Wisconsin's sleepy-eyed Governor, Scott Walker, has been campaigning for his party's presidential nomination.  Like his colleague/adversary, Jeb Bush, he has yet to declare his run for President.  As far as I know, no one, as of this date, has admitted to running for President.  Hillary Clinton's smug hints about running say the obvious.
     The 2016 election, nineteen months away, should be off topic in the news, but it's supposedly fascinating to watch the "hopefuls" visit states with early primaries: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina.  Scott Walker hasn't been in Wisconsin much since he won re-election.  Like New Jersey's Chris Christie, he's a traveling Governor, flying even to Europe to wow the English with his refusal to discuss U.S. foreign policy (a must if he becomes President, yes?) and dodging the question, "Do you believe in evolution?"
     Walker's advantage, propelling him to the world stage, comes from the bulwark of right-wing wealth holding him in place, plus the usual hot air balloon of Reaganite fuck-the-poor-and-middle- class ideas.  Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries have provided cash to make Wisconsin, a formerly liberal state, into a conservative-leaning experiment approaching final success.  Scott Walker has become what's called a polarizing figure.  Love him or hate him, that's the emotion in Wisconsin, while in America at large he's not well known enough to inspire passion.
     Wondering about who will be the next President inspires a sense of the absurd as I sit in a chair on a late winter night, pondering among others a political specimen like Scott Walker living in the White House in January 2017.  Or another polarizing figure, Hillary Clinton, a favorite among millions?  Or Jeb Bush, a doofus out of touch with the twenty-first century?  His national security advisory team has some of the same neoconservatives who pushed for the rape and pillage of Iraq.  Do you want the spirit of the Bush/Cheney years?  Vote for George's little brother.
     Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor, friend of Ted Nugent, NRA apologist, and former Fox News host, threatens a run.  A man of God, his warm, easy-going manner makes him seem like a genial high school principal.  In elementary school, a teacher instructed us on the different spellings of principle and principal. 
     "The principal is your pal."
     Mike Huckabee, your pal, as full of glib and amusing quips as Brian Williams, but when he talks about social issues and foreign policy he reminds me of the Devil making friends with the gullible. 
     When these Commander-in-Chief hopefuls walk around on stages, holding microphones, their sleeves rolled up, they act as if they're unobjectionable human beings, but anyone backed by secret monetary donations--a key to political corruption--is a rotting carcass in a skin suit. 
     H.L. Mencken, great essayist of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote that American voters, for some illogical set of reasons based on no facts or knowledge of history whatsoever, have a perpetual optimism about the process of elections; that the next group of politicians elected every other year will be better than the last.  Mencken, writing this in the early 1920s, didn't see this hoped for progress, but suggested politicians get worse over time.  I agree.  Some exceptional politicians come to the fore and work hard amid the mass of mediocrity, but it's mostly one corrupt lobbyist wannabe after another.
     Earlier this year, when the 114th Congress began, some in the news asked, "Will it be better than the do-nothing 113th?"
     Why would it be?  There are even more Republicans in the House and in the Senate than in the past few years.  Are they going to suddenly become effective at their actual jobs, rather than dwell on ways to fuck over Barack Obama?
     The rotting carcass, sleeves rolled up, holding a microphone, is your pal.  Your pal doesn't lie.  He, and she, cares about you.

                                                                         Vic Neptune