VITAL TOOL

You have to give Bush a lot of credit for brazening this out. Yes, eavesdropping without a court order is a very vital tool in the "war on terror." And chickens have lips. How many terrorists have they caught exactly? Looks like one, whom they promptly let go. How many have they caught at the Queens Midtown Tunnel in 4 1-4 years of narrowing the lanes down to one or two? A couple of guys with expired plates, some with weed, and an outstanding warrant or two. Al-Qaida? Exactamente zero. That's all that needs to be said on that tired subject. With us or against us? Against. Bring those unfortunate young men and women home to their lives and their families and give them all a nice free ride on the GI Bill. Full stop. No compromise.

The Republican party still has Hillary backed into a corner she has no hope of escaping. So, she'll do what Dukakis, Gore and Kerry did and just roll over and play dead for McCain. This after McCain's extremely tasteful joke: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father". Charming. And this is the guy we're supposed to admire because of his (ahem) bravery and feel so terrible for because that mean, tewwible Karl Rove put the hurting on him -- and his dark-skinned daughter -- in South Carolina, March 2000? Well, of course Hillary is going to roll over. She's planning a run to McCain's right! She'll spend the entire campaign praising him to the skies and then wrap up a tidy 10-pp loss in November 2008.

What exactly is it that makes Centrist Democrats behave this way? They just seem to love losing. Or it's as the far-Left and the far-Right say and it's just a some kind of commedia del arte circus for the people. If it's not, then Kelso will repeat his mantra again: at some point Howard Dean is just going to have to take Hillary aside and say "stop fucking with me and my party, when you can raise the kind of money I can, then you can speak...until you can, however, sit your your fat ass down and shut the fuck up...we're going with Edwards or Warner and you can spend the rest of your sorry career presiding over executions, your vile wars and cutting veterans' benefits."

One last note about St. John McCain. As everybody knows, he's one of the Senate's leading opponents of gambling. He's looking to ban betting on all sports, pro and college and looking to do what ever he can to fuck up boxing even more than it already is. Now, as in just about every, here's where Dr. Sigmund Freud takes over. This from an impeccable source. Where does one reckon one might find St. John every Friday and Saturday night? Come on, one guess. You've got it! At the craps table at Caesar's Palace or the Mirage drawing down from his seven-figure line of credit and going for an average of $30K per night, that makes him (a) a compulsive gambler and (b) a $3mm-plus loser per year. What a fine American. What a great choice him versus Hillary. To use an early 80s expression, "gag Kelso with a spoon."

Now, on to Time Magazine's "Persons Of The Year". Bill Gates, the greediest man alive. Wonderful. Melinda Gates: a fucking office whore who was the only woman in the state of Washington willing to actually do the business with Bill Gates. Yuck. Talk about twisted porn! Even thinking about this is making Kelso ill. And for what? Giving $50mm in used software to schools? Friends, as Rush Limbaugh would say, that's about the equivalent of any one of us reaching into our pockets and pouring some spare change into a beggar's cup.

The third leg of this hideous stool is Bono: a religio-fascist whose music is stone-cold unlistenable, and whose politics and self-importance knows no limits whatsoever. He makes Pope John Paul II seem like a communist and Pope Benedict a moderate, all the while pretending to care for the world's poor. Check out Chumbawamba and Henry Rollins on the subject of Bono for a good laugh. In a just world, had he been prosecuted by someone like Fitzgerald instead of a ruling-class bureaucrat like Joel Klein, Mr. Gates would be wearing stripes, not collecting Time's Person-Of-The-Year. And take this on faith, boys and girls, because Kelso is to the right of most of you on property rights and taxes and to the left of most of you on law enforcement.

Here's a good thought for Time. Let Kelso pick up a solid $500/hour prostitute with a nice personality and some brains. They do exist, by the way. By the thousands. OK, so Kelso and his Dallas or Taylor or Kendra get married. Time gives the award to Kelso and the girl, and instead of a stone thief with no ethics and his repulsive wife who doesn't have the sense she was born with. In Kelso Time gets a nice fellow with reasonably sound business ethics, a pretty strong entrepreneur who has never stolen a penny coupled with a lovely, personable young woman who has hit paydirt of a sort but is not high-handed about it.

Or, Christ, just eliminate the middle man and chop it up between Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet.

If a musician has to get a piece of this dubious honor, how Eminem or Billy Joe Armstrong don't get it is beyond Kelso's ken, but then again, maybe it isn't. Those guys figured they had enough money already, so they took an uncompromising stand politically from the bounce and let it happen. They made some of the more interesting and provocative music, got young people thinking and banked it. There's your trifecta.

Time's theme here is obviously pennty-ante charity instead of change. For heavens' sakes, it almost makes George W. Bush seem OK by comparison -- vital tools and all. At least you get the tax cuts.

Kelso's Nuts love you.