perfidy

Microsoft's innovative (if, by innovative, you mean taking ideas that have been kicking around for twenty years and putting them in an overpriced and stunningly unwieldy form factor and calling it "revolutionary") Surface computer was debuted at the D conference a little while ago.

Here's a new take on it.

Several of our Ministers have, on occasion, used this forum to express a rabid, unthinking and vicious hatred of the traditional and sacred art of gerrymandering congressional districts. Now, if they only knew how difficult it is to balance out all those competing interests, they'd make less fun of all the funny shapes. But wait! Now they can know how difficult it is, by playing the magical interweb gerrymandering game! How fun is that? Actually, more fun than you'd think, and rather tricky until you get to the sucker bit at the end where they try to foist redistricting reform on you. That part's easy.

I found this over at the Llamabutchers, after I did my Harry Reid post over at Murdoc's. This is makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Helpful advice for surviving when the zombies come, all in a convenient wearable package:

Get yours today here.

In the comments of the Pseudo-Linkzookery post, the conversation turned to wargaming - which was a bit of a surprise since if a thread drifts off topic here at Perfidy, the destination is usually zombies. One of the many games mentioned was Axis and Allies, one of my personal favorites, and a game I have not had the opportunity to play (due entirely to Mrs. Buckethead's bullheaded unwillingness to devote several hours to a boardgame.) It turns out that the Maximum Leader is a fan of the game as well, and so I propose that we set aside Bastille day as the first annual Perfidy Axis and Allies day. It seems particularly appropriate given that the French had no part in WWII, and will also have no part in the game.

Anyone who is local to the metro DC area who might be interested in playing a round of A&A, let me know.

Here's an interesting thing: a map of the United States with the names of the states replaced with the names of countries that have equivalent GNP's. It seems that my home state of Ohio is, economically, a brother to Australia. Cool. Take a look. Thanks to Rocket Jones for the link.

Here's some interesting things:

Yesterday, the Victims of Communism Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC, in memory of the hundred million and more victims of global communism. Thanks to the Daily Brief for the heads-up, I'll have to check that out.

Also, the Brits are moving ahead on their new nuclear sub - the Astute, first in a new class of subs for the Royal Navy. Soon to launch, and only five years late and 900 million pounds overbudget. But look at this:

That wheely thing at the bottom would be great for the Iowa-class Main Battle Tank, no?

My current preferred candidate for President is the Fred Thompson, who is apparently pissing off all the other candidates by out-polling them without even having a declared candidacy. And, they're gunnin' for 'im.

A physicist is soliciting funds from you, yes, you, to conduct research into quantum retrocausality. That means, John Cramer of the University of Washington Physics Department wants to see if "signaling, or communication, in reverse time" is possible. I read both his sf novels, I think I might send him maybe a buck-two-fifty.

Tony Blair has turned the UK into a panopticon surveillance society. Let us hope we can duck that one here, but I think it's largely inevitable.

And finally, it is my birthday. Please email me for details on where you can send your Apple gift cards so that I can get my iPhone.

My latest post over at Murdoc Online

As I expected, in the comments for my last post someone recommended that the battleships be brought back from retirement. We all love the battleships. Armored to the point of (near) invulnerability, graceful, powerful, and loaded with 16” guns. A battleship broadside delivers a mind numbing amount of shells on target. We dig that. It’s a spectacle. And of course, naval support of Marine landings is an important role. But how useful is it?

Step back a bit. There is a reason that battleships were relegated to a subsidiary role. And that reason is air power. The primary consideration is not that the airplane can deliver more firepower more accurately, because until very recently the accuracy bit was sorely lacking, and there is no way that a teeny, tiny airplane – or even many teeny, tiny airplanes – can deliver the weight of fire that a battleship can. I imagine that a single gun from a battleship weighs as much as a plane.

The reason that the carriers and their air wings achieved primacy in battle is the range and speed of the aircraft. Airplanes are faster than boats. Now, much faster. That is what allows a carrier to control a bubble hundreds of miles in diameter, while a battleship is limited to, essentially, line of sight.

Here Over at MO, the commenting-American community is often attacking the esteemed air arms of our military for their addiction to air power as a means of conducting warfare. I have seen many complaints that the battleship – and artillery for the Army – are slighted in favor of highly expensive fragile airplanes that deliver itsy little bombs. And it is true that the more, uh, “focused” among air power advocates seem to believe that air power is the cure for all ills.

Yet, while we (and especially Dfens and James) might legitimately and with the certain conviction that we are in the right argue that the way that the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and even the Post Office procure, design, screw up and eventually buy combat aircraft that are tragically expensive and often not really suited to the roles that they need to fill; the fact remains that an aircraft will always be more flexible, faster, and cover a greater range than any battleship or Crusader self-propelled gun.

The flexibility of air power is a gift from the almighty – load the bombs or missiles you need, and any target within a thousand miles is doomed in a space of hours, or less. Doesn’t matter if it’s a building, a bunker, a bridge, a boat or a tank column. Artillery, no matter how puissant (talking guns here, not rockets) is not hitting beyond a couple dozen miles, and neither is a battleship. And both move at 40 mph or less.

With the coming of precision guided bombs, the effectiveness of our planes has drastically increased. Once it took a thousand bomber raid using tactics of questionable morality to get an even chance at taking out military targets. (Combat air support was usually a bit more effective than strategic bombing, but still had limitations.) Now, with the wonders of modern technology at our service, we can actually take out that bridge. Or that building. To the point that the primary limiting factor on the employment of air power is not the accuracy of our weapons, but of our intelligence. (In more ways than one.)

A plane can move at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour over a range in the thousands of miles and destroy anything we can detect, with near perfect reliability. The constraints are the ability to detect targets, and the bomb loads of the planes in question.

The fault, then, is not that we have foolishly mothballed battleships or canceled artillery programs. It’s that we are buying airplanes foolishly. It is natural for the Air Force and Naval, Marine and Army Aviation to go for the biggest, most expensive and technologically sophisticated aircraft they can build. We can sort of forgive them for that. We want the coolest toys, and our contractors love the money they get for designing and mismanaging high technology weapons programs. It’s also completely wrong.

Where we’ve screwed up is in buying two dozen billion dollar stealth bombers instead of a hundred less capable, higher capacity bombers. Look at the service we’re getting out of the B-52, still. The F-22 is ridiculously expensive, and seriously flawed as many have pointed out in the comments here. It’s invisible to radar. It can kill any other plane that dares to leave the ground. Bats can’t detect it. Yet, it can only carry one medium sized bomb and it’s gun has less rounds than a police revolver. It’s utility is therefore limited by the small number of credible enemy fighters for it to destroy.

The fact that the air heads are always pushing for multi-role aircraft as a “savings measure” is frankly retarded. The planes end up costing more than twice as much and aren’t as effective in either role. What we need is ground support, in quantity, to make up for two things: the fact that artillery delivers a heavy weight of fire, and the fact that my kid’s scooter is faster than most artillery.

Let’s buy a couple squadrons of F-22s, we can use them for the really tricky stuff when we go to war with China. Same with the B-2. Fine, the Air Force can be happy with that. I’m sure the naval version of the F-35 will be an adequate interceptor. Stealthy-ish and fast, it is probably more than a match for any potential air threat. Let us buy a few. Keep the research fires burning so that we can take advantage of any new tech that comes down the pike. But let’s not buy a thousand planes at a hundred mil a pop for no damn reason.

As much as I love and covet advanced technology, we need to back off just a bit. The capabilities of our potential enemies just don’t require it, and in pursuing it, we deny ourselves capabilities that we know we need, and that can be used against any enemy, large or small. A relatively small force of very high technology planes will serve to assert and maintain air superiority. Likewise, stealth bombers of various types are the kind of doorknockers we need to take out air defenses and hit high-value targets deep inside enemy territory. But using an F-22 for CAS, or relying on a billion dollar stealth bomber to loiter over an insurgency is not an optimal solution. Instead, let’s build airplanes that suit our needs.

Like that new version of the A-10 that coolhand77 suggested in the comments. Something tough, simple, and capable of carrying a double buttload of very, very smart bombs. And, of course, the modern avionics to make best use of those bombs. And why don’t we give it to the Army while we’re at it. Forcing the Army to use helicopters regardless of whether they are fit for the task is slightly daft. Modern bombs are very effective indeed – clustered munitions, smart bombs, precision guided munitions of all kinds – delivered in quantity by cheap, high-payload attack bombers will be what we need to provide support for infantry on the ground.

And let’s build a naval version. What we need – to make restoring and then crewing vastly expensive battleships unnecessary – is a replacement for the A-6. A carrier air wing that has, say, a navalized, new model A-10 capable of carrying a substantial amount of ordinance could perform the role of naval support for amphibious landings that an Superbugs and F-35’s simply cannot thanks to their limited payload capacity.

For the Air Force, a B-52 replacement based on a commercial or military cargo plane would be a cost effective way to deliver, when needed, large amounts of ordinance in a environment where control of airspace is more or less a given. The advent of stand-off weapons like the J-SOW even means that targets can be serviced from a distance even when control of the air is not complete.

For the price of one $200mil F-22, we could have twenty or so A-10s, each capable of delivering many times the weight of bombs. The A-10s we have in service have been or are being modified to better use smart weapons, but we need more, not less of this type of plane. The naval need for this sort of aircraft is even greater. Likewise, the $2bil cost of a B-2 bomber would likely give us eight B-767 bombers, each with about three times the bomb capacity of the stealth bomber.

Air power is useful, cool, and lethal. Our addiction to buying the state of the art prevents us from actually employing air power to maximum advantage.

Murdoc, of the world famous Murdoc Online, has foolishly entrusted me with the keys to his website. I'll be guest posting over there for about a week, and you can check out my first attempt at losing him his reputation and traffic here.

Ever wanted to know something about video codecs? I'm giving you all or nothing: read this link and know everything, or don't and know nothing. Actually, it's a well written piece, and if the mysteries of codecs have you befuddled, it should sort you right out.

Wisconsin: a manure soaked, cow-infested corner of the world inhabited by crap-beer-sozzled, squishy socialist, Scandinavian refugees. Given that they have so little to be proud of, why should we ridicule them? Silly question. Because we can.

• Badgers?! We don't need no stinkin' badgers
• You're Among Cows
• We put the "sin" in Wisconsin!
• The Carnation Coffee-Mate Non-Dairy Creamer® State
• Not just cow farmers, progressivecow farmers
• My own private Sweden
• Come see the Radiant Progressive Future in Wisconsin!
• Land of funny accents
• Familiarity breeds contempt, which is why we are so self-loathing
• We gave D&D to the world, please don’t hate us
• Eat Cheese or Die
• Cow Pie Paradise
• The State of Mustardly Love
• Wisconsin: Minty Fresh
• Forward - always forward, never straight
• A cheesy motto for a cheesy state
• We had a thin guy who lived here, but he was eaten
• More boviny goodness than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick
• Not so boring if you're drunk
• The Seasonal Affective Disorder State
• Look, jerky, I don't need to talk to you!
• Pinko commie, but in a nice Swedish way, not a bloodthirsty Russian way
• I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay
• Milwaukie’s Best: the cause of, and solution to, all life’s problems
• Say "Cheeeese" and I'll slit your throat, fucko
• Milky Lickers
• We’ll provide the beer, cheese & bratwurst – you bring the air freshener
• Come Cut Our Cheese
• Wisconsin is like its beer: fucking close to water
• Badger Badger Badger Badger
• Western Outer New Jersey
• You’ve got a vaguely Scandinavian friend in Wisconsin
• The Cheesy, Cupric, Milky Badger State
• The best place to see a tractor on the road
• Spicy lamby nipple chops with minty pickle sour sauce!
• Out drinking your state since 1848
• Fargo’s in North Dakota, jackass
• Gateway to Michigan’s Fantabulous Upper Peninsula
• Stay Just a Little Bit Longer! Does that sound needy? Be honest.

By now, even headhunters in the highlands of New Guinea are aware that the Jesus Phone from Apple will be released on the 29th of this month. But I will have to wait a little longer to get my hands on my own personal iPhone. My current two year contract does not expire until July 17th, and I must wait until it does before starting a new one. Damn, damn, damn. Mrs. Buckethead is highly dubious of my intentions to get a new phone, especially since it costs half a grand. I have a perfectly good Motorola Razr, she says, and she's right. But the Razr doesn't have that touchscreen magic. It doesn't have the preternaturally slick interface that can only come from Apple. It doesn't have WiFi. I want an iPhone so bad I can taste it.

It seems that Liftport, the space elevator company, is running into some serious trouble - which bodes ill for both efforts to build a beanstalk, and for friend of the Ministry Brian. Here's hoping that they get it together. I want to ride a train to space.

West Virginia is second only to New Jersey in the abuse leveled at it from the decent states. And just like not everyone can be thick-headed, rude Mafioso-wannabes living in a pestilential, polluted industrial nightmare; not everyone can be inbred, uncultured rednecks living in abject poverty amidst the wreckage of a once beautiful landscape. There is, thank heaven, only one West Virginia.

• America’s Dip Cup
• The Robert E. Byrd Memorial State
• The Mountainish State
• It seemed like a good idea at the time
• Got Teeth?
• My other car is West Virginia
• The State of Brotherly, and Sisterly, Love
• Almost Poland
• Not Just Strip Mines and Rednecks Any More. Well, Okay, Still Just Strip Mines And Rednecks.
• Because somebody has to make Virginia look good
• The Manhandle State
• Oh, honestly, people. We have a world-class orchestra. We have a university.
• Where Senator Robert E. Byrd Sends Your Federal Tax Money
• Come see our new paved roads! You paid for them!
• Now with electicity
• Where girls and grizzly bears both lick their paws
• We Figured There Was Enuff "Norths" and "News”
• Fighting Never Proved Anything, Except Who’s Better
• Where "family values" has a slightly different meaning
• One Big Happy Family
• Why’d we have to throw out the good part of the state?
• That’s “Appalachian-American” to you, fucko
• We... hey, Joe-Bob, pass me the chewin' tobakky, willya?
• New Jersey is down on its knees before Almighty God giving thanks that we are in the union
• Deliverance was filmed in South Carolina; Indeed, Our Rate of Murderous Inbred Banjoists Is Well Below That of Massachusetts
• Where cars up on blocks outnumber cars that run 3-1
• West Virginia: Better When You’re Drunk
• The non-wealthy, non-slave-ownin’, white trash Virginia
• Hateful, Talentless, War-Lovin’ Trailer Trash
• Yes, you can live in a trailer on a 45 degree slope. Why?
• Duct tape is the new chrome
• It's All Relative in West Virginia
• New Jersey is the West Virginia of the North
• Hey, we’re an oppressed minority, too
• West Virginia is the Best Virginia
• Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and Route 77 to Cleveland
• West Virginia is Bigger than France
• West Virginia Bathes More than France
• Ain’t No Lovin’ Like West Virginia Lovin’
• The Hillbilly Rape State
• Montani semper leperi
• Weird, Woebegone, West Virginia
• Semper Redneckius
• Almost Heaven, for very generous values of “almost”
• We know God hates us, ‘cause coal is so much cheaper than oil
• Just think if we was rich like them ay-rab shakes. Damitalltohell.
• The fightenest, drinkenest state in the Union
• The Moonshine State
• You ain’t a revenoor, is ya?
• The Commonwealth of Byrd
• Byrdania
• The People’s Republic of Kleegle-Byrd
• Byrdmark
• Byrdland
• Byrdatopia
• Byrdania
• Die Grosser Byrdreich

Patton has accused me of being overly concerned about wasting a scarce natural resource. The category tag. In this, of course, he is completely wrong. Naturally, I could have argued that over-categorizing a post dilutes the utility of tags. And I would have been right. But that wasn't the point. I was attacking him on aesthetic grounds, and just to stick a stick in his eye.

Just to prove that I am not some sort of homo-tree-hugging-enviro-commie, this post, which really is about everything, is tagged with every category we have. And, when I have a free moment, I'll add some new categories, and add them to this post.

So there.

We are in the home stretch now for the interminable Perfidy continuing educational series, "new mottoes for boring states." To be frank, I don't know what I'm going to do when it's all over. What will I post on? Countries? Continents? Well, while I ponder that, you can peruse our suggestions for the sappy state of Washington:

• Come See Why Cobain Committed Suicide
• Not just Evergreen, SuperGreen
• Where even the Tear Gas is environmentally friendly
• Look Good in Flannel
• Don’t screw with us, or we’ll sic the Killer Whales on your ass
• With Gates, all things are possible
• Help! We're Overrun By Nerds and Slackers!
• Al-ki is not short for “Alcoholic”
• Nirvana, it ain't
• No, the Capitol has "DC" after its name
• Where Californians go to die
• Home of Frasier
• Come for the Retarded Protesters -- Stay for the Over-roasted Coffee!
• The Old Boeing State
• We hate that pretentious Eddie Vedder fuck, too
• We are a state, not the a craphole Federal District
• We are the first, and likely the last, state to be named after a president
• A wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft-Starbucks GmbH.
• Not The Cool Washington, The Other One
• Keep Washington Green, Grow Even More Hemp
• Getting there is all the fun
• Our heroes are Injuns we kilt a hundred years ago
• The New Jersey of the Great Northwest
• We like our state, so STAY THE FUCK OUT!
• Our state tree is the Hemlock for a reason
• All the grim raininess of England, without the history
• Gateway to Alaska
• Experience Washington, no, Experience Washington
• Bigfoot’s gonna git ya
• 54-40 or Fight!
• If it’s not ecologically sound, it’s crap
• Proud home of D.B. Cooper
• SayWAtf
• The People’s Republic of Ecotopia
• Geeks, Freaks, and Treehuggers welcome!
• Grunge wannabes will be interned in our re-education camps

The Fred is doing very well in the online GOP straw poll run by, uh, GOP Straw Polls. As you can see if you follow the link, The Fred has been chosen as first choice by over fifty percent of all respondents. Romney and Guiliani are trailing significantly behind, both in the teens, and the ragged rabble of other GOP candidates languish in the single digits. Naturally, this is a self-selected group, and not a scientific poll like those run by the major news organizations. Nevertheless, that's a hell of a lot of support from at least one group of people - and a group of people, moreover, that will have a large effect on the campaign if what we saw in 2004 is any indication of the growing importance of blogging on elections.

Off of slashdot, I think, an article about how some dude makes $70 million a year buying expired domain names. Damn, damn, damn.

Virginia has been my home for most of a decade now, and while Virginia has its charms (among them being a hell of a lot more jobs than my home state of Ohio) there is still much to ridicule in my state of domicile. I could speak of the starkly horrific traffic, but that problem is really more of a DC metro issue than one for the state as a whole. But hey, there's still just tons to make fun of:

• Virginia is for Lepers
• Sort of the South, but with fewer guns
• South Carolina may have bolted first, but we made the Confederacy
• Fireworks! Cigarettes! Ham!
• Don’t tell any one, but Queen Betsy got around a bit
• Who Says Government Stiffs and Slackjaw Yokels Don't Mix?
• My Virginia is Itchy
• Please don't confuse us with West Virginia!
• Birthplace of the Slave-Ownin' Presidents
• Tobacco Is Only a Hobby
• Not so much Virginia as Virginesque
• East Virginia
• Home of the CIA. Aaah, damn, now we have to kill you
• Virginia is for lovers. No, really.
• Like West Virginia, but without the confusing “West”
• We're Better Than Maryland, Damn It!
• Objects in Virginia are closer than they appear
• I can stop growing tobacco whenever I want
• Vagina, Virgin, Virginia
• Everything historical happened here. Don't even front.
• Most famous speaker of our state motto: John Wilkes Booth
• Yeah, it sounds kinda like 'vagina' ha ha we get it
• Every Minister has been here, yet most managed to make it out
• Actually it's more like Fairfax County, and everyplace else
• OMG I can't believe I moved to this hell hole! Oh wait, I was just in Maryland for a minute ... whew
• Virginia ... where time serving bureaucratic hacks go to get retired in place
• Home of the NRA ... now git off my lawn!
• Lick my Virginia
• Gateway to Montana
• We would have won the Civil War if wasn't for you meddling kids
• Birthplace of Liberty, just like Montgomery, AL is the birthplace of the civil rights movement
• Home of the Gold Mining Interpretive Center of Goldvein, Virginia
• Home for the illegals ambitious enough to leave the Carolinas, but still too lazy to make New York
• Colder than you think, and not half as friendly
• The Real South. If you're from Connecticut
• Four centuries of slavery, rebellion, and willful ignorance
• Don't touch my Virginia
• My Virginia smells funny
• It’s really more of a middle-aged dominion
• At least we’re not New Jersey
• Do you smell fish?
• Give me Liberty, or Give me Death. But not for negroes
• You've got a friend in the CIA
• Gateway to the Confederacy, as Grant proved
• Virginia ... birth place of the striped shirt ... LOOK AT IT!
• Home to losers of two civil wars
• The South will rise again! And, no doubt, be ground down to dust once more
• Home of the Virginia big-eared bat, and other women
• Sic semper leperi

We continue our continuing series, "Meet the candidates"

The number of candidates gunning for the highest office in the land continues to grow. Governor Richardson has tossed his hat in, and there are rumors that even our first android-American candidate, Al Gore, is considering making a go of it as well. Of all the candidates, real and potential, only two interest me. One is Hillary Clinton, and the interest comes from a deep and soul-scarring fear. The other is Fred Thompson.

Over the last couple days, I’ve been talking with a new good friend, who – thanks to his position deep in the bowels of politics – shall remain unnamed. And we’ve been talking about Fred.

Fred is different than the other candidates. Romney, Guiliani and their ilk are slick, often witty. They are polished, but polished to a particularly political sameness. Thompson feels different. To be sure, that feel is carefully crafted - the result of his experience as an actor and politician. But he has crafted a persona that looks like it is rooted in his actual character, and that character looks interesting. In that, I think, he's a lot like Reagan - not that he looks or sounds or talks like Reagan - but that he is not trying to look like a "statesman" and as a result actually looks more like a statesman than anyone else on the political scene.

What he looks like is my grandfather - he even has the same cadences in his speech. I’ve watched two interweb videos of Fred recently. One was his response to Michael Moore’s debate challenge. Only 38 seconds long, this is a masterful bit of political jujitsu. Fred’s got style, presence, and a good bit of humor; and manages to slam Moore without making an ass of himself – something that most politicians have a very hard time doing. If this is any indication of how effective a Fred campaign would be, then the other candidates have much to be worried about.

I watched another video, an interview he had where he talked about not watching one of the Republican debates. I was struck by how he accurately communicated his ideas without using political catchphrases, tired metaphors - just clear communication laced with his sense of humor. Looks like he alone of the current crop actually absorbed the lessons of Orwell’s "Politics and the English Language."

Also alone of the candidates, I actually like listening to him. Listening to Bush makes me cringe, has since before he was elected. And that cringing has only gotten worse over the last seven years. Yet I voted for him, if only because the alternative was far worse. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I think Fred would have no real trouble cleaning up his Republican competition – assuming of course that there are no skeletons hiding in his closets, and that he can put together a well-run campaign and pull in the contributions.

But Bush is the albatross that any Republican candidate will have to deal with in going up against the eventual Democratic candidate. And the albatross in chief has certainly not made it easy for anyone to follow him into the White House. Bush’s stark inability to communicate, well, anything has left the impression that the Iraq war is an unmitigated disaster. It isn’t, though problems and casualties have dominated the public perception since about a month after the libervasion began. Four years of not making a sound public case for the sacrifices of our soldiers is a large obstacle for anyone who wants to become the next Republican president.

As well, Bush’s failures to get anything done on the domestic front will be a similar huge obstacle. For years, Bush had a Republican congress and yet was unable to make any progress on immigration, social security, or any number of other issues. Certainly any Democratic candidate will be able to make hay on that.

Who among the currently announced Republican candidates will be able to overcome a Democrat armed with all the weapons that Bush has inadvertently given them? Even the Republicans have grown weary of the feckless Republican leadership in the White House and the Congress. If Thompson could demonstrate that he has feck, (and his absence from elected office recently might actually help there) he stands a chance at retaining current support and winning over the independents. Independents often vote character more than issues anyway. My liberal mom would have voted McCain, for that reason.

Charisma isn't everything - but if Fred puts together an efficient campaign, I could easily see him trouncing all comers on the Republican side. And the guy has style. He’s got charasma. Could he be the second coming of Reagan? I wonder, now. He's got the instincts, it seems; and he's got the gravitas - more than Reagan, even. He's smart not to be jumping in too soon. And more than anyone else, he seems to get how new media (bloggers in particular) can help:

Since the ‘04 Howard Dean campaign, the Internet has been seen as fertile ground for presidential candidates. But the advent of a possible candidacy by former Senator Fred Thompson could take online politics to a new level. In this exclusive article for Pajamas Media, Thompson reveals a respect for the ‘net and its importance to democracy that could only come from a true web surfer. If the six-time weekly winner of the PJM Presidential Straw Poll is actually elected President, are we looking at … the First Blogger?

To PJM and Friends
By Fred Thompson

So, I hear you all have been talking about me.

It seems that I ought to respond, at least briefly, to all those who have expressed confidence in me — both here and in other forums. I do not take that confidence lightly.

The Pajamas Media poll is certainly good news, especially when, for a lot of politicians, encouragement to run from three relatives and an unemployed campaign consultant is considered an unstoppable groundswell. When people are saying nice things about me, I try to remember the proverb that compares flattery to a net at your feet. To be sure, the Pajamas poll results are very flattering, so let me return the favor and throw a net at your feet.

“So, I hear you all have been talking about me” Classic – and, if the other videos I linked above, and for that matter his performances in everything from The Hunt for Red October to Law and Order, are indicative then I think he’s a potential winner. If Hillary wins the Democratic nomination, the only thing that is going to beat her is the kind of humor and common-sense persona that Reagan deployed to such great effect against Carter. I wonder what the “There he goes again” moment will be in this election.

And I'd dearly love to see him destroy Hillary in a debate. I dig the guy. Barring some horrific revelation about his past, or learning that he favors something I detest, I might actually be voting for someone in 2008. And as my friend said:

It’s all about the Feck. The f*ing Feck. Fred has Feck.

[wik] More information on Fred Dalton Thompson can be found here, here and here.