THE NORMAL LATE SUMMER/EARLY FALL SATURDAY FOR KELSO

Some business to clean up first and then maybe a little NCAA. Mrs. Kelso has asked off the blog. Earlier she had asked to be on the blog. Kelso abides. Mrs. K., you're off. Poof.

Apparently, Kelso's bud Eve Rachel Markewich has not conceded in her race for surrogate. The first count fell <51% Glen, 49%< Markewich. So, Eve's going to wait it out before conceding. Excellent. Maybe we get lucky on this one. For all Floppers outside NYC, the office of Surrogate is no bullshit. The Surrogate adjudicates ALL contested wills. Velly, velly important job and Markewich's incredible reputation for probity WILL (I say) serve her well in it. Kelso's never heard of Glen, but as the Tissue Of Lies has endorsed her, over a strong Jewish candidate like Markewich, something must be going on. Could be that Markewich got the Amsterdam News endorsement first and the Tissue wanted to differentiate itself from all those horrible brown people and their socialist views. Don't believe? Listen to an archived version of last Monday's Brian Lehrer show at wnyc.org in which Brian convenes a small roundtable to discuss endorsements. Apparently, the Tissue has ceded tremendous power in this area to some woman named Curio (sp?) who was an architect of some of the worst aspects of Clinton's Third Way agenda.

Kelso's friend the movement conservative consoled Kelso on Markewich's loss with the simple statement "that's politics." True enough. He also said he thought that Paul Hackett would absolutely crush DeWine in the Ohio Senate race. Combine this with Democrats running one-two in Cincinnati's mayoral election and maybe Walden O'Dell's going to keep his fucking thumb off the scale this time. If he doesn't, there a long-line of Democratic Americans and bereaved Republican Americans ready to cut that thumb off!

So, appropriately we start our NCAA day with....

* OHIO +34 over VIRGINIA TECH
* TEMPLE +30 over TOLEDO
* SMU +28 over TEXAS A & M
* BALL STATE +37 over AUBURN
* BUFFALO +22 over RUTGERS
* SOUTH FLORIDA -9 over CENTRAL FLORIDA
* CLEMSON +7 1-2 over U OF MIAMI
* LOUISIANA-MONROE +38 over GEORGIA

Don't yet have the physical Tissue yet and the on-line edition looks pretty tame all around, tame, of course, being the steady-state for the Tissue.

One intersting article from the Guardian, however, about the clash of opinion on the Right with regard to aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina. URL below, but Kelso thinks this is all pretty funny when one looks at the budgets of the Department of War and the Department of Fatherland Insecurity, combined with the never-ending off-budget allotments for the wars. Kelso would be a little cheesed-off that Halliburton will be getting the lion's share of the project, but they've already gotten the lion's share of everything else, so, what? All this means is that when President Cheney's ticker gives out and they finally come for Lynne Cheney with a butterfly net, Mary Cheney is going to be the LUCKIEST DYKE IN AMERICA.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1572300,00.html#article_continue

And here's an absolutely outstanding story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050917/ts_nm/crime_hunters_dc

Please read it first. It is a true cluster-fuck of ironies and would make an outstanding movie. Kelso only hopes that it's made in such as way ALL parties are villainous. In other words, keep your fucking hands off this, Stephen Spielberg and Ron Howard. Peckinpagh would have gotten this right.

Kelso is not 100% up to scratch right now. He's not a "morning person" and has a bad stomach and is facing 16 racecards and a vast expanse of baseball and NHL research and revision. He had hoped to take Jr. to the park to race the new remote control boat Kelso got him in Vegas, but it looks like rain here. Kelso's not going to be able to pass along Dick Cheney bucks to Kelso Jr., but for now, the remote control boat's enough. Kelso, however, caused neither the death, injury, imprisonment nor torture that Cheney did in amassing his little pile, though. Nor did he have to even yell at anybody. In these days, that's saying a little something.

Not sure where this point fits in exactly but it needs to be said, so here goes. Kelso stopped reading Slate and Salon because of their fucking credulity toward all things Washington political. At first Kelso didn't understand. Well, he understood the economics. Slate was owned by Microsoft and is now owned by the Washington Post. Salon's founders were looking at a massive windfall during the dot-com boom and then had to (quoting Tom Paxton here) "hunker down and watch it trickle through their hands." Fair enough. But why all the ass-licking of the Doles of the world? Kelso has a theory. Washington is a one-industry town and these guys are Gods. Ass-licking required. Maybe not to the extent that Elisabeth Bumiller takes it, but it's still a sine-qua-non. Thus, Washington-based reporters have this blind spot to the greed and overall evilness of the political class. We have a perfect analogy here. The Mafia. New Yorkers are so in love with their image of the mafia that they are blinded as to the evil they do. These, for the most part, are not colorful Runyonesque rogues. They are thugs. See Junior Gotti's testimony about his own life-conflicts for details. It took the free-market to break their hold on gambling and drugs. Eventually, "Justice For Janitors" and the like will break the mafia hold on the unions, and the fabled Cosa Nostra will probably take its place as another thuggish group among the West Indians, Domenicans and Russians, fighting for a piece of the drug business, paid-violence business, and excise tax fraud business (i.e., cigarettes and unbranded gasoline) And the ass-licking will end. New York Daily News, btw, the worst about this.

Kelso's own opinion is while these criminals don't need to be romanticized, they cause way less damage and suffering than the Bush Administration and the liberal puppy-dogs do.

Kelso's Nuts love you.

LATE POSTCRIPT: Kelso will be very busy tomorrow with work and lots of family stuff, feature of which is the Christening and launch of Kelso Jr's new toy boat for some racing in the boat pond. It's a beauty. NCAA looks fair...hangs on the narrow shoulders of SUNY-BUFFALO and SOUTH FLORIDA.

The bridge: Here's a gift to loyal Floppers. If you can find a bookmaker who will take two-way action on Condoleeza Rice, Kelso recommends a fade of the fancy schvartza with a moustache in size for the Republican Nomination for President 2008. She's 15/1 against. A reasonable bookie will probably let you lay him or her 18/1 to 20/1 depending on the spot.

A little more on Condi -- savior of the nation and a credit to her race. She urges the UN to "get tough on Iran," does she? Is George Shultz still alive? Is he still at Hoover? If so, he has to sit this bitch down and set her to rights. The American public or at least a career U.S. Attorney ought to "get tough" with Condi. Kelso also has it from an absolute A+ source in NoCal that she is as dumb as a box of rocks. And Kelso was questioning Albright's intelligence and judgement? That was Kelso's childish rancorous rant. Here's some science. Having closed a small deal with some British investors of extreme politics, Kelso's business partner, the Movement Conservative, said: "Isn't it funny how much Socialists love the free market and how much Right-Wingers love big-government?"