Kelso thought today might be a nice day to shine a little light on his own life, but there are some nice meaty issues in New York State politics that are worthy of attention.

Let's start with the race for Governor. The heavy favorite is State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer has earned this reputation for being tough on Wall Street stock promotion excesses. As Spitzer is creature of Wall Street (not that there's anything wrong with that!), he has essentially been the fox guarding the hen house, meting out fines that are basically rounding errors of rounding errors of the cost of doing business.

Spitzer has been effective at one thing, however, he has for all intents and purposes imposed a kind of Kyl-Lite on New York State residents, who are now unable to use banks doing any business in New York to transfer money or receive money from off-shore, on-line gambling sites. In addition to the token fines he imposed on the banks, and the anti-gambling rules, he has made international wire transfers subject to all sorts of inquiry under something called the "Know Your Customer Program". Kelso feels it's his public duty to remind everyone that ~20% of the stock of this large financial services institution is OWNED BY THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA!!!

Kelso had a interesting interchange a few years ago with one of his bankers.

"Is is Mr. Kelso?"

"Yes"

"Mr. Kelso, as part of our on-going effort to serve you better, we've introduced a 'Know Your Customer' program and would like your participation."

"No, thanks I'm happy with the service I'm alredy getting from your bank."

"You sound suspicious, Mr. Kelso, this is our 'Know Your Customer Program...Mr. Kelso, on (so-and-so date) 2002 did you receive a wire from (so-and-so company) in the Netherlands Antilles in this amount?"

"Yes, I did."

"Can you tell us what your business with them is?"

"No. I don't want to. They owned me money; they paid me. That's about it."

And on and on it went as they went through about five more wires Kelso had received until Kelso had had enough.

"Listen," Kelso said, "Kelso is sure that your bank would like to know a lot about him: Whether he's straight or gay, whether he prefers Oreos or Hydrox, but the U.S. Constitution says he doesn't have to tell you anything. If you have a problem with that have your supervisor call Kelso's attorney. Here's his name and his number."

Click. Kelso never heard back.

With PATRIOT re-authorized and the prospect of Eliot Spitzer in Albany, Kelso probably won't be able to be so bold next time. But once again for anyone who hasn't been paying attention, the largest shareholder of the bank in question is our partner in peace and fighting terrorism (there's an oxymoron if there ever was one), THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA!

Please remind Kelso, how many of the 19 hi-jackers of 9/11/01 were Saudis? 16? 17?

Of course, Spitzer is a BIG supporter of the wars, getting(!) tough on the Palestinians, is pro-death penalty and an all-round megalomaniac.

This is why, sorry to disappoint, Kelso's looking very closely at Republican William Weld, a true crime fighter at Justice -- kind of an Archibald Cox figure who quit rather than drop the case against Ed Meese, a solid Governor of Massachusetts, a libertarian who was filibustered out of his appointment by Clinton as Ambassador to Mexico because of Weld's anti-WAR ON DRUGS viewpoint.

If Weld doesn't get the nomination, Kelso likes the Marijuana Reform candidate, the Libertarian, or the Socialist Workers' guy/gal in protest.

As usual, we move on the the much more pleasureable topic of sports. We've done a lot of baseball, so let's move on to golf. All eyez on the PGA this weekend. Kelso reckons that the usual suspects Woods, Singh and Mickelson will all be there on Sunday, but watch out for Donald, Furyk, Verplank and maybe a last hurrah for Tom Lehman before he takes over his Ryder Cup captaincy.

Kelso's Nuts love you very much.