After two terms of whatever this has been (we'll never really know), I can't imagine anyone sanely planning to take the job of Next President seriously. But assuming they are serious, I've been trying to think of the best case scenario and the worst for each primary.

Because he doesn't really care about anything, and because he's a lightly grouchy but generally likeable guy, I think Fred Thompson would be the best case. But then he'd have to stock a cabinet and hire advisors. Without an agenda of his own, he'd likely end up with the usual faces running the HR, meaning the cynical and soulless RNC appointees hand-picked by the Onceler. So the best case is also the worst.

Giuliani is an incompetent hack. He only understands jailing. His administration would be so busy compensating for what he lacks that we'd all end up either in jail or conscripted. Three wives, a recently lost comb-over, that guttural inverse lisp? What of taxes, trade, the rest of the world? Certainly worser than Thompson. Many would think he knows stuff, being from the city, and we were all charmed by his stony mug after the President let those planes crash into the World Trade towers. But he's a shrill narc, unfaithful and a career ward politician. Worst case.

Huckabee is unacceptable. He'd replace the income tax with preachers. He'd replace the NIH with the NIX. Read that as 'nix' or National Institute of Christ. That 'aw-shucks' act is too well-developed. We have no idea what he's really like, but I suspect he and Pat Robertson have the same hamster-torturing home life. How has the entire state of Arkansas been silenced? Are they unaware another of their governors is about to ascend? Seriously, this might wake up all the educated among us and the polls would be jammed with anti-votes. That would make it take a lot longer to vote, so I wouldn't be able to get home and obsess about exit polls all night. Worst possible president of the R cohort, except the previous two.

Ron Paul has been consistent, and what he wants to do would undermine the money-distributing powers of the Congress. So he would be completely ineffective. I respect his stick-to-it-iveness, and I'm not worried about how bad he can wreck the nation. Best case.

Is there anybody else? Oh- McCain. McCain has strength, he's moderate except when he has to pander, and even with his physical problems would probably kick somebody's ass if he had to. I think he's less malleable than Giuliani or Thompson, and seems less friendly toward the RNC slimeballs greasing the election with dirty money. But the war, or the failure to wrest victory from winning, make him pretty unacceptable.

So I'm going to vote hard against Giuliani and Huckster, medium-hard against Thompson and split my basic NO vote between Paul and McCain. Wait- Paul is anti-war, isn't he? If he came here, I'd offer him a beer. But he'd have to pay me for it, since he doesn't believe in sharing.

The Iraq War ended years ago. The ensuing violence was caused by Bush & Co's lack of leadership, their incompetence, stupidity. They opened a big hole, what we call a power vacuum, and Iran ran in to fill it. There were no police or borders, so the Saudis and Pakistanis and their Jihad thing ran in to shoot at Americans. And the lack of social stability rushed in where simple things like stores with food in them were conquered.

The whole thing was and is a money pit. We have paid dearly in humans and dollars (and credit), and 'pay' takes an object. Someone got paid. And their sales people got a commission. And they haven't finished the work. Don't pay the roofer until you have a roof.

Is an Iranian-style Islamic State coming? The Wahhabi wet dream of another Taliban regime, this time with oil? Constitutional Democracy? Egalitarian Capitalist Utopia? Don't know- unfinished, unplanned.

That surge presided over the winding down of neighborhood cleansing and precinct politics. I'll bet you $1 the violence is down because the neighborhoods can get food, since their local bosses have set up their own grey-market trade routes, the mixed neighborhoods have emptied into Jordan, and the wrongdoers are just done doing their doin'. Petraeus was the roofer, and gave the only advice a roofer can give: "Needs more roof."

But WOW, what a smoke screen! For the past 15 years... only 4 or 5? Okay, for the past several years we haven't been able to talk about anything else as a nation, and it's allowed the Decider et al to avoid accountability. Heck- while they hid behind the blast walls, Cheney declared himself Regent or Viceroy or something, and Congressional Republicans have discovered that, despite the '06 flood of national will washing their colleagues from DC like Katrina rewriting blue-state political maps, they can maintain their blockade against the future a little longer.

Remember when they whined about the minority, how it's the minority because it's not supposed to get what it wants? The majority gets to carry the day? All this lingering. Lingering military-industrial complex funding, lingering inability to put the Detainees in legitimate prisons, lingering cynical RNC mongering.

So far, very little about '08 is convincing me that either team will be able to end this lingering national malaise.

It's important that the borders north and south of the United States be actual borders. We recognize them, the drug companies recognize them. But the coastlines are immense. If we're going to erect a fence along the Rio Grande, we'll have to do the same just a few miles from the Rio Grand Mall in Cape May, NJ. Shark fences might be a good idea, since we're pressuring those giant, wet wolves into tighter ecological niches, but the Mexicans float. And so would terrorists.

In every other country in the world we have to be wary of the military. The police carry machine guns. The government isn't always required to read you rights or provide a lawyer. Here though, the bad guys should be watching out for the Americans. We're here. I'm completely willing to kick the ass of a bad guy. But I like Mexico. And having been to Europe I know how bad it can be when you create a second class of humans: Guest Workers.

That said, immigration, illegal and otherwise is the price for economic success. We've climbed to a point where some work is simply beneath us. The work isn't the bad part, it's the pay. We won't work for $50/day. We won't stand for the 3-family cramped home. We can't even live within 40 miles of our stupid parents. Certainly not going to work 10 hours at the sink in the din of a kitchen. But we're going to eat at restaurants.

When their kids are born here, they become the parents of actual Americans. Just like Poppy and Noni from the Old Country. But we didn't like those damn Italians either.

We don't restrict them because they fill a vital role in our giant industries, and they're the ones paying for your Congressman's paid vacation. But do we restrict the offshoring of corporations who shield themselves from our tax laws? Labor protections? Those shirts in your closet, supposedly "Made in America" are made on tiny islands by American corporations paying slave wages in deadly factories, driving your buying power into the dirt because you can't make shirts cheap enough to sell here.

The immigration debate is moot: All is America. We are everywhere. The real question is: Should we be herding all those compliant Chinese commies into the election booths? Should we be importing the deprived to help depress our working conditions here? Should we allow KBR to compete for government contracts from their Bermuda perch? Should Andersen still be our National Accountant, given their extra-national status?

I think the Mexicans sneaking in are a good thing. Attractive, good music- great food. It's those fat white guys raping our economies from the Caribbean we should be complaining about and attempting to deport en masse. Anyone who thinks the 0.0004% of the tax he pays for welfare matters so much has been completely fooled by the capitalists.

If I were Iran, faced with the daunting challenge of developing proficiency with Uranium enrichment AND developing a warhead for nukes AND a US troop buildup relatively close to the border, AND a Kurds uptick, AND a Turkey/NATO ... thing, I'd probably backburner the warheads too. At least until I got a handle on the enrichment process.

Building a thing is less difficult than perfecting a process. If you've made beer, it was probably fair the first time. Next time, maybe better, but maybe worse. You have to believe that Uranium enrichment would be a challenge. Getting it hot enough to drive turbines and generate electricity doesn't sound so hard.

But building a warhead to hold the stuff in place and direct the force of an explosion to make it explode just right? That's where the newspapers said Korea failed, although the story often changes around here. If you can draw it, and if you can get metal, you can probably machine it. Iran can certainly buy a lot more metal than Korea can.

Are they a threat? Not a nuclear threat today. But we've had an antagonistic relationship with them for decades. Europeans colonized 'em, carved up their real estate and they planted a flag. Then we supported the wrong guy, and pretty aggressively. Then came Reagan, and who knows what really happened then?

The real threat to us today from Iran is normalization elsewhere. We have them pretty well marginalized, but they have oil. Plenty of it. Russia has oil too. And plenty. And France and Russia and Halliburton really want in.

I'm distracted these days by the world as our Liliput. So many annoying little white or beige dogs nipping at our heels, such a sudden turn of the tables regarding resources. We build a few factories in China, and suddenly they need all the steel in the world.

Iran is tiny militarily. Certainly not a threat to mainland USA. But if they figure out how to be less flea-like internationally, maybe lifting groups out of failed states instead of investing in keeping those failed states busy with Isreal? There are only a few formulae for the USA getting a comeuppance, and the combined Venezuela, Iran, Pakistan, maybe even Russia could tangle us up like Gulliver.

Why has nobody mentioned Rudy's speech impediment? Bush has a hard time saying words the way they appear in dictionaries, but some serious part of Giuliani's act must have something to do with the way he squashes the soft C and S sounds closely pronounced with other consonants.

Then, his current wife isn't into policy.

Then, he's a poseur narc.

Then, he was a Democrat lean before he joined the Reagan lean, which is where we made the national transition into massive deficits to fund massive federal spending coupled with small-government rhetoric.

Rudy is the worst legitimate candidate on the Republican side.

This is my first post. Thank you for tolerating it, I know it lacks substance. But I've been insanely tormented by Bush's lack of SHpeech.

Cheers,

Joe