Bloomberg has money and brains but as a campaigner he's the driest biscuit in the box.

His electoral chemistry is well nigh inert and he would have to make a virtue of his dour style.

But as my friend, the pollster Frank Luntz, has pointed out: "With this much money in your pocket it doesn't matter if you're dry, what matters is the calculation: can I win?"

This is where it gets tricky. The bedrock party support for the Democrats is estimated to be around 39% of likely voters.

These are the people who would vote Democrat even if a potted plant were on the ballot paper.

These days the Republicans can count on only about 30% of cast-iron loyalty.

According to Mr Luntz this has two consequences: the first is that Mr Bloomberg is unlikely to win, even with all his cash, appeal and the current degree of disaffection.

Secondly, he is far more likely to steal Republican voters at a time when the Grand Old Party desperately needs independent voters to get into the White House. Rudy Giuliani should be far more worried by a Bloomberg candidacy than Hillary Clinton.

But if he thinks he can't win, why should Mr Bloomberg, a results-driven executive, even bother to run?

Because even if he never got to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he wouldn't exactly be missing any meals and he might just make the history books.

If that's not political Viagra for a 65-year-old, unmarried, 5ft 7in, alpha-male billionaire, then what is?

WHERE ARE THE NEW FDR'S AND LINCOLNS?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Instead of comparing our presidential candidates to each other, why not compare them to past presidents? We don't because it’s been pretty well accepted that we will never seek the likes of an FDR or Lincoln again, so get with it and settle for what’s out there.
But you have to ask yourself why, if the 1930s could give us an FDR, and the 1860s a Lincoln, couldn’t the 2000s find us another clear thinker and doer like them -- a decent, take-charge human being who's not loony -- from a population that’s more than twice the size now than it was in 1932?

The answer is, we still have people like FDR and Lincoln around, but they don’t run for office. That's because our system requires presidential candidates to spend years traveling around the country begging for campaign money from rich people.
So we wind up with some really defective personalities as candidates. Then we’re told we must choose one of these screwy people. That’s practically as stupid as saying we’ll just continue doing what we’re doing in Iraq until a nice, friendly democracy rises from the rubble there whose citizens won’t mind if Big Oil carts off their petroleum at a cut rate.
This Bush dynasty, father and son, did everything they possibly could to keep our elections crippled by the brute force of plutocratic dollars. George I vetoed campaign reform, and when George II saw he’d have to let something through, he and his compadres made sure McCain-Feingold was so shot full of holes it did nothing except change the name of campaign kitties.

LET'S PRETEND
Donations are unlimited as long as they’re made to groups that pretend they aren’t coordinating their activities with the candidates’ campaigns. Just as politicians pretend the favors they do for their big contributors at the expense of everyone else aren’t related to those contributions. And more than half the states allow corporations to give money directly to the campaigns.
The result is that the race is not always to the swift, just as Ecclesiastes tells us, but also, election-wise, it is never, ever won by people lacking this defective beg-mongering chromosome. So guess what? Our front-runners from both parties, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, are both twisted, egomaniacal liars who don't mind kissing ass for the right price. Just what their biggest contributors were looking for.

IRAQ: 155,000 U.S. TROOPS ON SNIPE HUNT

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Take a serious look at this administration’s announced goal of creating a secure democracy in Iraq. It means that at some point the balance scale will reveal -- Eureka, everything’s hunky dory over there -- and we may exit as proud victors.

Precisely where is that point? When the murders and kidnapping stop? Because people get bumped off or kidnapped once in awhile even in relatively peaceful cities like Copenhagen. Does Baghdad have to become another Copenhagen? Or should we settle, say, for Los Angeles, which has about 950 homicides a year? Obviously we can’t hold out for perfection. But how much distance from perfection is the Bush brain trust willing to settle for?
Moving on to the goal of democracy, you’ll find another amorphous goal, and one that has arguably been met already. Iraq has an elected government. It’s not functioning like a Lexus, but the fact that there was some kind of election creating this Parliament is in fact evidence of democracy, precisely as Bush, Inc. claimed after the voting took place. But that wasn’t enough for our wartime president. Clearly he’s bent on the country having a good elected government. Define good.

WHERE'S NATO ARMADA?
In our own country we have a Louisiana congressman recently caught with $90,000 in his freezer, indicating perhaps we don’t have a perfectly functioning democracy. Go back a little further and you find we had two presidential elections in a row decided under less than perfect electoral circumstances (See Florida in 2000, Iowa in 2004). Should the rest of NATO send over an armada to repair American democracy?

This mission that Bush, Inc. spelled out for Iraq was never more than a quicky excuse it came up with when the original announced purposes were proved false. Security and democracy sounded to the war’s creators like good substitutes to fill in for nonexistent WMD programs and nonexistent ties to al-Qaeda while they held on to the oilfields and Bush settled his personal daddy business with Saddam.

Now we have 155,000 troops over there on a snipe hunt so a pack of liars can try to prove it’s not a pack of liars. Everyone who’s been to summer camp understands a snipe hunt. You send new kids out in the forest with sacks and tell them to come back with some snipes, and all of them are too embarrassed to admit they don’t know what a snipe is (it isn’t anything).

It’s hard to believe our country has continued on this loony road to nowhere for more than four years. Under any sane system, Bush, Cheney et al would have been kicked out of office long ago and be writing their memoirs in prison.

Yet when you look at the words of presidential candidates in both major parties, just about none of them will provide a clear-cut statement that he or she will stop hunting snipes -- certainly none of the “major” candidates. To find someone who makes such a flat declaration you have to dig down to smaller players like Dennis Kucinich, who’s been deemed non-presidential by Big Media and Big Election Money.

So the snipe hunt continues. Democracy and security. You know, we could use some of that ourselves.

U.N. FINDS 94% OF EGYPTIAN GIRLS CIRCUMCISED; NO LAW AGAINST IT, MUBARAK'S WIFE CONCEDES

The following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on March 8, 2007, as transcribed by MEMRI (Middle East Research Institute)
Interviewer: "According to the 2005 UNDP report, 94% of all girls in Egypt undergo circumcision. What have you, in the National Council for Women, been doing about this, and to what extent are these statistics accurate?"

Suzanne Mubarak: "These statistics are clearly incorrect, because they go to some village, and select all the women aged 35 and up. These women have all, indeed, been subjected to this. But if we were to conduct statistics on the younger age groups... Today, we are working to protect them from this procedure. We have a national plan, through the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, and this is its main concern now. We go to the villages... This too, goes back to the culture, which is based on mistaken concepts. It has nothing to do with religion. Although some people say it is required by the religion, the vast majority of the Arab and Islamic countries do not practice these violations."

Interviewer: "But in African countries..."
Suzanne Mubarak: "They inherited it from the African or Pharaonic culture, thousands of years ago. Based on this, we have a national, comprehensive, and strategic plan, which we began to implement three years ago. We've begun to talk... At first, this procedure was something nobody talked about much."

Interviewer: "Because it hadn't reached the Western media, but the moment there was a scandal, people began to talk about it."
Suzanne Mubarak: "Today, we talk about it with complete openness. We are dealing with it as something that must come to an end, and, Allah willing, it will come to an end soon. We conduct campaigns to promote awareness among mothers, grandmothers, and mothers-in-law. You'd be surprised, but it is the women themselves who lack this awareness. We also urge that it not be conducted outside hospitals, and that it be performed only in cases where it is medically required. We admit that this is insufficient, and we are working through the council... One of our missions is to submit new bills for legislation, in order to completely ban this procedure."

Interviewer: "Why is there no law that prohibits..."
Suzanne Mubarak: "Allah willing, it will happen. Soon..."

Interviewer: "When?"
Suzanne Mubarak: "I can't tell you when, but we are working on it."

QUESTIONS BUSH IS NEVER ASKED

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

When you ran for President you promised service members that help was on the way. A new report ordered by Congress informs us that 40 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have psychological problems, that the mechanism to help them has broken down, and many are punished for their afflictions. A situation like this doesn’t happen overnight. There must have been warnings. Why did you allow this to happen?

Eighty percent of casualties in Iraq, where more than 3,500 U.S. service people have already died, are caused by improvised explosive devices. Two years ago the Marines requested 1,100 mine-resistant vehicles and the Pentagon didn’t order them or send them. The Army is in similar dire straits. Why did you allow this to happen?

In various legal filings, the prosecutor said both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby told several reporters about Valerie Plame's employment at the CIA. Why haven’t you fired Rove for damaging this country's security in order to cast doubt on the account of her husband who exercised his constitutional right to reveal you'd made a false claim to the nation that Saddam had been seeking weapons-grade uranium from Niger?

Vice President Dick Cheney, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, continues to claim a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Why haven’t you admonished him for spreading this false idea and told him to cut it out?

The Downing Street Memo informs us that the British saw no evidence your Administration devised a post-invasion plan for Iraq. Would you agree? If you disagree, how have would you categorize that plan now in retrospect?

Your political appointee in the Pentagon, Mr. Wolfowitz, was a key instigator in your disastrous invasion of Iraq. You promoted him to head the World Bank, where he was fired for corruption. Got any more plans for Wolfowitz?

Your administration for years conducted a secret, warrantless, wiretapping program involving millions of phone calls, emails, and posted mail. When you were caught, you claimed you didn’t need warrants. Courts ruled otherwise. Even your first attorney general ruled otherwise. How do you justify these acts in view of your oath to uphold the Constitution?

Though you don't call it torture, your administration does in fact continue to torture suspected enemy captives even though experts tell us this is counter-productive. Explain why this doesn't undermine our argument when we demand moral behavior in places like Darfur.

Alberto Gonzalez’s conflicting testimony that he had nothing to do with firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons and then that he couldn’t remember doing so has been flatly contradicted by a wealth of documents and eyewitness testimony. What message does it send to America when its chief law enforcement officer exhibits these behaviors?

Why does your Administration continue to ignore congressional subpoenas in this and other matters?

You continue to claim pre-war intelligence showed invading Iraq was warranted. But the Downing Street Memo shows that the "case was thin" so "facts and the intelligence" were being "fixed around the policy." To what extent did Iraq's petroleum reserves play a part in your decision to invade?

Explain the difference between Shiite and Sunni beliefs and provide us background on the historical rift between them. When did you become aware of this division?

Why, unlike other wartime presidents, have you refused to attend funerals of fallen service people from the Iraq war?

Why does your Administration refuse to allow photographs of caskets returning from Iraq?

How many more U.S. troops must be sacrificed, as Bill Moyers put it, on the altar of your ego before you admit you were wrong to invade Iraq and that our occupation there only makes things worse at home and in the Middle East and is a boon to both Iran and al Qaeda?

You say the "enemy" despises us for our freedom. Then how can you explain why polls show that a vast majority of citizens in virtually all the democratic nations of the world despise you and your policies and that this is leaking over and making them despise our country, perhaps for generations to come?

The problems this country faces domestically and diplomatically have long appeared beyond your intellectual grasp. You answer questions about them in repetitious, simplistic generalities that fail to inspire the country’s confidence. You have no plan, for example, to deal with the nation’s awful statistics on infant mortality and longevity as compared with the rest of the developed world. Your appointees have systematically undermined programs that were in place to protect the workplace and the enivornment. Your plan to deal with the very real global warming crisis affecting us now is to keep stalling. Why won't you at least try to open your mind and go beyond your circle of myopic advisors for help?

MORE ON MINE-RESISTANT VEHICLES BUSH FLUNKIES REFUSED TO BUY FOR TROOPS

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL
The Bush administration and military leaders in Washington are always claiming that they will do anything to support American troops fighting in Iraq. That makes it all the more infuriating to learn that, for more than two years, the Pentagon largely ignored urgent requests from field commanders for better armor-protected vehicles that could have saved untold lives and limbs.

Improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, can blast through the flat underbelly of the military’s standard Humvees, maiming and killing the soldiers within. These devices, a low-tech response to America’s overwhelming military power, are now causing 70 percent to 80 percent of the American combat deaths in Iraq.
More than two years ago, according to newly disclosed documents, Marine commanders in Al Anbar Province, a center of the Sunni insurgency, submitted an urgent request for more than 1,100 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, or MRAPs, that have V-shaped bottoms able to deflect blasts from below. For reasons yet to be satisfactorily explained, military officials initially sat on the request and then ordered relatively few.

Some, second-guessing the judgment of the battlefield commanders, apparently felt that Humvees with upgraded armor could do the job. Others may have been reluctant to invest billions of dollars in vehicles that might have little use after Iraq. Turf battles were probably also a factor, as a large-scale purchase might threaten future weapons programs. But Iraq is the war that Americans are fighting and dying in today.

Only now are Pentagon leaders, prodded by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other critics on Capitol Hill, rushing to ramp up production. Congress has accelerated funding to buy more than 7,000 of the vehicles by early next year, and the military services are seeking some 21,000 in all, at a cost that could exceed $20 billion. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has declared his determination to “produce as many of these vehicles and get them into the field as fast as possible,” though the precise number needed has yet to be established.

Unfortunately, the MRAPs will remain vulnerable to the deadliest I.E.D.’s, known as “explosively formed penetrators,” which destroy vehicles from the side. The military is looking for ways to add armor to the MRAPs and is testing another new vehicle to counter that threat.

If the small companies that make these vehicles are not able to produce the quantities needed quickly, President Bush and Secretary Gates ought to make this a crash program and enlist major manufacturers.

There can be no excuse for failing to provide the best possible protection for American troops in this disastrous war.

THE SOPRANOS: GETTING PAST FINALE PRANK

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

IT WAS A LITTLE tough to take when David Chase ended his beatified Sopranos series with a series of red herrings and a black-screen practical joke, but I guess that’s what happens when you give final cut to a mad genius. It’s a free country, even in New Jersey.

But I’m reading lots of misinterpretations of that last Sopranos episode. So here’s a bit of clarification.
No, Tony didn’t get whacked. Over a span of 86 episodes he’s proved himself very, very smart. Being aware of suspicious-looking characters is what he does all the time and what he was doing in the diner with his family.
We can assume the new head of Phil’s family, “the little man,” was tired of the war. It cost him money, so he was unlikely to send hit men after Tony. We could say the suspicious characters in the diner were feds, but the reality is they were just nasty jokes played on the viewers. Chase is the only one laughing.
No, Tony wasn’t going to be indicted after all. He discovered it was Carlo who was ratting him out to the feds. Not good for Carlo’s health. Next time he’s shopping, he needn’t lay out for extra-large shampoo or the bigger economy size of his favorite breakfast cereal.
On a happy note, there was possible good news for the environment. With Phil Leotardo’s shot head cracked and splattered under the tire of his own gas guzzler, Tony won’t have to dump asbestos in the Jersey harbor anymore. He can do business with “the little man,” who’ll let him dump it wherever he was dumping it before, which, on second thought, probably wasn’t much kinder to local ecologly than the mess he made in the harbor. Most likely an eagles preserve or something. That’s something to remember for all those environmentalists rooting for Tony. The man’s damn charming and is kind to cats and hookers, but in addition to being a serial murderer, he’s an unapologetic serial polluter.
With the immediate threat of assassination lifted, Tony can return to sick, serious gambling, Carmela to developing sub-standard housing for gullible shmucks like her own cousin, A.J. can go back to failing at everything, Meadow can return to losing at love and winning career-wise, and Paulie, regardless of whether he does or does not spot the Virgin again in the Bing, will continue being the most severely sociopathic individual in North Jersey and possibly the entire Tri-State Area. The fact that a miserable, good-for-nothing psycho like that survives while better people are getting whacked all around him is one of the most realistic elements of the show.

DOUGHNUT CRIME
One TV critic wrote that Tony’s cold-blooded murder of cousin Chris in an earlier episode placed Tony well outside the boundaries of sympathy. But if we were to hold him up to normal standards, he’d have been outside those boundaries several seasons ago. The critic forgot that in the episode previous to Chris’ demise, Chris had shot a friend in the head because, heck, Chris was in a bad mood. He also once shot a doughnut guy in the foot for laxity and disrespect, though I’m not sure if that’s a crime in Jersey.
We won’t learn whether the FBI guy who tipped off Tony about Phil’s whereabouts gets over that stomach ailment he picked up in Pakistan. The possible terrorists? The Russian mobster who got away from Paulie and Chris in the forest? They’re like so many peripheral people who slip out of our lives. Maybe they become dot-com billionaires. But I doubt it.
Okay, the last few minutes were an immature prank. But that doesn’t erase what preceded it for eight seasons – the best damn thing on TV ever.