I sure hope Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig sobers up enough to follow the Tour de France doping scandal. With odds on favorites Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich tossed out before the race began, the road was neatly paved for American Floyd Landis to secure the yellow jersey. But a mysteriously high testosterone level may cost Landis his title. After European riders spent years bitching that Lance Armstrong had an unfair ergonomic advantage because a surgically removed testicle better accommodated the contours of a bicycle seat, they now complain that Landis was able to zoom through the Alps like Superman because his ball sack was toting an extra passenger. What precisely, then, is their objection – Yanks with too many nuggets or too few? In any event, the point for Mr. Selig is to show his own cojones and eject Barry Bonds and his souped-up home runs from baseball. With madness and chaos abounding, we need men in leadership positions to stand up and showed us their brass. Goodness knows I’m all for castigating Don Rumsfeld, but what does it tell the world when Hillary Clinton sports the biggest set in Washington?

Thankfully, Senator Arlen Specter’s (R-PA) oysters weigh in a close second, as evidenced by his lawsuit against George Bush over the use of executive signing statements. These exclusionary clauses allow the President, with a mere wave of the hand, to circumvent the very laws he consecrates. Like, for example, the McCain anti-torture amendment, which now reads like the Geneva Convention scribbled on slices of Swiss cheese. Though the President was forced last month to renew the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he did manage to insert the proviso that the right to vote does not extend to Asians, Blacks, Latinos or Jews.

Such a disclaimer surely brought hosannas from Mel Gibson who was arrested in California for drunk driving. After trying to escape, the actor was handcuffed and stuffed in the back of a quad car, at which point he shouted. “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Which, for those that saw The Passion of the Christ, comes as no surprise whatsoever. While some nitpickers may point to Northern Ireland or the Sudan as evidence to the contrary, the Lebanese believe Mel just might be onto something.

And it’s not just Middle Easterners held in Mel’s sway. Here at home incumbent Democrats Cynthia McKinney and Joe Lieberman lost in primary elections, a turn of events mistakenly attributed to an anti-incumbent tidal wave. In actually, the duo was done in by Mel’s diatribe in which kikes and niggers are blamed for, well, just about everything. Of course, McKinney didn’t do herself any favors going Rodney King on the Capitol Police while Lieberman, once the party’s vice-presidential nominee, never missed a high profile opportunity to snake his tongue up the President’s ass. After his stunning loss to neophyte millionaire Ned Lamont, Lieberman vowed to run in November as an independent, declaring, “I don’t want these [anti-war bloggers] taking over my party or American politics.” No worries there as Joe’s nascent party has but one member, and, sadly, a single philosophy on the war: a quick redeployment “would be a disaster for the Iraqis and for us.” As if it’s not an unmitigated disaster already.

Why is it that the more things deteriorate, the more Karl Rove’s minions are apt to sweep unpleasant realities into the future? Perhaps that is where solid facts can be atomized by conjecture and probability. Perhaps it will give Mel Gibson enough time to get Baby Jesus back down here before the shit really hits the fan. Who knows? But for those of us cursed with paying attention IN THE MOMENT, this Rovian reflex was recently displayed by Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the US central command, as he offered a rather glum narrative of Iraq’s security situation to a gaggle of US Senators: “Sectarian violence probably is as bad as I’ve seen it… If not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war.” Note his use of code words “if,” “possible,” “could,” and “toward” despite the universal assessment from those in the field that the civil war is well into the second inning. Lawmakers became increasingly disturbed when the General added that his deeper fear was that Iraqi insurgents (as well as Hezbollah and the Taliban) would grow even stronger if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his band of Iranian extremists somehow manage to overthrow the Shaw.

What is no longer a subject for speculation is whether the Federal Reserve will once again raise interest rates. Unbowed by the fact that the European Central Bank, as well as the Banks of England and Japan just tightened the screws, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke insists that the impending recession, after 17 consecutive quarter-point rate hikes, will be far more efficacious in tempering inflationary pressures than would a continuation of Mr. Greenspan’s piecemeal monetary tightening. To wit: GDP grew in the second quarter at less than half the pace seen in the beginning of the year as 4 months of anemic payroll numbers pushed the unemployment rate up to 4.8%. Five years of declining real household income finally choked off the real estate market, where housing starts are collapsing almost as fast as the unsold inventory piles up. But these are just statistics. What does any of this mean for you and that medical savings account the President shoved down your throat when you lost your health insurance?

Well, if you invested in, say, the S&P 500 you would have likely lost money (the index is down 6% since Mr. Bush first took office) whereas during the tenure of President Clinton, who by the way endeavored to get you MORE health insurance, the index tripled in value. But if you were cynical (or lucky) enough to see the writing on the wall after 2000’s stolen election and had bought shares of Halliburton or Exxon Mobil, you would have doubled your money. Those with the keenest of foresight might have anticipated a replay of the 1970’s (unpopular / unwinnable war, unfettered domestic spying, high oil prices, bell-bottomed jeans) and deduced that last generation’s dope smoking hippies would give way to this generation’s dope smoking bloggers. Those that invested in Apple Computer on that sickening inaugural day (I for one flashed back to the Kennedy funeral procession) would be up 550%. Not bad for a counterculture company about to be delisted from the stock exchange.

So unless you had a crystal ball or a no-bid government contract, it’s a sure bet you’re noticeably worse off than you were six years ago. No wonder everyone is hitting the bottle. Christ, even sharp-witted comedians like Robin Williams and George Carlin are booking the Whitney Houston suite at Hazleton. What is truly appalling is that if anyone could take our nation’s sagging fortunes as grist for the mill, it would be these guys. The rest of us, that is to say had better get on the Prozac, and soon. As Williams and Carlin turned themselves in, we will never be privy to their inebriated pontifications, but according to Mr. Gibson’s many acolytes, booze does have a inherenttendency to precipitate anti-Semitic behavior. In other words, Mel’s a swell guy and it was only the alcohol talking. Looking at it this way, I can only conclude that Adolph Hitler must have been on one doozie of a bender.