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A GOOD DAY TO BE DAFFY. Sometimes there just isn't that much to say about it all. Daily events play out exactly like an old-time cartoon, as a series of sight gags that defy explanation. Yesterday, for example, we had the great Democrat brains of the Senate demanding that oil executives tell them why gas prices are so high, as if the execs could do anything about OPEC -- or as if they should go politely out of business rather than pass their costs on to their customers. I suppose the bottom-line implication is that they should forego all future profits because the Congress isn't ever going to let them drill for non-OPEC oil or build any new refinery capacity. Their real responsibility is to take the blame when Congress and the whole DC establishment drives the U.S. out of business. Sure. That makes sense.


Meanwhile, the selfsame Congress that wants to punish oil companies for high prices they can't control also decided to reward farmers for the runaway food prices which have been directly created by collusion between the farm lobby and -- ta da! -- Congress. I guess there's no political mileage in pounding the table for surtaxes on windfall government subsidies.


Events were unfolding just as sanely on the campaign trail, where Tom Harkin suggested that being from a military family makes one automatically a danger to the republic in high office, while Father Barack added his wife's campaign speeches to the lengthening list of things Obama about which it is "unacceptable" to speak. The dark warning to "lay off my wife" seemed to imply an unspoken "or else" that inspires a certain amount of wondering speculation. Is personal vengeance a task he'd delegate to old pals like Bill and Bernardine? Or would he himself become the righteous, smiting hand of God his adoring flock already believes him to be?


Not that the Democrats have any kind of monopoly on slapstick nonsense. The Republicans, who know they're facing open revolt from their conservative base because of eight years of profligate spending, were tripping all over each other to be first in voting for the $380 billion farm bill. Yep. That's gotta be the perfect way to serve the constituents and save the party.


But at least McCain is having a good time, a big old barbecue (way to distance yourself from GWB, smart guy) with 20 old white guys angling for the VP slot and one young brown guy who's the very last person any clear-thinking Republican would want to yank away from his golden opportunity to show the country what entrepreneurial principles can do to save New Orleans and Louisiana from themselves. If he weren't a rock-headed, egomaniacal old coot, McCain would know that the best decision he can make in the 2008 campaign is to leave Bobby Jindal right where he is. And if he weren't a pandering tool of the Luddite, mankind-hating environmental lobby, he'd know that the best possible VP candidate he could find isn't a man at all, but the only governor in the country who has the guts to stand up and fight against last week's catastrophically corrupt designation of the polar bear as a threatened species.


I'm not even going to make the case for why Palin is the best choice. There's no point. It doesn't matter what anyone says this year about integrity and responsibility and principle. Absolutely everybody in the middle of the national political game right now -- including McCain, Obama, Hillary, and all their supporters, staff, and hangers-on -- is really just one laughably transparent character. But don't worry. I'll never tell who it is.


That's all for now, folks.