"PRAISE THE GRAMMAR POLICE/SET ME UP WITH YOUR NIECE/WALK TO BALTIMORE/AND KEEP THE LANGUAGE OFF THE STREET" -- PAVEMENT

Don't know why exactly but that lyric always puts Kelso in the mind of Hillary Clinton. It was written in the mid-90s and there is a specific reference to "liberals" in a different song on the album ("Brighten The Corners"), so it may very well refer to Hillary. Kelso was DEAD WRONG about the Tissue Sunday Magazine's "Political Capital" issue. It's pretty good. Russell Shorto's "Why Manhattan Became the Nation's Ideology Factory" carries a nice conceit and gives a pretty good tourist's eye view of New York history. Kelso's mother, having been an American History major at Barnard, put Kelso and his sister through their paces on this subject as children, so the names Fernando Wood, Boss Tweed and George Washington Plunkitt are not foreign to Kelso. Furthermore, Mr. Shorto takes the revisionist position on Plunkitt and Tweed -- about as radical a position as one can take in this day and age. Steal everything that's not nailed down but make sure to help the poor while you're doing it. "Honest graft" they called it.

Matt Bai's piece "Hillary's Centrist Crusade" does a great job of explaining exactly why Hillary Clinton is a conservative and does so in not exactly glowing terms. She comes off like the prig that she is: pretty much in favor of everything Pat Robertson is in favor of save guns. Why the fuck did she vote not to confirm John Roberts? That was an absolute lay-down move. If you're Hillary you have to vote to confirm him. Maybe she's not all that "smart."

Sam Tannenhaus's Buckley piece is also good. Kelso kind of likes Buckley for complicated reasons he doesn't want to deal with right now. Btw, he also appreciated Norman Mailer's run for mayor in the cycle following. Really, James "My Giuliani Moment" Traub is the only contender for DWEEB OF THE WEEK out of the Sunday lot. To be fair, Kelso has not yet read the Spitzer piece. A new contender has emerged from today's Tissue Of Lies op-ed page, Nicholas Kristof, writing against liberal and judicial activism, and hoping that Harriet Miers, if confirmed will not be a judicial activist, all the while claiming to have worshipped William O. Douglas as a child while the other boys were into Hank Aaron. He also recommends liberals pursue their agenda legislatively. Ha ha. What fucking rot. Convenient position to take when actual capitalism as opposed to Republican Corporatism is too "liberal". Got to give his sorry ass the edge over Traub right now, but it is close. There is nothing that gets a brave lefty's blood boiling like right-wing pussies. Brings out the bully. And that's a good thing. Kelso would love to have a chance to batter either one of these twerps and he doesn't reckon he's bigger or in better shape than either one of these guys. You know they hit the gym on the regular. Kelso likes to play poker, eat vikeys and drink tea. Doesn't much care for that gym.

Adam Liptak has widened his DUDE OF THE WEEK lead with the Monday feature on U.S. teenagers who will spend the rest of their lives in prison. This is not a small number, both the teenagers and the size of Liptak's lead in the race. In another week, it would have been Alex Rodriguez who, after being informed that he was "under investigation" by baseball commissioner Bud Selig because A-Rod and his wife played at an NYC poker club Sunday night in the company of Phil Hellmuth and other "dangerous gamblers" (Selig's words) said "what my wife and I do for entertainment is none of Bud Selig's business." Ah, the power of the talking cure. Good on you, A-Rod. Kelso finds his work with his own shrink very helpful and self-empowering, too. And Kelso is nobody's MVP, except maybe his mom's.

On a completely different subject, Kelso did his time today for RoshHaShana at the Humanistic Shul. Very compact service. Funny rabbi. Good vibe. NO CLOUD BEING STUFF OR TALKING SNAKE THEORY OF CREATION. Science, reason, secularism, peace and finding one's strength in one's self within the Jewish tradition. It made Kelso wonder what Thomas Friedman, William Safire, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith do at the power shul in Bethesda. Do they pray for MORE killing and maiming? Fewer "giveaways" to "welfare chiselers" in New Orleans? For Dick Cheney to have the strength to invade Iran and Venezuela and then bomb North Korea? For Rush Limbaugh but not Tom DeLay to beat the rap? Or do they just recite platitudes and pretend they're not vermin? These fucks have plenty to atone for next week to be sure. (Is Judy Miller Jewish?) Better do it. As they are for all intents and purposes Christian Crazies already, Kelso would really recommend they do it because otherwise it's Pat Robertson's version of hell for eternity. And from what Pat tells us, that isn't too much fun. Where does Bud Selig stand on all this, Kelso would like to know just for the sake of completeness?

Kelso has been struggling with the question of whether for a non-humanist Jew, the invasion of Iraq is the equivalent of an early intervention in Europe in the 1930s. Kelso thinks no fucking way, but is willing to propose this compromise. If you're Jewish and support the war in Iraq on the grounds of the Nazi Holocaust, ask yourself this question: have you ever cried actual tears over a protracted period of time to the point where you were paralyzed to do anything else for the memory of relatives you never knew? If so, have at it and don't worry about the war wimp label, just be happy the blacks snd the hillbillies are doing your fighting for you. And you can get righteous and root for (um) "us". Nothing stopping you from joining up and getting a gun, though. From what Kelso is led to believe, they need a lot of warm bodies over there. If not, see you in the lake of fire.

Kelso knows he's in enemy terrain here, so he's willing to do the 'splainin', Lucy. Flopper's of the Nuts know that Kelso is not anyone's Tissue Of Lies "Liberal"; he's hard right on financial regulation, guns, property rights and taxes, hard left on everything else. His pacifism springs from his own neuroses. Look at it this way. Take the worst pain you've ever felt in your life and multiply by the number on grains of sand on the beach factorial and your not close to what war is. So, to wage it is pretty fucking sadistic. To wage it for realpolitik is sadistic+. To wage it for shits and giggles is in some other dimension Kelso cannot conceive of. Kelso thinks even Buchanan and Buckley are with him on this. The argument that the progeny of the progeny of those killed under Hitler and Stalin would have cured AIDS and cancer is more persuasive, but in that case WHY FUCK WITH A SECULAR COUNTRY WHERE THEY TEACH SCIENCE. And for fuck's sake, Thomas Friedman, why then advocate backing the Muslim crazies in a civil war? In Kelso's little mind, that means get the fuck out of Iraq, stay away from Lebanon and if Venezuela's touched, that's the exit sign for anyone of means and conscience in the U.S. Have fun without our tax dollars, cocksuckers. Does that mean the fate of the great United States is entwined with the fate of the Chicago White Sox? Draw a line from you to a left-wing diaspora and make sure it passes through Ozzie Guillen and you'll get that reference. Want to do war? Do it in Saudi Arabia where they teach hate in those wretched madrassas to prop up a despotic state. What's the chance of that happening? Oh, slim and none, and Kelso saw Slim sneaking out a back door. Saudi Arabia is after all "our" partner in peace.

Now, wouldn't everybody have been happier if Kelso hadn't gone to shul today? And had just stayed home with the vikeys and the tea? Too bad for you sensitive souls that Jake Peavy broke a rib in the Padres game 1 loss and that the Sawx lost game 1. Kelso got a measure of revenge back with a small win on Rudy Giuliani's Girls, but he's fired up pissed and there are no vikeys to be had. That was a joke. The natural high of contemplation and reflection only lasts so long on Kelso. UN-PC is a double-edged sword. General Boykin gets his say; Dennis Kucinich gets his. Westmoreland and Stokely Carmichael. Sorry, but that's how it is.

Kelso may do some 9/11 conspiracy stuff and certainly some baseball and NCAA football manana. You know, nobody should worry about Kelso and his 5 or 6 readers. Mr. Jon Stewart Leibowitz is doing this with more elan for millions of people every night. At least that's what Kelso tells himself when he wonders if the Department Of Fatherland Insecurity will ever come like thieves in the night!

Kelso's Nuts love you.