ON HAVING HANDLERS AND OTHER SILLY STUFF

Any lingering doubts that John McCain is growing more senile by the day were erased by his recent behavior of nominating his wife to participate in a wet T-shirt contest and reports that he's "a challenge" for his many campaign handlers who have been trying to keep him from making incessant cell phone calls to solicit opposing opinions in the middle of strategy sessions. Handlers? One usually associates handlers with captive bears and mental institution patients, not the guy running for the most demanding job in the world.

Shouldn't he be the one doing the handling? While most people seem to have all their marbles at his age and well beyond, well, he doesn't seem to be one of them. These things happen. Which is not a call for a sympathy vote here. Look what happened when we elected a mildly retarded guy to be our president in 2000 and 2004. He wound up invading the wrong country in response to being attacked. That was pretty "challenging," no?

The Chinese government once again declared the weather in Beijing to be hot and humid, typical of that part of China this time of year. Okay, fine, but that still doesn't explain why the air over there is brownish yellow and can be cut into squares and stacked in neat piles.

Ralph Nader is once again running for President, once again making more sense than either major party political candidate by identifying with far greater clarity the problems facing Americans and once again alienating the nation with his creepy personality. Well, as they say; two out of three ain't bad.

Paris Hilton stunned the nation by proposing a more comprehensive and workable energy policy than either Obama or McCain. Wonder what's her take on foreign policy, nuclear proliferation, the trade imbalance and world hunger? Maybe John McCain ought to punch her number into his speed dialer when he's bored to tears in meetings about talking points and swing states.

Turns out Russia really, really misses being the Soviet Union, the big mean old bear of tyranny. In spite of still being the largest nation on earth, Russia has decided to invade Georgia to reclaim tiny bits of her former empire. It seems that the breakup of the Soviet Union has left Russia with only about 140 million people, not nearly enough to whet the Kremlin's appetite for making people miserable. While South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two disputed regions of Georgia, boast only about a quarter of a million people between them, well, Putin figures that's 250,000 people who weren't traumatized yesterday, a job well done and a fine start. There's also the other 4 million citizens in Georgia who won't be sleeping well anytime soon.

Fat people in California gained even more enemies, like they needed them in that self-absorbed and fitness-obsessed state. Los Angeles banned the use of trans-fats anywhere within their borders for any reason by anyone and for all time. No word yet on what they plan to do about the Biblical proportions-epidemic of collagen and silicon implants in their part of the world, but their donuts will be less tasty from now on.

In what can only be considered the end of life as we know it, it has been revealed that those dopey ultra-violent video games are really not responsible for any spike in street crimes or homicides, dealing a severe blow to our legions of professional hand wingers and self-appointed PC police. Flush with their trans-fat victories in New York City and Los Angeles and their successful campaign to give cat burglars better social standing than cigarette smokers, they are studiously ignoring the factual evidence and attempting to regulate the fun out of everybody's life anyway. That's their idea of fun, nobody having any but them. Odd what floats some people's boats, no?