The charitable assessment of Hillary's press conference performance in Cincinnati yesterday is that she simply snapped and went 'round the bend. If you've seen the video of it, and I'm sure you have, you suspect that the psychiatrically trained among the spectators were shifting nervously in their seats, wondering if she was about to go the last full measure of clinical rage and start blasting.

She possessed an eerie, otherworldly look that screamed for the fictional and expository talents of a Norman Mailer. Here, one could nearly conclude, is a politician all used up, emotionally and dangerously unraveling right on stage.

If Hillary's campaign still had any realistic shot at capturing the nomination, perhaps her accelerated malice could be accepted as spirited, hardball inventiveness, however over the top it might be. But it has no such shot. Her campaign is not merely dying; it is dead. Hence her recent words were not merely over the top -- they confirmed, instead, merely that the contest is over, but she has no intention of going down alone.

But about every Democrat, Hillary is thinking not one minute. She is thinking about only one. She has lost all human perspective, engulfed as she is in a narcissistic, entitled rage. If Democrats won't have her, then the country -- which earlier this week she still mawkishly prayed would "be fine ... no matter what happens" -- won't have any Democrat in the White House come 2009. So she'd be primed for an earlier run in 2012, not 2016.

Hillary Clinton is now less a tragic figure right out of Karl Rove's playbook than straight out of Shakespeare. She's willing to sell the fate of an entire nation down the road, so that someday, sooner, she may be queen.

And if you reject the Shakespeare metaphor, perhaps Ann Rice? Please, somebody grab a wooden stake.

In the wake of ten straight losses, Clinton's going to need some miracles to win, and Mike Huckabee's already ahead of her in line for divine intervention. But the question is how much damage she'll do to Obama and the Democratic chances before she quits.

All the Republican candidates have campaigned on the virtue of literally abolishing all taxes, at least on the wealthy, so they can use all their money to make more money and to become even wealthier. Ron Paul even goes as far as pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, while Huckabee is an advocate for the "flat tax" which will further shift the burden of supporting the government even more onto the poor and middle class. Of course, they all want to eliminate all Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government charitable institutions, leaving the poor to beg at the doors to churches and panhandle on the streets. Meanwhile, they ignore the enormous national debt that is lurking out there, waiting to bite us hard just when we are trying to restore our democracy.

The Democrats timidly offer as a solution the end of the war and the timely death of Bush's tax cuts for the rich while the Republicans jump on the old "tax-and-spend" bandwagon again and put the pedal to the metal, hoping that the poor, ignorant peasants will not realize that they have been taken.

When just one drug takes 1000 American lives a month (see CBS 60 Minutes, February 17, 2008), you better believe this is a national security matter that President Bush should pay focused attention to, even if no suspected terrorists are involved.

However, his ideology is one of no-law-and-order, no regulation, that is, of these corporate outlaws and their profiteering, reckless practices. President Bush and his Party’s campaign chests are filled by these very corporate interests.