Kelso managed to peruse the A section of the Tissue Of Lies and only found one item of note: an AP wire story on Donald Rumsfeld's visit to South America in an effort to bring "stability to the region" and stem the influence of Venezuela and Cuba on the region. Combine this with the Venezuelan air crash of a few days ago, the failed coup attempt in Venezuela -- soundly backed by The Tissue Of Lies, of course -- and the evilness of Rumsfeld, and this is a little scary.

Kelso knows that the Right doesn't do logic and hates it when the Left picks the Right's stupid arguments apart. What a boring and lame waste of time. The Left has to get some gravel and guts and go for it, not pick apart illogical arguments. Nevertheless, Kelso's going to jump into the Liberal pool here and make a couple of points: (1) Cuba is a Communist dictatorship; Venezuela is a Capitalist democracy (2) Having decided NOT to take a crack at Iran, it's looking like the Satan's Minions are looking Southward and probably plan to go after another OPEC member and from a PR standpoint conflate it somehow with the drug war. The latter, of course, has been a ringing success: the coke/pot spread has gone substantially negative, prices of drugs other than pot are way down and purity is way up.

Kelso has read that the Repbulicans are big into the Washington Nationals baseball team. You'll know the shit's about to come down, when the Nationals' Venezuelan pitcher Tony Armas, Jr., is paraded around Washington bashing Chavez. But then again, there's that old problem of troop strength, isn't there. Venezuela might be another fine testing-ground for Rumsfeld's "lean-and-mean fighting force theory" or maybe he'll order up a good old Dresden with no Vaseline. Caracas is supposed to be a nice city. Produced 1971 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Canonero II, by the way.

Kelso also feels he's been on a lefty, apocalyptic trip a bit too much, so let's switch over Right a bit. Kelso believes that there is far too much financial regulation. This notion that every single American has a God-given right to make money in the stock market is the height of stupidity. Caveat Emptor. Kelso believes Western Europe had it right pre-Blair/Clinton. Allow insider trading so the stock price gets to it's "efficient" value as fast as possible. The SEC will not wipe out cheating, but it sure can play favorites and cause great market inefficiencies and dislocations that end up hurting the average investor and the pension funds. The stock market is a random variable. Again, Caveat Emptor, everybody.

The Nutsac continues to lean to the right a bit today on taxes, too. GET RID OF THE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX. This was meant to ensure that the "rich pay their fair share" and has only caused the middle-class no end of hardship. Bring back income-averaging if you really believe in entrepreneurship. The Bush administration believes in a corporate state and has nothing but contempt for risk-takers and entreprenuers. Lots of loot with no risk are their watchwords.

There's a problem with Social Security and Medicare alright: it's a two-headed beast named Hillary Clinton and St. Joe Lieberman. Want to solve the ethnic inequities in SocSec? Cut the retirement age! And how do we pay for all this? Does Kelso really have to do this??? END THE FUCKING WARS NOW.

The Blue States are not impotent, you know. They only seem that way. As the Blue States are HUGE NET TAX SUBSIDIZERS of the "rugged individualists" in the Red States, if something really ugly comes down, a large-scale tax protest by the citizenry of the Blue States will get the lame-ass Democrats and quite a few Republicans' attention real quick. Kelso doesn't know about y'all, but when he was taught American History, he learned one of the phrases that sparked the American Revolution: "TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION IS TYRANNY!"

Peace, tax-cuts, end-of-war-on-drugs, less financial regulation (more environmental regulation)? Kelso likes the sound of it and would run for school board on that platform if he weren't the laziest man in America.

A couple of celebrity-related questions. (1) Was the rule that no one could ride their bicycle ahead of Bush in effect when Lance Armstrong rode with the president? (2) Jon Stewart is cool and funny and all, but why does he lick McCain's ass with such frequency? McCain is just another Bush foot soldier. It's not like he's fucking Galileo or Jonas Salk or even George Patton.

Kelso's Nuts love you all very much.