The Sunshine Empire

Watching the spectrum of absurdity on the news this evening I was struck by the political obituary that is being written for Senator John McCain of Arizona. True he has not run a great campaign up to this point in the cycle. He has replicated Walter Mondale’s brilliant campaign strategy of promising the public what it uniformly does not want with his “the surge is everything” approach, and he will be older than Ronald Reagan’s great-grandfather’s t-ball coach when and if he took office. Yet the thing that upset me about the news was the fact that the first causality of the 2008 campaign, may come in the summer of 2007. I am still waiting for The Onion’s prediction of the New Hampshire primary happening tomorrow to come true.

Then we come to the next casualty of the D.C. Madame case, the Republican senator from the great state of Louisiana David Vitter. I will start by saying that the story of him being a client of this brothel is nobody’s business but him and his family. Yet like the Scooter story, this event has shown how most Republican’s morality of the late ’90′s when it came to William Jefferson Clinton was as fictitious as Paris Hilton’s contrition. It has been written far and wide how the Senator was very vocal as he took office at that time about how Bill Clinton should resign his post due to his infidelities. Yet I was struck by how his public statement about his admission sounded almost exactly like Clinton’s did from the Map room of the White House. I remember watching that speech at my wing-nut ex-girlfriend’s house, all the while her bloated father went on and on about the trilateral commission and some hair dye conspiracy. Ah, the memories. But Clinton’s was, “Now, this matter is between me, the two people I love most — my wife and our daughter — and our God. I must put it right,” and Vitter said, “Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and from my wife in confession and marriage counseling.” I wonder if Vitter is ready to head his own advice? That being said I think it’s none of our business.

The former head of the Chinese equivalent of FDA was put to death recently over the contaminated products that have been pouing out of factories and into the United States. I can only imagine if we had held any of our past or current governments to such an account. There would be thousands of slaughtered County Commissioners all across the Republic.