Tuesday, January 8, 2008

High Noon for Hillary?

The voting shuts down in about an hour in New Hampshire. It is looking bleak for Hillary. At least according to the latest polls. Maybe this is not a bad thing. I mean, isn't there something a bit disturbing about the idea of another 4 or 8 years of a Clinton being president? That would make it so 2 families controlled the presidency of the U.S. for up to 28 years, if Hillary got 2 terms. That means someone who is 30 years old would have no memory of anyone but a Clinton or a Bush being president. That's like something that would happen in a banana republic, not here.

I heard on the radio today that Hillary has fired some key advisers and is bringing in some old helpers, like James Carville. I'm wondering if she is secretly calling Dick Morris, the Clintons go to guy for decades in times of political trouble. Last week I read Morris's book about helping Clinton called 'Behind the Oval Office'. In that book he makes himself seem like the brains behind the Clinton operation and he makes Hillary look good. After that he turned on the Clintons and wrote 2 more books, one countering Bill's long-winded 'My Life' and the other countering Hillary's 'Living History'. I'm currently reading the book where he turns on Bill, called 'Because I Could'. It is not a flattering portrait of the Clintons.

At the same time I'm reading 'Because I Could' I'm reading a book called 'Bad Boy from Rosebud'. Not that there is any connection between the two books. I like the true crime genre with my favorite author being Ann Rule. One of the reasons I like Ann Rule's books is because so many of them tell of crimes that occurred in the Pacific Northwest and I will often either remember the crime or know exactly the location she is describing.

So, unbeknownst to me 'Bad Boy from Rosebud' is also about locations of which I am familiar. The surprising wrinkle being it is Texas locations. I'd barely begun the book when I realized I remembered the scandal of this criminal. Kenneth McDuff. He committed brutal murders in the 60s, sent to death row. Somehow got paroled by the early 90s. And began to kill again. Texas had been emptying prisons due to over crowding, letting thousands of bad guys out. Due to the public outrage in Texas over McDuff, laws were passed called the McDuff laws that hopefully prevent such a thing from re-occurring.

Anyway, McDuff's murders in the 60s took place just south of where I live, in the town of Everman. His hometown was down near Waco. He was all over this area, often in Fort Worth. So, it was sort of a surprise to accidentally pick up a true crime book and find that it was once more describing places with which I was familiar.

Well, it is coming up on 7pm Central Time, that is 8pm New Hampshire time, when the polls close.

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