Kerry files complaint against 527 group "Gunboats Without Scruples". Yawn yawn yawn.

It's not like JK is out there telling MoveOn to go easy on GW, now, it is? Unfortunately, this just sounds like election year whining. After all, is the FEC going to do anything? Is it empowered to?

Face facts: the Dems chose Kerry because they knew whoever they chose would have to endure the total shitstorm of allegations, innuendoes, outright assaults on the truth, and all the other insulting crap that goes along with being a target of those bullies, the Republicans. Let me ask you: would John Dean have been able to take it? He would have melted down and crumpled in the last few weeks. Gephardt? That would have been handing the keys to the car to the GOP.

Hence the decision to use veterans and firefighopportunityters to prove that Kerry is an "Amerrrcan". That he ain't afraid of "terrr"* or "terrrists". And hence the opportunity for the other team to drag some vets out of the pond and have then repudiate Kerry's Amerrcanizm. Bo-riiiiing..... Oh, and really original too, I might add.

Oh, and speaking of free speech - I'm inclined to agree with Los Angeles Times editorial and opinion editor Michael Kinsley, who was Scott Simon's guest on Weekend Edition this morning: the 527 Group law is a joke. The re-election committees will always find the end run around any legislation designed to limit awful spending on awful attack ads. So why bother? And, after all, one person's attack ad is another person's free speech.

* Sometimes also pronounced "teyrrr".

Do I have to resign myself to the fact that when I was growing up, the Left had meaning and purpose, and as I age and die, the Right is in the ascendancy and the Left is in shambles? Will my final days be as desperate and filled with fear as Winston's were in 1984?

These thoughts were triggered by the following new boutique trends which were called to my attention this morning, brought to you by the current regime:

• Increased personal surveillance. Face it, if the FBI (or whatever it is called now) wants to know if you've been buying Twinkies, it can just watch the tapes of you buying stuff, or dig through your bank account records.
• Decreased First Amendment rights. The "Scalia Posture" I heard tell of this morning is a variation on "What Would George Washington Do?" In other words, when the framers built the Constitution, they had a very narrow idea in mind because they couldn't predict the future and forsee stuff like TV and cellphones and kiddie pr0n. So we should just dummy up, Edith, and pretend that the law is supposed to be interpreted as if these things don't exist.
• Historical revisionism. You watch - "W" will find a way to assert that there really were WMDs in Iraq - wiley ol' Saddam managed to clear them out before we got to them. Yeah, and then he hid in his "rat hole" without getting himself out too. But the Administration does have this peculiar idea that if you distort or misstate history, the public will believe you. Sad to say, they're right - at least for half the nation.

What would have happened to this nation if Ben Franklin had not been allowed to publish his Almanack? Is not freedom of the press a cornerstone of this democracy? The issue of keeping your Deep Throat informant deep is tricky - without the guarantee of anonymity, we would not hear a lot of the truth. We wouldn't hear a lot of the lies, either. But if the burden of keeping our press free falls on the shoulders of publishers who need to foot the bill for costly litigation, we'll see how fast the Free Press falls by the boards. Censorship will become a de facto feature of American Capitalism.

NPR tells me this morning that if half the protesters anticipated to show up in Nuevo York actually show up, the protester-to-delegate ratio will be 50-to-1. 50 to 1. You want to know what the big irony is? It's this: since Amerika is not a Free Speech Zone, nobody in Duluth watching the convention on TV will know that there are any protesters in New York - or homeless people either, for that matter.

Hizzoner Bloomberg is ready to be very accomodating to the onslaught of protesters - after all, they need to eat too, and sleep somewheres, maybe this commercial hotel here? But please, not our Public County Hotel, cuz that's already overcrowded and besides, that costs us money, not you the publicly disobedient. You wouldn't like Rikers very much anyways. So here are the rules: stay behind the razor wire, spend money, and nobody will get hurt. Nobody will get seen or heard, and all will be well in Georgie's World. It doesn't seem to occur to Hizzoner that there's a nation of dumpster-diving vegans out there ready to inflict anarchy in the form of not buying a single thing during their stay in the Big Apple.

Hope you're all comfortably numb out there for this one, folks. The electoral process is a farce, and it has nothing to do with you.

But don't misconstrue me - it's important to act anyway, no matter how futile it appears. I fully advocate that you get yer ass on a bus and go to The City and be counted behind the razor wire. The whole world is watching, even if Amerika isn't.....

OK, so - when are we going to peek under the rug and see what we've swept under it? My bet is somewhere around or after November 12.

How many more days can you wake up and listen to NPR and not see the big picture: the cost of everything is going up, yet wages are flat or even retreating, as people are willing to accept less money to do things merely because any job is better than no job at all.

What triggered this today? A bit about how the price of coal has basically doubled within the last 10 years. Take that and add the fact that oil is now above $40 a barrel and you've got the basic recipe for the dirty word nobody has mentioned yet: inflation. When the cost of things goes up for one reason or another, you have inflation.

Politicians and economists argue that inflation is when there's an excess of money supply. This extra pile of cash floating around in the economy drives prices up - in other words, it'll require more of those dollars to buy your loaf of bread because those dollars are so plentiful, they're cheap - in other words they buy less stuff. In economies which try to solve their solvency woes by printing more money, this is what you get. Basic requirement for peanut better sandwich: one wheelbarrow of cash.

But think about this: when the basic cost of goods goes up, that drives prices up immediately. Your friendly petroleum dealer isn't going to absorb the price increase of goods to him or her - the increase will get passed along to the trucking company buying the fuel to ship the goods. Trucking company which, dutifully, passes the cost increase along to the iPod manufacturer shipping the iPods. Or farmer shipping lettuce. Or whomever shipping whatever.

Remember too that we are all energy consumers. Look at poor Florida, for example. One of today's news items it that without power, the sick are getting sicker. Nobody's got A/C* for crying out loud, so food is spoiling and old folks are suffering.

We gotta get away from oil, people. Seems impossible, I know, and life will get harder. But what are you gonna do when the well dries up? Run outdoors and shoot your neighbor? Is that the American way? The way people cut each other off in traffic, it sure seems like it. Yo, Christians: what ever happened to turning the other cheek?

*Air conditioning? Alternating current? Same diff.