Me Too!

I can't help it. I wanna bag on Elliot, too. It's just too easy.

Actually, we're OK with married men hiring hookers. That Repub in Louisana did that and he's still on the public's payroll.

We're not OK with:

- Laziness. Jesus, take a lesson from organized crime; USE CASH! Is it that hard to do?

- Unsafe sex. THAT was the thing that was so emotionally disturbing.

The real hero here?

Kristin.

An 18-year-old hooker was ready to tell the Governor of New York, "Look, you either wear a condom, or take your hardon and walk."

Prosecute her? Hell no! Kristin for President, I say. She'll have the same background, ethics and do the same thing as McCain, but at least she'll be nicer to look at.

A lazy man's guide to political scandal

Ah, Eliot. I'll let Wall Street and Capitol Hill celebrate your downfall and do the moralizing -- as if high-priced pros don't find lots of work from those two centers of power.

No, what I may mind most is your laziness.

You wanted to be governor of New York. You might have been president. You couldn't just go out and find a lady to supplement your marital bliss?

You're a celebrity, cavorting in New York and Washington, with plenty of cash to lay down for meals, plush hotel rooms and assorted other forms of fun, You could get millions of people to vote for yo. But you couldn't close the deal in a Westside singles bar? Nothing steamy in the Georgetown night? You couldn't just get a girlfriend?

We could debate whether that's morally superior, of course. But American political life is full of politicians who've done quite well despite having girlfriends as well as wives. Yes, you might eventually have to choose between them -- Clinton chose Hill, Newt dumped two wives for girlfriends, McCain dumped one -- for the sake of a campaign.

But that's like shampoo. Rinse, cycle, and then repeat. It doesn't end your career. And then you can get another. We've outgrown Gary Hart. Heck, Rudy Giuliani left his wife in the New York mayoral mansion to publicly date his mistress, and he was a serious candidate for president. As a Republican.

But hookers? Nah. Sure, Charley Sheen can still get a TV show. Jimmy Swaggert and Ted Hagget can still pack churches. But you're not an actor or an evangelical preacher; you're a moralistic politician.

So I suppose it's OK to celebrate your downfall.

The Race Card and Political Suicide

I'd expected someone to eventually try to smear Obama with the "affirmative action" charge; i.e., as the latest Clinton gunslinger says, he got where he got because of his race. (The laughter you hear is that of every African-American person in the U.S.; blacks in the U.S. get to where they are in spite of their race, not because of it. If Obama were white, he'd be the nominee now.)

What I didn't expect is for Hillary to be the one to sling this particular bit of mud. And I'm curious as to how Hillary expects to win the general election while alienating one of the largest voting blocks that has stuck by the Democratic party in times good and bad. Maybe she figures that demonizing minorities of all stripes - illegal immigrants, gay people, even strong women - has worked for Republicans, so it might work for her. It's as though she's forgotten that there's already a Republican in the race.

Never underestimate the power of a Democrat to self-destruct. Or spend tens of thousands on hookers. Or gay masseusses. Or hit on underage males. No, wait, those are Republicans ...

Democrats masters at losing battles

Leave it to my Democrats to find new and novel ways to lose a presidential election.

Here's the worst: The convention this time around was delayed until August, as a showcase for the fall campaign. But we have a deadlock, so we have months left for Hillary and Obama to tear each other to shreds while McCain stands above politics as usual.

You have McCain standing up with Bush and with a preacher who hates Catholics and Jews as much as Satan, and the Dems say nothing.

Or worse than nothing. Hillary is saying she and McCain are better on foreign policy, and Obama will no doubt respond by saying we need a maverick like him or McCain.

This should be a slam duck, with Bush's ratings in the toilet and McCain promising to continue Bush's war and his economic policies, same ol' same ol. It will take some effort to screw this up.

But it looks like we Democrats will manage.

Is Obama tough enough?

So Hillary wins the key races, but the folks over at Air America were talking this morning about how she should step aside anyway. They're shocked (shocked!) at her recent tactics; she's not playing nice.

They're missing the point of primary season.

Much as I support Obama, if he can't stand up to Hillary, how will he stand up when the voices of Rove, Coulter, Limbaugh and the rest rally behind McCain and get nasty, as they inevitably will?

And McCain may not have stood with them in the past, but this is a once-proud man who now hires a talking head to introduce him with insinuations about Obama's race and religion, then distances himself from his own introduction. The straight talk express is now the hate talk express.

Once of the best things about Hillary is her toughness. Republicans have gone after her and Bill with throngs of political hacks, legions of supposed journalists and armies of special prosecutors, and been beaten every time.

Obama's talk about a new era of cooperative politics is certainly inspirational. But can it hold up against the old politics of rip their throats out and grind them into the dirt?

Demoats lost with Gore and Kerry, who declined to fight back and lost races they should have won. We actually once nominated Walter Mondale, who slogan was "Jimmy Carter's vice president.' And then there was Michael Dukakis, who vowed to try to be nice if someone raped his wife.

Obama is being tested, and frankly, if he can't stand up to Hillary, he would lose to McCain. This is why we have primaries.

McCain's own Farrakhan

Well, it's just a few days since Louis Farrakhan endorsed Obama, Obama denounced, Clinton said he needed to renounce, and he did so there. Or something like that.

But certain GOP nominee John McCain has thus far accepted the endorsement of his own religious hate-mongering fan, a guy named John Hagee.

If you haven't heard of him, he's the evangelical spokesman for God's wrath not just against pro-choicers and gays, but Catholics. He's said, among other crazy nonsense, that Catholic school birthed Hitler's hatred toward Jews.

Folks looking for McCain to denounce Hagee include those not-so-flaming-liberals at Catholics United. But so far, McCain says he's happy to have Hagee on board, and frankly he's in a tough spot.

Catholics are critical to any victory, according to Karl Rove, among others. But so are evangelicals, and denouncing this rootin'-for-armageddon pastor would step on their toes.

Imagine the uproar if Obama had accepted Farrakhan's endorsement, and rightly so. He's said lots of crazy, hateful things, and believes those who don't side with him are bound for hell. It would cost him the Democratic nomination.

But McCain can't denounce Hagee, who's also said lots of crazy, hateful things, and believes those who don't side with him are bound for hell. GOP true believers are indeed a different bunch.

Bush, the zero-percenter

0%.

Yes, that's zero-freakin' percent.

That's the entire gain of the stock market, as determined by the S&P 500, from the end of January in 2001 through today. As you try to decide if it's better to put a Republican or Democrat in the White House, consider the simple fact that the market does better under the left.

And more importantly, that today's president -- with a Republican Congress for most of his term -- has the worst stock market return of any chief exec since there was a stock market. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Now, it wouldn't matter so much if I hadn't dutifully put a significant part of my income into my 401(k) every week for years on end, like so many busy American workers, confident the market's historic 8% return would mean a decent retirement fund all day. Skip even a few years, they say, and you lose the magic of compound interest and will end up picking up scraps of aluminum on the highway.

Yet the same thing happens when the market skips a few years. And with most Americans now relying on 401(k)s instead of the quaint notion of working for 40 years to earn a guaranteed pension, it matters a whole lot.

Of course, lots of money was still made on Wall Street in the past few years. By Wall Streeters who got commissions when we bought and sold stocks, for managing those 401(k) contributions, for planning IPO busts, for conjuring up subprime loans and CDOs and lord knows what else.

And that's the reality of investing. As in Las Vegas, the house gets its cut up front. They don't care if we win or lose, only that we keep playing.