No God but Caesar

For well over a decade, I've been saying that Florida is a police state, that its sheriff's deputies are the creme of the crop of insecure, power-hungry, steroid-pumping, gender-identity-challenged thugs who would make Brownshirts look enlightened, and that its judicial system reeks of putrid corruption.

If you need more proof than the fact that a Florida court ordered a man to jail for failing to re-sod his lawn, and that, in fact, deputies arrived at his home, shackled him as though he were a violent threat to society and hauled him to jail, trust me, it's out there.

In The Constitution State -- that's Connecticut, in case you don't know -- the Constitution is no longer needed, because the supreme court makes all the decisions now. So don't worry about anything. They'll take care of you. Just get to work and pay your taxes.

And speaking of idolatry -- hey, I'm not the one who calls him "messiah" -- the oldest trick in the book is to tell people who they're going to vote for before they do. It is reported that "traders say that Obama could win 364 electoral votes to McCain's 174". Two things about this. No, three.

First, the operative word is "could." Lots of things could happen. Monkeys could, as the saying goes, fly out of my butt. Second: "traders." Online information exchanges are just like any other market: they're fickle and can go to extremes of extremes. Traders --those Wall Street types --it's not like they ever get enamored of a bad idea, right? Do you really want them picking your next president?

Third: if the traders are right, you can bet it's because they've done the math on how many bogus voter registrations there are.