• The hair. This blogger's detractors will argue that in bringing up Donald Trump's unruly mane, I am grasping at low-hanging comedic fruit. In fact, you will see, as this line of argument gathers steam, that it is not this blogger grasping at what's easy; it is The Donald grasping at highly situated bananas on a precarious branch. If Donald Trump is in fact a macaque or some other higher ape pretending to be a human, imagine the ambition. Every day it balances itself on its own hindquarters! It has put its damned, dirty, ape name on our skylines; it has polluted and befouled our politics at its highest levels!

  Human beings quite simply don't have hair that behaves in the manner that Donald Trump's hair behaves, with the possible exception of Rudy Giuliani (and this blogger, quite frankly, has his lingering doubts about Rudy's citizenship in the family of Man, as well). Certain members of the great ape family do, but not Man, QED.





• Apes throw their own feces. And what is it, pray tell, that Donald Trump does in our commons? Witness: "The big question is: What does John Jr. see in Daryl [Hannah], if anything. I have seen her on many occasions, and she is, quite simply, a 'six' -- and badly in need of a shower or a bath." Do human beings above the age of 7 actually talk like this? It comes from a boiling Freudian id, clearly. But the boiling, rancid id of what species? I would argue a macaque; an orangutang probably wouldn't be an outlandish guess, either.

  If that isn't an instance of tossing one's feces in public, witness this regarding Rosie O'Donnell: "Rosie fails at everything. She had a variety show, it failed. I mean, she -- I don't understand now, somebody else, some moron will come and hire her again to do something else and that will fail." Again, this is violence toward a woman, behavior only tolerated in the animal kingdom and in some unfortunate parts of the former Soviet Empire. Further, one cannot help but note that an alarming number of Donald Trump's wives belong to countries in the nimbus of the former Soviet Empire. Just saying. Moving right along.





• Apes mock charge. And what is it, pray tell, that Donald Trump does when he frequently runs pseudo-presidential campaigns? The sheer animal spectacle of it all! Public radio-show host and former Spy founder Kurt Andersen, one of the best contemporary social philosophers of our time, said on New York's WNYC last year of Trump and his latest "mock charge":

  What will his excuse be if he says, "I've decided not to run"? ... The boy can cry wolf only so many times. So, he has done this again and again and again. I mean, sometimes he does it as a kind of left-wing Democrat saying that we have to have universal health care, and George Bush is the worst president in history, what he said a few years ago, and now he says it as, I love the Tea Party, and I don't believe he was born in this country, and he's the worst president in history. So it's an amazing spectacle. He is an amazing spectacle, which is why I guess I've been a sort of a student of Donald Trump for I guess these 25 years.

  To be a student of Donald Trump, to be sure, is to be a student of the family of the great apes. More zoology than sociology, this blogger would argue.

It is not inconceivable that Ron Paul's timing -- his campaign upsurge -- has the good fortune of reaching its peak just as the Iowa straw caucus poll begins and all the other not-Romney wannabes have fallen. There is, one cannot fail to note, a "felt need" within the party for anyone other than Romney that is so strong it would to consider an astonishing buffoon like Herman
Cain. Ron Paul, though at times he can appear a bit Magooish, is not Herman Cain. That having been said, I fully expect Mitt Romney to win the GOP nomination. Mitt Romney
is making the fewest mistakes; Mitt Romney is a solid debater; Mitt Romney -- and this is
my most important point -- has, quite simply, the best hair. It's a truly fucking awesome
head of hair, graying at the temples just as it ought. Romney is quite frankly good at
projecting an image of inevitability, of quiet competence. It is impossible, however, to
ignore entirely that telling 25% ceiling that his campaign cannot seem to crack no matter
how "competent" his projected surface. Mitt, who knows that numbers don't lie, would
understand my skepticism here. A quarter of Republican support is a fragile house upon
which to build an American Presidency.

It has been said that with regards to elections, Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in
line. Another extreme oversimplification coming right up: the Dems are the "Mommy Party"
-- concerned with education, healthcare, human rights. The Reps are the "Daddy Party" -- all
fiscal discipline and national security, rigid and hierarchical (and they don't ask for
directions). It is, in GOP terms, by the logic of hierarchy, Mitt's turn by virtue of the fact that
he won the silver medal in 2008, just like it was McCain's turn in 2008 because he got the
silver back in 2004. Fair play and all that; it's all very white of them.

In my guestimation the GOP primary ultimately plays out something like this: Romney
makes it into the top tier in Iowa, maybe third, quite possibly second -- no big deal, as he
has lowered expectations already -- and then wins New Hampshire. New Hampshire is the
key to Mitt's campaign, the place where the Team Romney makes its stand. I wouldn't be
surprised that someone as -- how does one say this? -- calculating as Mitt Romney didn't
think of Wolfboro for a second home because of the added bonus of the Presidential
campaign calendar. New Hampshire is also where, in all likelihood, another Mormon on the
trail, Jon Huntsman, will make his concession speech saying that he would never have
forgiven himself if he didn't give it a try. Mitt Romney has an 11 acre estate in Wolfeboro, was Governor of neighboring Massachusetts (most of the New Hampshire population lives in the Boston media market) and is thus a known quality in the state.

Next up: the South. Romney will lose South Carolina GOP primary, because he is simply not
conservative enough and because he is not Christian enough. At around that time Mitt will
be rolling out a shitload of endorsements - those carefully cultivated IOUs that he has kept
close to his chest. Those will minimize the blow, make him look inevitable even while he is
having his ass handed to him south of the Mason-Dixon line. That steady stream of
endorsements will jettison Mitt into Florida at the end of January and give him just the
right kind of momentum into Super Tuesday. The endorsements -- from party
superheavyweights like Jebby and Chris Chrystie -- and the great money advantage should put him over. This is all good so as long as Ron Paul doesn't win Iowa. In that event all theoretical
bets are off.

So I ask -- what if Ron Paul happened to win Iowa. It is not an inconceivable event, not
beyond the realm of possibility anyway. Ron Paul's support in Iowa has always been above
a respectable 10%. Paul is, however, starting to surge in the run up. And, curiously, Mitt
Romney may be noticing. Even as President Obama was making his historic trans-Pacific pivot, Romney, on a far
less grand geopolitical scale, was pivoting to compete in Iowa. Does
"Mittens," as Rachel Maddow so un-affectionately calls him, want to put this thing away with a
quick one-two combination punch in Iowa, then New Hampshire? Is Romney worried that a
surging Ron Paul might win in Iowa, thus radically boosting Team Paul's chances in also
taking New Hampshire, a state perfectly tailored to Ron Paul's libertarianism, a state that
happens to love the art of the political comeback? Remember Pat Buchanan, another
arguably loveable paleoconservative "outsider" in the Granite state in 1992?

Were Ron Paul to win Iowa, he would definitely alter the dynamics of the primary race in
New Hampshire, a key state for Mitt Romney. Were Ron Paul to win Iowa and then, quite
possibly, New Hampshire as well, Mitt Romney would be headed down South -- enemy
territory -- and would not reach his allies in Florida until January's end. And what if Ron
Paul's paleoconservatism and his momentum were enough to win him South Carolina, the
hat trick? Then Mitt Romney, allies in Florida or not, would be very, very fucked. And
the big winners of such a scenario - not so very far-fetched -- would be Ron Paul.

And, of course, President Barack Obama.

"The slower departure sends a message to the Pakistanis-that we're not going to do what we did last time and bug out precipitously, leaving Afghanistan as a playing field in their Great Game against the Indians. It also gives the Afghan National Army more time to establish itself as a convincing anti-Taliban force. This is not a far-fetched proposition, by the way: the ANA is 90% non-Pashtun, a nearly-direct descendent of the old Northern Alliance that lost the civil war to the Taliban in the 1990s. (The various Taliban factions are almost entirely Pashtun.) My guess is that the ANA will be more than willing to continue that civil war after we go, and more than able to keep the country now that it has US equipment, training and logistical support (as opposed to the spotty Indian, Iranian and Russian support it received in the past).

"A friend gave Novak Catholic literature after he came close to dying from spinal meningitis in the early 1980s. About a decade later, the columnist's wife, Geraldine, also not a Catholic, persuaded him to join her at Mass at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Washington. The celebrant was a former source of Novak's.


"Father Peter Vaghi, now Msgr. Vaghi and pastor of the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Md., was a former Republican lawyer and adviser to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. He had been a source for the Evans and Novak column that Novak wrote with Rowland Evans.

"Novak started to go to Mass regularly, but it wasn't until a few years later that he decided to convert to Catholicism. The turning point, as he recounts in his book, happened when he went to Syracuse University in New York to give a lecture. Before he spoke, he was seated at a dinner table near a young woman who was wearing a necklace with a cross. Novak asked her if she was Catholic, and she posed the same question to him.

"Novak replied that he had been going to Mass each Sunday for the last four years, but that he had not converted.

"Her response -- 'Mr. Novak, life is short, but eternity is forever' -- motivated him to start the process of becoming a Catholic through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. He was baptized at St. Patrick's Church in 1998. His wife was also baptized a Catholic."

On Saturday I called Dad: 'I'm going to be on Meet the Press tomorrow. Any advice?"

'Pretend you're talking to me,' Big Russ said. 'Don't get too fancy. Don't talk that Washington talk. Ask questions that my buddies at the legion hall would want to know about.' It was good counsel and, as usual, I took it.

"Frankly, I've always believed that the quickest way to show you're a chump is to run around telling everyone about that aren't one. You want to prove to the American people that you aren't shook? Don't talk them to death. Get in the ring and kick the other guys ass. It's that simple. Screw all this talk about who's tougher than who. Here is what I know: McCain will talk that shit about Ayers and brag about taking the gloves off. He will send his wife and Sarah Palin out to do his dirty work. But when faced with the man who he believes 'pals around with terrorist' he played his position."

"There has never been a moment when, at least in public, (Obama) seems gripped by inner turmoil. It's not willpower or self-discipline he shows as much as an organized unconscious. Through some deep, bottom-up process, he has developed strategies for equanimity, and now he's become a homeostasis machine.


"When Bob Schieffer asked him tough questions during the debate Wednesday night, he would step back and describe the broader situation. When John McCain would hit him with some critique -- even about fetuses being left to die on a table -- he would smile in amusement at the political game they were playing. At every challenging moment, his instinct was to self-remove and establish an observer's perspective.

"Through the debate, he was reassuring and self-composed. McCain, an experienced old hand, would blink furiously over the tension of the moment, but Obama didn't reveal even unconscious signs of nervousness. There was no hint of an unwanted feeling."

"Sorry, John Updike. Don't get your hopes up, Joyce Carol Oates. And Philip Roth, what were you thinking? It's been 15 long years since an American author was last honoured with a Nobel prize for literature.

Judging by the low opinion the head of the award jury holds of American writing, it is not going to happen this year."

...

Robert Kimball, the editor of The New Criterion, registered (Nobel Literature Committee judge Horace) Engdahl's comments with a degree of detachment. He noted that the other Nobel committees are due to announce their prizes next week, in medicine, peace and economics, and that Engdahl may have been trying to generate some advance publicity.

The committee on literature by convention gives only 48 hours notice of its announcement.

'It reminds me a little bit of the Apollo space programme that Uganda instituted under the rule of Idi Amin where they had rockets and so on except that they were made out of balsa wood,' he said."

"During the independence festivities only one noted Zambian failed to share in all the harmony. He is Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, a grade-school science teacher and the director of Zambia's National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, who claimed the goings-on interfered with his space program to beat the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the moon. Already Nkoloso is training twelve Zambian astronauts, including a curvaceous 16-year-old girl, by spinning them around a tree in an oil drum and teaching them to walk on their hands, 'the only way humans can walk on the moon.'"

"Mr. Rudd revealed in an interview with Beijing Now in Beijing on Saturday that he was sitting just two rows behind Mr. Bush when an 'animated' discussion between he and Mr. Putin broke out over Russia's advance into South Ossetia, a breakaway region in neighbouring Georgia.

'The President and Mr. Putin were in animated conversation two seats in front of us and I imagine they had a few things on their agenda,' Mr. Rudd said.

Mr. Rudd said that Mr. Bush appeared to be making a strong point to the Russian Prime Minister, even as the world's elite athletes filed into Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium."

"In Beijing, Mr. Putin was able to talk directly to another Olympic visitor - President Bush - and still found time to pay Russian athletes a morale-boosting visit. Then he flew straight to Vladikavkaz, across the border from South Ossetia, to meet tearful refugees. Both moments received ample coverage on the country's television evening news, adding to the impression of the former President as an indefatigable action hero."

"Putin pushed Bush on whether he would attend the summit scheduled in St. Petersburg, which is Putin's hometown, for the city's 300th anniversary.'I certainly hope I can make it,' Bush said somewhat coyly."

"In an interview with CNN last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of orchestrating the war in Georgia in order to benefit the candidacy of John McCain. He claimed that 'U.S. citizens were indeed in the area of conflict' and that 'the only one who can give such orders is their leader.' Without endorsing Putin's claim, many European officials reportedly do harbor suspicions that there was more American involvement in the crisis than previously reported."

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