RUNNING ON EMPTY 2008

All men are genetically programmed to get a thrill out of seeing how far below the "E" their car's gas needle can go before re-fueling. We feel some small measure of victory when we pull into work in the morning with the "low fuel" light on and then drive home at the end of the day without having addressed this earnest warning. I'm starting to think the Democratic party is made up entirely of men who are operating it on the same principle.

One of my favorite websites is PollingReport.com. Not because its polls are reliable or especially accurate, but mostly because it's entertaining. Its hypotheticals are the political junkie's equivalent of sitting around a bar talking about who would win a game between the 1927 Yankees and the 2004 Red Sox.

They have a section devoted to 2008 Presidential Election preference polls conducted by various media and dedicated polling organizations. I find the sum of it to be unbearably depressing. This is best explained by way of examples. The following poll is representative of the standard Democratic Primary line of questioning:

"I know it is early, but if the Democratic primary for president were held today, which of the following would you support for the Democratic nomination for president? . . . " (Ipsos-Public Affairs poll. Dec. 17-19, 2004. Nationwide.)

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton 33

Senator John Kerry 19

Senator John Edwards 15

Retired General Wesley Clark 11

Governor Bill Richardson 3

Senator Evan Bayh 2

Senator Russ Feingold 1

Governor Tom Vilsack 1

Governor Mark Warner 0

Other (vol.) 3

Unsure 9

That rotating sound you hear is William Jennings Bryan rolling over in his grave. Even Mondale and Dukakis are probably shitting themselves laughing. Is this it? Is this really the best of what they have to offer? An intolerable bitch who used to be First Lady and three losers from the 2004 race (followed by the usual smattering of Governors that no one knows). Great. Good luck with that.

The only person on this list who is electable is Bill Richardson. Of the established veterans, he is the current highlight of the Democratic party. But of course he'll be outspent about a billion-to-one in the early primaries by Hillary and won't amount to anything as a candidate. For shame. Richardson is one of the Clinton acolytes who actually understands the idea of expressing a vision and projecting confidence.

In the late 1990s, after the 1996 election fiasco and the failed impeachment witch-hunt, the Republican party set itself up for success by flushing itself of its old, stale faces - Dole, Gingrich, Kemp, etc - and handing things over to a new generation. The Democrats seem unwilling or unable to do so right now. You know a party is in really bad shape when two guys who have been in Congress for about five fuckin' minutes (Barack Obama and Harold Ford) are the best thing they have to offer. But that's reality, and they'd be smarter to deal with it rather than put off rebuilding for four more years while the Ghosts of Elections Past take one more lap around the track.

GINANDTACOS.COM ASSERTS ITS CONSERVATIVE CREDENTIALS

Now folks, I'm no libertarian. I also do not lie awake at night fuming about property taxes, government spending, and the inheritance tax exemption threshold. But the 2005 Federal Highway Spending Bill is enough to finally put me and the Cato Institute on the same page for once.

Not only does the bill waddle in at a staggering (if not incomprehensible) $286,000,000,000 but it contains 6,371 individual entitlement projects - pork barrel projects for individual Congressional districts. In comparison, the original Interstate Highway Act signed by Dwight Eisenhower contained two. In the 1987 bill there were 152.

Some of my personal favorites include:

I'D BETTER WRAP UP THE RIGHTS TO THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY

Nothing makes one feel more empty, soulless, and already dead quite like the new Hollywood trend of re-making anything and everything. It's depressing enough when they crank out original dreck (Collateral, Wedding Crashers); offering big screen versions of old sitcoms (Charlie's Angels, Dukes of Hazzard, the Mod Squad, etc etc ad infinitum) and old stories (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Peter Pan) adds insult to injury.

Let's be honest - it can't be that hard to write a script for a new, original, and horrendous movie that will rocket straight to #1 at the box office. What, like it took a convention of the world's ten greatest living authors to crank out Must Love Dogs or Men in Black? Yet no matter how simple the "let's make a Vin Diesel movie that will break $100 million" formula is, Hollywood still strains under the weight of the artistic burden. So they steal. They re-make. They sequel. They Adapt Things for the Big Screen. Video games, Disneyland rides, comics, TV, pop fiction novels, Shakespeare....if it's not bolted to the ground, they'll take it and make a movie out of it.

With one old piece of classic fiction currently wallowing in the top 10 among current releases (War of the Worlds) it's only fitting that we predict classic literature to be the next area strip-mined for ideas that these people are entirely too stupid to think of on their own. Lots of classics already have older film versions - so what? Make'em again.

Lest you think I'm pulling this out of my ass, I submit: Robert Zemeckis and Roger Avary are producing a big-screen version of Beowulf. Yes, Beowulf. Beo-fucking-wulf. The very same one you nearly jammed two pencils up your nostrils while trying to read in high school. The same one that is barely readable and details a story that really isn't even mildly exciting.

I can think of no adjectives in English to describe how tired, pathetic, desperate, and intellectually retarded the people running these studios must be if they're digging up Beowulf for Next Summer's Action Blockbuster. Charlie's Angels 3 would be dignified in comparison. Then again, so would Carrot Top Presents: 90 Minutes of Fart Noises and Blows to the Groin.