People keep looking for the next Reagan. She’s already here.

I’m not waiting. The future of America is no longer about winning the next election. I no longer care about electoral math. I’m back with my punks. It’s about leaving a record, for the ones who will come later. (Lake, help me with a chapter and verse citation.)

Five months into the second Obama term, I am officially and unequivocally endorsing Sarah Palin for the presidency of the United States. It’s not a protest vote. She’s ready. None of her leading opponents has any experience at all, unless you count Joe Biden’s fake legal and political career or Hillary’s oddly transgender cuckold career as First Lady and the stooge of Benghazi — always, always screwed with never a clue about what was really going on. Meaning what? She’s the piano-legged dud we thought she was way back when Bill denied an affair with Gennifer Flowers. She got smarter somehow along the way? uh, no. Still an over-educated fool, perpetually the last to know anything.

Palin is different. Where Hillary is studied, coached, and dull, Palin is lightning. She doesn’t lecture her audiences; she electrifies them. Her ongoing political commentary has always been witty, to the point, and true. When attacked, she strikes back as venomously as a rattlesnake. Her political endorsements and followups have been more effective than those of multi-term U.S. senators. What nobody wants to acknowledge. She’s a natural.

So it’s time for her to leave the Republican Party and make her own party. Even if she loses, the results are the best possible hope for the future of this doomed country. Don’t forget that Goldwater’s crushing defeat paved the way for Reagan’s landslide. At some point, women — the tsunami of American traitors to the whole concept of individual liberty framed by the constitution — will eventually be disgusted by the totalitarian compulsion to tar an honorable mother of five as a whore, an idiot, a tool of special interests, and the inbred halfwit cow who calved a retard in proof of the ideological inferiority of all conservative values.

Bring it on. I didn’t think anyone could withstand such constant, unrelenting, sexually sadistic abuse. But I was wrong. Palin can. She’s the ultimate feminist nightmare. The woman who’s so self-confident she just doesn’t care how hard you try to demean her. To her it’s just proof of how limp your dick is (or how dried up your snatch). She takes the punishment and keeps taking it until it’s time to make a deadly point. Reminds me of Ali in Zaire, leaning against the ropes for round after round after round while the supposedly smartest pundits keep predicting his imminent doom, until, oops, he wins by a knockout.

Wake up, lefty Viagrans! She does not care. Talk about hate-fucking (yeah, you Maher)? Palin could hate-fuck you to death and show up pristinely beautiful at the next Tea Party rally in the hometown of your alma mater. Right. She’d kill the crowd even in Ithaca, New York.

Here’s the truth. She wouldn’t attract so much horrifyingly sexist abuse if she weren’t so dangerous a leader of the conservative opposition. Why she needs to be the leader of the next generation of Americans who don’t wish to be victims. Nobody else has that credential.

Remember. I’m the first to say she’s the one we need. It will take everyone else much much longer.

Hey. Give it a shot. Tell me who else can fight for us like Boudica. Nobody but this extraordinary woman.

P.S. Lake came through. As usual. Here’s a YouTube link to the chapter he quoted. If I had more belief in WordPress, I’d make the video show up here. Can’t do it. If you can, tell me how.

Happy Independence Day, everyone. Not trying to be ironic. It just sounds like that.

The reading:

She was the one.

We interrupt our general lamentation to bring you specific grief. One of the three fledges at the Franklin Institute we posted about before flew into a window and died today.

Sometimes things just suck.

But Peanut is okay.

Clockwise from top: Big, Bigger, and Go Screw Yourself.

When everything is really falling apart, it’s a clarifying experience. We can’t save the republic. What’s left is giving a good account of ourselves during the downfall.

Why I can now commit to a three party system. The three can now be, and should be permanently branded as, 1) the Party of Big Government, 2) the Party of Even Bigger Government, and 3) the Party of Screw the Government and the Horse it Rode in on.

Pick your affiliations.

Feel free to discuss.

It’s bad when someone is hurt.

We do the every day and we are happy. The every day changes and we are not happy. The Boss is cross and breakfast is not when breakfast is or the dinner or anything else. Mommy sleeps and is still and the Boss stops us from touching her. We are sitting on our haunches and the Boss says lie down. There are no treats. There is the every day you know and today is every day until the every day is the no day again.

Wag. Lie down. Lie down get up lie down. Grrr. Mommy is less still and she sleeps more. The Boss is more tired and he sleeps not so much. He does not touch so much. We touch if we can.

We do the every day. Every day. We are happy. Wag. We lie down.

Deerhound people know that deerhounds aren’t really like greyhounds.

My wife wants me to write an ad for this site at MADA, which is the Middle Atlantic Deerhound Association. I’ve been flummoxed, to be honest. Somehow I see lots of Obama stickers on Volvo and Subaru SUVs.

This is a deerhound site but not really. And I’m thinking that the political content here is not going to sit well with a lot of the people who devote chunks of their lives to deerhounds.

I mean, not every post even contains a deerhound photograph, let alone topic.

In fact, I think a lot depends on what people, including you faithful readers, think deerhounds are.

For example, All deerhounds DO look alike. Watch the linked video to see how true that is. Much more than greyhounds do. And greyhounds are a big part of how most of us arrived at deerhounds. We started with greyhound rescues, pure and simple. Why I’m thinking the deerhound crowd won’t like Deerhound Diary. The story of greyhounds is the story of Oppression by the Man, including tattoos in the ears. Canine Holocaust in service to the capitalist enterprise of dog racing.

I’ve been there too. We still have Molly, and I’m still grieving for Patrick, Andrew, and Sonny. We’ve done the transfers from foster parents to us in mall parking lots, and there’s nothing like the feeling you get the first time a track greyhound can climb the stairs to your bedroom.

When I confessed my fascination with deerhounds, my wife repeated what she had heard, that deerhounds are simply bigger, hairier greyhounds, and just as comfortably dumb. As she had dutifully learned from the pervasive sighthound propaganda.

But now we’ve had two. The first was Psmith. Who changed all the rules. Monstrously destructive as a puppy, which he was for three years, then progressively a kind of mystic Scot, remote, gravely affectionate, and kind. We lost him prematurely, at the age of six, to the bloat.

Losing him hurt so much I was prepared to go without another. My wife knew better. She found another breeder, another litter, and went through an admission process worse than what applicants to Stanford and Harvard go through. The result was Raebert.

Who looks, predictably, almost exactly like Psmith but bigger, and couldn’t be any more different in terms of personality and character.

Why there’s this site. He’s the smartest dog I ever had, and I’ve had two scarily smart German Shepherds. His breeder was smug when she told us, “my deerhounds aren’t dumb.” Jesus. What an understatement. Life with Raebert is a constant battle of wits, and he wins almost as much as I do. But he wins in the end anyway. I’ll explain more of that as we go, but what I’m thinking about right now is the assumption embedded in the astonishing “how much they all look alike” meme.

They’re all utter individuals. As are we. Which is a thing I’m thinking the progressives, for all their avowed tolerance, keep forgetting. All conservatives are bigoted idiots. All black people must be loyal liberal Democrats or they’re Uncle Toms. All women must be hard left feminists or they hate their own sex. All deerhounds are friendly dopes we need to protect because they can’t protect anybody. Which does nothing to explain THIS image:

Fast on the draw…

Deerhounds may be greyhounds in some respects, but they are also Scots and very far away from greyhound couch potato propaganda, which greyhounds also are in my experience. Deerhounds can be smart, brave, cunning, manipulative, piercingly understanding, not to mention mischievous jokers, and they are one of the best proofs of the infinite diversity of creation I have ever witnessed. We also love each other as only two total sonsofbitches can.

Raebert was never trained to shake hands. HE initiates. He needs to hold hands.

That would be my pitch to MADA. And come to think of it, to all of you. This site begs to differ. And at times our eyes turn to blue fire, relict of the heather.

Guessing my wife won’t think this is a good ad…

What exactly is it we think a direwolf was?

You know. One more Scottish danger.

Raebert? Maybe. I’ve seen that in him. The ultimate of ultimates. If you’ve never seen it, good luck to you. I spend my time trying to understand the savagery in all of us. Maybe you should spend some time trying to understand me.

Boxing movies almost all suck.

Revisiting a tired question.

Welcome to SportsNation! On Friday, we’re chatting sports movies with Ray Didinger, co-author of the new book “The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies.”

Didinger, along with Glen Macnow, tried to answer the question of which movie is better, “Field of Dreams,” “Bull Durham,” “Hoosiers,” “Raging Bull” or “Rocky”? Those last three were their top three, in alphabetical order (they reveal their ranking in their book). The duo watched over 300 movies, grading them and coming up with a top 100

Actually, none of these is in my Top Ten. Didinger/MacNow believe somehow that Rocky is the best sports movie ever made. Total bullcrap. It’s not even close to being the best boxing movie ever made. (In fact, it may be the worst of the genre.) There’s nothing realistic about the ring scenes at all. Both fighters would have been dead by the end of the fifth round.

Field of Dreams and Bull Durham also don’t belong on any list of good movies, let alone great sports movies. Costner’s overwritten, artificially inserted soliloquy citing the crack of the bat and the smell of pussy kills Bull Durham dead the moment it occurs. And Field of Dreams in its static nostalgia is more a cremation than a celebration of baseball.

Truth is, there aren’t a hundred great sports movies. There are just a few. Here are ten:

10. The Replacements. Almost all football movies are sentimental, inaccurate garbage pretending to be truth. This one is just fun. I’d probably have put Major League in this spot, but there’s no other football movie worth mentioning.

9. Stroke of Genius. The story of Bobby Jones, played by Jim Caviezel. A man pitted against himself. Insight into genius and its penalties.

8. Mystery, Alaska. Yeah, I know. Everybody loves Slap Shot as best hockey movie. Sorry. This one is less slap stick and more hockey.

7. Sea Biscuit. Great history, great performances by everyone involved. Only a couple of inaccuracies. (War Admiral wasn’t huge, and Sea Biscuit had a fine thoroughbred pedigree.) Still, a stirring movie you can watch more than once.

6. Coach Carter. Not about winning the championship. About winning in life. No other movie about basketball compares.

5. Pastime. It’s about baseball and baseball players. The best ever. Proof? The real-life major leaguers who played cameo roles. Nothing splashy. Just true.

4. The Greatest Game Ever Played. Yeah, golf is a sport. And one American finally put our country on a map that used to be limited to the British Isles. Excellent movie.

3. Senna. Formula 1 car racing. A documentary. Riveting as any fictional drama you’ve ever seen.

2. Secretariat. More history, well told. One of the greatest sporting achievements ever.

1. Ali. Boxing should be easier to get right than baseball, football, hockey, or basketball. Turns out it isn’t. The only movie ever that got it right. The Liston, Terrell, and Foreman fights are not only accurate historically, they’re viscerally, violently compelling. The rest of the movie is absorbing too, as befits its landmark subject.

I’d do Honorable Mentions, but I think I’ll leave that to you all. Have fun with your sharpshooting.

P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, an excerpt from a text message I sent to my good friend Josh today:

All I have to do is battle through the fatigue… Saw the movie Ali today. Like a time machine for me and the sensual realization of the only Mailer book I ever liked. He was ringside at Ali-Foreman in Zaire (which I watched live on HBO in B school after an exam and have written about). Mailer said the sheer sound of Foreman’s body punches in the first round was terrifying. He didn’t believe Ali could survive the round or if he did survive the round he might not survive the fight with his life. The movie captured that terror perfectly. It was torture watching round after round of rope a dope: body blow, body blow, body blow, body blow… with everyone in Ali’s corner screaming, “Get off the ropes!” Because nobody can take that prolonged a beating from such a punching machine. And then, suddenly, the lights that had seemed doused in Ali’s eyes flashed back on and here he came, off the ropes, resurrected, dancing (dancing!) and slugging like a predator who’s finally seen the opening he was waiting for. It took only a few moments and the best punch was the one not thrown, which Ali pulled back as Foreman was hitting the canvas. I will never forget it. Me and my B-school buddies practically cheered the roof off the apartment we were in. But the neighbors didn’t complain. They were cheering too.

Time machine.

All I have to do is battle through the fatigue. What Michael Mann was saying in his movie. For years, Ali had to stand against the ropes and just take it from the U.S. government AND the Nation of Islam. No wonder he won the Rumble in the Jungle. He’d had all the training anyone could ever expect to get.

Me too.

P.P.S. The missus watched the Ali-Foreman fight in the movie before the On-Demand timing expired. What did she say? “Good God. I get it.” Meaning everything I’ve said about Ali over the years. Just as she’s gradually gotten my love of the Stones. Slowly but surely, she begins to understand that I’m not arbitrary (or wrong) in my admirations.

Rule of what? Oh yeah. Pussy.

There’s really nothing left. The people in charge are all trash. You know who they are. We do what we want, whenever we want. You don’t like it? Screw you. NSA observation? What have you got to hide?

How about my privacy? Should I specify? No. But I will. You don’t get to know what I look up at Google or where I go with GPS. None of your business. What is my business? Ah. I’ll let you in on the secret, just this once.

The Clintons. Big Bill is, was, allowed to commit perjury. We loved him for it. Which makes us trash too.

Maybe that’s when it all ended. After that came Hillary, who was also trash. She lied her ass off about understanding a husband who screwed teenagers and raped campaign assets. No reason to believe anything she ever said afterward. No wonder Benghazi was a treacherous, tragic farce.

Then came Obama. Who just lied and lied and lied until anyone with any sense would have thrown up, but nobody had any sense and so we’re stuck with the worst president the U.S. ever had. When no one can believe anything you say, there’s no more freedom. You’re just the unpredictable psycho in charge, like the chief gangster in Escape from New York.

Really enjoyed the new IRS director’s report on how the tax kids did nothing wrong, no matter how hard he tried to find out otherwise.

The same way I loved The FBI director’s inability to remember anything about any investigation of anything.

And Eric Holder’s insistence that he’s never done anything to interfere with the freedom of the press. Hell, everyone knows the press is sick to death of being free.

And don’t forget the War on Women, recently won by the Planned Parenthood, er, Obama electoral victory in 2012. Because women have to be free to screw their brains out and flush away the consequences right up to the last minute. Because, you know, women are morally superior to every living being who doesn’t have a penis. Why it’s so important for them to show their penis-free crotches to everyone via Facebook, texted images, and TMZ.

Trash? Do any of you even know what it is? It’s people who don’t have values but poses, foul mouths, fancied privileges, and exorbitant appetites. Michelle? Anybody? Barack? Everybody? The mentality of me, me, me, me, me is nothing but trash when you’ve asked millions to spend hundreds of millions to put you in charge. Especially when you refuse to take responsibility for absolutely anything that happens on your watch. Trash.

What’s the practical adult result?

It’s that we now have a record and an outcome, a fatal one. The end of the rule of law. An administration that enforces laws it likes and ignores laws it doesn’t. Like an arbitrary, angry girlfriend.

Which is the ultimate corruption. It no longer matters what laws are passed. The ones the Obama Gang don’t like just don’t matter at all. So why should the Congress pass anything? No reason at all.

Meaning what? We have a president who’s little more than, well, what he always was, let’s face it, a stupid trophy wife. If only he had her balls. He can telephone Lebron but not Putin. More French-tongue than shark-bite. The republic is dead. When Rome killed its republic, the Empire was born. In our case, the republic dies, with all its liberties, just in time to get overrun immediately by a wave of barbarians who’ve been waiting for the pouting pussy we now have as president.

Somebody characterized it as the Second Carter term. I think that understates it. I still don’t think Carter 1) wanted to kill the United States, or 2) thought hanging around with Hollywood and NBA royalty was the whole point of being president.

So now we’re just a joke. Gives us new aspirations to pursue, right? We can become the Greeks of the new age of China. Slave architects, technologists, and entertainers.

It’ll be fun, right? Until they piss on our climate control fantasies… unless the Pussy-in-Chief is willing to lap that up too. Who knows what he’s already learned from the FLOTUS flow?

Sometimes life is just life. For weeks, for years, my wife has been following the fates of red-tailed hawks nesting at the Franklin Institute. There’s a website that shows the nest, the eggs, the hatching, the shifts of both parents bringing food to perpetually hungry mouths, and then, finally, the fledging. First flight.

Last year was especially affecting. Hawks are monogamous. But one day dad didn’t return from a routine foraging expedition. Somehow, he died. Then came the young male web watchers dubbed T2 (for Tercel 2). He stepped right in and did everything possible to raise the three chicks he didn’t sire. Cool, huh?

This year the chicks were his. Three more bobbleheads my wife has been watching in her damaged condition. The fear this year was about the third chick, who hatched days after the first two. We were worried. That he’d be neglected, slow, lost in the fledging race. So many times we’ve seen the last to take wing get into trouble. One year, the first flight of the last chick ended up with a fledgling walking across the JFK Parkway all by his lonesome self while web watchers stopped traffic to save his sorry ass.

Not this year. The first to fly was the one called Peanut, which was the name given to the last chick to hatch. Apparently, he’s the true son of the noble T2. Long may he rule the skies.

My name is not Peanut. It’s Imperator.