Here's my prediction as of today, two days before the New Hampshire primary:

• Big Republican tussle between holy rollers and Mammonists divides the vote between Mussolini and Hucksterbee. McPain is a New Hampshire flash-in-the-pan.
  
  
• Ru Paul takes his $20M and launches an independent bid.
  
  
• Bloomberg, observing the splitting up of the electorate by Paul, throws his hat in the ring.
  
  
• Mammonists lose to the whack jobs. Hucksterbee picks a Mammonist running mate to toss the base a piece of red meat. Mussolini passes on the chance.
  
  
• Clinton gets real ugly on Obama's narrow ass. If the backlash outweighs the propaganda, she's toast. Let's give the benefit of the doubt to Democrats on this one, and assume Obama emerges victorious.
  
  
• Obama and Edwards consummate their marriage of convenience as running mates; open web site "andnowforsomethingcompletelydifferent.com"

In the four-way that would ensue under this scenario, Obama's blackness will have opportunity to collide with Ru Paul's past borderline-racist social observations, and slowly but surely his true nature will be exposed in all its putrid green ugliness. Ru Paul still manages to siphon off votes from Obama by chanting "end the war" and from Hucksterbee by chanting "Constitution."

With the two party-line candidates weakened by Ru Paul, who himself never manages to gain anything more than spoiler support because he wants to legalize drugs, Bloomberg seizes the election by the nuts and emerges victorious.

Who'll give me odds?

Here's why Ron Paul has such broad appeal: he's a different sort of mix and offers a little something for everybody. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

But one has to think about whether they can live with the aspects they disagree with, in my case, anti-governent, pro-privitization, anti-abortion philosophy that would dismantle Social Security, never ever get health care fixed, kill Medicare/Medicaid, kill education, sell off the National Parks, shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the working class, and all the rest of the economic Darwinism that Paul represents in his Libertarian streak.

This insightful primer is from this month's Mother Jones:

Libertarian Theology

Libertarianism might be a simple ideology, an aversion to big government in all its forms, but don't tell that to libertarians: "Like any movement of any size," says Nick Gillespie, editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, "it is an endless operation of trying to figure out more and more ways in which people who agree on 99.9 percent of everything can really hate each other's guts."

Anarcho-Capitalists: The most radical of the lot, they want to abolish government entirely (though, unlike regular anarchists, they do support private property rights). "The state acts like a band of thieves and killers," explains Lew Rockwell, the best-known exponent of this strain. "The private sector doesn't do that." (...no, of course not. BTW, this gem of a human being who felt Pinochet was persecuted also served on Ron Paul's staff at some point I believe.)

Minarchists: Archrivals to the anarcho-capitalists, they support a minimalist version of government: Let the state handle roads, policing, and defense—but nothing more. Many, including Ron Paul, view the Constitution as the ultimate minarchist document.

Cosmopolitan Libertarians: Term used by the minarchist editors of Reason to describe their embrace of world citizenship and deride rivals as hayseeds

Economic Libertarians: Worship free-market absolutists like Milton Friedman

Hippie Libertarians: Worship freedom-loving freaks like Larry Flynt

Religious Libertarians: Worship deities of their choosing, care about politics primarily as it affects religious freedom. In 17th-century England they were Puritan Roundheads. In 21st-century America they're Mormons.

Gold Bugs: Advocate a return to the gold standard, or some equivalent, as a way to diminish the fiscal powers of the state; dismiss foes as "inflationists"

Objectivists: Followers of philosopher Ayn Rand who love morality tales, hate anarchy, and endorse a scorched-earth foreign policy. If "flattening Fallujah to end the Iraqi insurgency will save American lives," Ayn Rand Institute director Yaron Brook has written, "to refrain from [doing so] is morally evil."

Neolibertarians: Libertarian neocons; big supporters of the Iraq War

Paleolibertarians: Old-schoolers who despise the neolibertarians for selling out to the system. Also think atheism is overrated.

Technolibertarians: Extropians, transhumanists, sci-fi-fans, they strive to transcend humanity's meat-puppet limitations and take self-determination to the final frontier.

South Park Conservatives: Find their politics articulated in a show created by two avowed libertarians; a seminal episode follows a race for school mascot between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Which, says Reason's Gillespie, "pretty much sums up how most libertarians approach politics."

Paultards: Blogosphere dis for those who annoy the online masses by relentlessly shilling for their man in comment threads, polls, and social networking sites

—J.H.

as posted in today's NYT:

The senior senator from Pennsylvania and minority leader of the Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter explained it all to Wolf Blitzer last Sunday.

Permit me to relay his explanation to you, if paraphrased somewhat: You see, America, it's not only understandable, but completely reasonable that Mukasey would skirt calling water boarding torture. That's because, since torture is against the law, he'd have to actually prosecute the law breakers.

You know, that's precisely the quality that I'd look for in an Attorney General.

They're rubbing our nose in it now, just daring us to do something about their arrogant abuse of power, and all we can do is look slack-jawed at each other, helpless while we watch this train wreck in slow motion, the demise of the greatest nation that ever existed.

And it's all aided and abetted by a feckless, flaccid, ineffectual (and with Feinstein and Schumer voting "aye" out of committee and the rest of his floor supporters in the face of this reality) an unquestionably co-conspiratorial Democratic Party for whom impeachment is off the table, dammit, no matter how egregious the activity.

Only this peculiar generation of useless stuffed suits would claim, as did Feinstein, that overtly covering up these crimes out in full view, in the midst of an AG's confirmation hearings no less, is what oversight looks like.

Future generations will read this history one day and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

Senator Spector this morning on Blitzer's coffee klatch made an interesting comment: to the effect that if Mukasey had declared water boarding torture he would put members of the administration in legal jeopardy.

Whoa! Let's unwind that for a second.

The administration orders torture, against domestic and international law.

[Waterboarding isn't torture, you say? Well, their own Justice Department subordinate in charge of making that determination experienced the procedure for himself and declared it so, and he was fired (shall we say "Shinseki-ed?") for it. Pol Pot used it. Tomás de Torquemada used it during the Spanish Inquisition. We've imprisioned and even executed Japanese for it during WWII. McCain says there's no doubt about it. There isn't.]

So, we've witnessed this blessed Sunday an Attorney General nominee being defended for not saying waterboarding is torture by the minority leader of the Judiciary Committee --- on the grounds that he'd then have to prosecute the crimes.

What?!

Meanwhile, stuffed suit Democrat Diane Feinstein, the pivotal vote, takes the position that Bush making a recess nominee is more undesirable because it would have no oversight. Instead, it's Feinstein's belief we should withhold oversight in the actual approval process, thereby sharing the responsibility with the administration for never prosecuting these crimes.

Where has our America gone, my fellow citizens?

John Dean had it right at TPM: as with the appointment of Elliot Abrams to replace John Mitchell, make the approval contingent on appointing a special counsel to investigate crimes, in this case, crimes much more egregious than Nixon ever dreamt.