Just as time and the universe have no beginning nor end, it’s been discovered that the end of history is part of a closed loop tape, so the end is really the beginning. Only no-one can pinpoint it because they used invisible tape, then pixelled it over so it looks as innocuous as that guy over there who’s really not staring at you.

I came upon this fact rather inadvertently while watching the latest US disaster report:
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Sure. Go ahead and yawn. That Bush bollixed up everything is hardly breaking news. And most everyone also understands that no one else can unbreak Bush’s broken country. Oh, they’ll patch and glue and make it better, but it’ll never be the same as when it was gifted to the little spoiled rotten putz.

Some guy named Obama has been real clear about that. He says he can make the country better, studies things awhile, then provides an indication of what he intends to do. As time goes on, he adds more detail and the guy competing against him says “No fair changing!” as if anything can ever be accomplished with a steadfast recipe (and if it says ‘a pinch of salt’ then adding two is unforgiveable!)

On the other hand, his competitor, that McCain guy, offers everything. “I can win the unwinnable!” he proclaims, when no-one’s sure what exactly would be won. Or by whom. And now he’s saying “I can do magic” and the corporate media says “oh kewl.’

So when he says “Presto, change-o, the debt is gone!” they’ll applaud loudly because, after all, nobody really wants to whip out their calculator to check his math because the numbers are just too big to think about.

History repeats and every American over two - in age or IQ - knows that Republican candidates excel at one thing most of all: creating debts for others to pay. That’s why they occasionally put a Democrat in the White House, to pay off enough of the credit cards that the country isn’t foreclosed on, by Japan, China, Saudi Arabia and our other owners.

Democrats used to also make an effort to help wage earners stay ahead of the wolf at the door, though their last great effort helped lift only one demographic out of poverty between 1965 and 1975: seniors. So how’s that group doing these days, eh?

McCain, being the first dinosaur seeking to avoid the tar pits by escaping to the Oval Office, certainly should be concerned about the struggle of his elderly peers. Rumor has it he lies awake most nights, worrying about them from his beds in one of his seven houses. He has a plan to fix that, too. It’s called ‘magic’ also. Which, one has to admit, is way more interesting than policy changes, ideas and budget numbers. As long as it’s called ‘magic’ and not ‘eating dog food’ or ‘dying of neglect’, it sounds exceedingly fun and kewl.

The magic extends to defeating the latest fear-inducing bogeyman by military weapons overspending. What better way to capture a medeival freak holed up in nearly impenetrable mountain ranges than to send hundreds of billions to Joe Lieberman’s Connecticut friends to build more nuclear submarines? Magic’s amazing stuff and requires no belief in tired old facts and boring logic.

Just click your heels together three times and say “we’re winning in Iraq” and you’ll see.

Of course, no show of Republican magic can be complete without the tricks of their master delusionist, Abracadabra Rove. He’s got that rapt audience completely fooled into believing McCain can actually win the White House, when most of the country knows he’s already lost.

Stalwart defenders of that old Republican black-op magic are starting to realize that the rabbit in the hat is a comatose bunny on an IV drip. And it remains an unfortunate truth that the love of magic disappears as soon as one crosses the US border where the real world is more soberly considered.

It’s really no surprise that the last seven years of Republican history ends right back at the beginning. After all, since the fall of Soviet Communism, it took the Grand Old Party a dozen years to find a suitable bogeyman to scare everyone into granting them a repeat performance. It was really quite the trick, too, if you really consider it. The Soviets had about 20,000 nukes to plunge the globe into nuclear winter with, complete with a massive army, the technology and manufacturing resources to build even more. The new bogeyman had a few thousand followers, has to steal the transportation vehicles for its explosives and has the capability to manufacture weapons any teenage geek can figure out via the Internet. Yet somehow, George Bush has spent more to keep that 14th century voodoo doctor holed up in the hills than all his predecessors spent fending off the mightiest army on the planet.

He’s also resurrected the Soviet gulag system, failed Chinese torture techniques, a justice system last seen in the wild, wild West of 130 years ago and adopted them as ‘modern’ American strategies. McCain offers all the magic of Bush and Rove but overlooks the third crucial element to any successful magic show: the guy with a saw ready to cut people in half.

That’s right, McCain has no Cheney.

So as this chapter of Republican history limps to its final curtain, remember that it’s really just another beginning. There’s another magician out there ready to pull another bogeyman from his magic hat. And that magician is young enough to remember where he left the hat and to include a crusty bastard