I’m not making any predictions for tomorrow. But I’m hoping that enough Pennsylvanian Democrats will vote for the Democratic primary race to be over, and that means pulling the lever, or touching the screen, or making an “X,” or whatever it is you do in your town, for you-know-who. The candidate whose last name does not rhyme with “Schminton.”

Update: “Oh, well.” Get ‘em next time …

Later update: This seems like as good a place as any to add validation code from whereistand.com

Drat. It’s back up. Never mind. Move along. Nothing to see here.

It was probably just some sort of server hiccup. Daily Kos is among the reasons I rarely write anything serious about politics — almost everything I might want to say gets said by *someone* there before I can get around to typing. If I’m going to write politics, I prefer to stick to humor, satire, parody, etc. and pick my spots.

I do have a sense that the next president of the United States is going to be Barack Obama, as in, we’ve gotten to the point where I will be surprised if anything derails him. I’m not saying this as someone who has been for him, or as someone who is jumping on the bandwagon. I think it is clear that Hillary Clinton won’t be taking the nomination from him; and that Republicans don’t have a prayer what with taking the blame for the economy being down the toilet. I wish the election could be about the stupidity of fighting a war of occupation in a country where we’re not wanted …

Ahh, well. Daily Kos is back up. I’m sure someone there already said it better, and at length.

“I am very certain that this military engagement will not be very difficult.”

– John McCain on CNN, September 12, 2002.

or:

“I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

“I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

– Barack Obama speech, Oct. 2, 2002

Just sayin’.

Maybe my standards keep going up. It is possible. I mean, *I* expect to keep getting better. Why can’t they?

But I also think The Times has declined gradually over the last 20 years, probably for much the same reasons that journalism has generally declined. Staff cuts. Space cuts. “Do more with less.” Etc.

I happen to own the domain name “notthenewyorktimes.com” … I’m getting increasingly tempted to use it. My annoyance of the day is the execrable headline:

Spitzer Wrestles Over Response, Paralyzing Albany

Please. Snowstorms sometimes paralyze Albany. That the guv’mint is all limbs-akimbo and that jaws are aflappin’ over Eliot Spitzer’s paid womanizing does not paralyze the city, or the state. If it paralyzes the legislature, that might be an improvement.

I get that. It’s really hard to muster up any sympathy. It’s difficult for me to think of him now other than as a “doofus,” to use the technical term.

So what about the other Johns? What about the sex workers, that being the term I prefer to use rather than hookers, or prostitutes, or all the worsewords and phrases that people will throw around? I don’t think any of them are, ummm, going down. Just the Emperors Club management, and Client #9, Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

What about Clients 1-8 and 10 to infinity? Who are they? Do we care? Does the F.B.I care? The New York Times?

It doesn’t look like it, does it.

Lots and lots of people broke the state laws in different states, in this case. More than a million bucks got spent on sex. It’s a drop in the bucket. Just google ™ “escort services”… do you think they’re all quaking in their five-inch heels?

I don’t.

But I bet they’re going to start screening out politicians, if they can. Let’s be clear here — the Emperors Club was singled out because the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. were investigating Eliot Spitzer, NOT because they were (gasp) running a high-priced escort agency.

“… in the Hauppauge offices of the Internal Revenue Service, investigators conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks found several unusual movements of cash involving the governor of New York, several officials said. “

That’s what The Times says. I do wonder just how “routine” this investigation was. This looks like a “gotcha” over a few thousand bucks. But it’s about sex, and there’s no defense when sex in involved, when everyone, especially you, knows your pants are down … knows your spouse is pissed and your family is devastated. Eliot Spitzer, if you read between the lines, also would have preferred not to use condoms when screwing a sex worker … another kind of crime to answer for, maybe, but not in court.

That Spitzer was stupid seems without question. But I don’t see anyone — even over at, say, Fleshbot, which has some otherwise excellent commentary — noting the likelihood that the banks and the feds were probably looking for anything they could get on the doofus governor of New York, who, after all, had made a shitload of enemies in his career.

I think the odds are 50-50 on whether Spitzer gets prosecuted … because the government really does not want to take the time to round up and make cases against all the other clients and the sex workers, and the government is going to feel like it has to do that in order to prosecute the former prosecutor.

But they might not. They might just decide he’s special, even though he isn’t. It would be a shame, maybe, if he took a bunch of otherwise OK sex workers and rich Johns down with him …

Update: Check out the questions and suspicions of a former Department of Justice lawyer here. Or, similarly … go check out “It looks like the Bush Justice Department just bagged themselves another Democratic Governor” …