This could be the worst article ever written. I guess that’s the trouble with featuring an article by the editorial staff. There’s no one left to edit it.

People pay for the right to be there. They pay to get there. Sometimes they have to compete to be welcomed at the place where they want to go (although they’ll happily settle for a second or third choice). The partying can be nonstop. The environment is highly sexualized (my own experience excepted). And when it’s all over, well over half of those who came end up leaving with nothing.

Am I talking about Vegas? Nope.

College.

Quick Update:
Smoking causes everthing.

Back in the day, traveling salesmen used to visit a town, sell a few bottles of a natural and miraculous cure-all and the then pull-out of there before the townspeople realized that they’ve been duped.

Today, we have Walgreens and Rite-Aid.

While there is often no solid evidence that so-called natural cures (from echinacea and ginkgo baloney to chiropractors and biofeedbackists) have any real impact – and while there is little evidence that some of these products are even safe – Americans are still buying it all up schnook, spine and sinker.

Part of it is a predisposed need to try something, anthing, when you’re feeling lousy. I have never had a good experience at a chiropractor and everything I’ve read on the subject (along with the cracking sound) leads be to believe it’s a bad idea. But when my back goes out, I’ll try anything. Maybe the next chiropractor will have the key. I have likewise never felt any discernible impact from taking echinacea at the onset of a cold and no study that I know of has ever confirmed that echinacea does anything. But if I sniffle, I still put a few drops into a tall glass of water. It’s worth a try…

Maybe the snake-oil salesmen never needed to leave town in the first place. They could’ve just set up a permanent store. The consumer’s goal was never to prove them wrong. We want to believe. First item didn’t work, well this time Dr. Snake-oil has the perfect solution.

Most people would eat a plate of dirt if someone convinced them that it would make their cold go away faster.

John Ashcroft made big news with his terror threat warnings earlier this week. The press conference left Americans with several key questions: Why were we being warned when local and state law enforcement officials indicated that they received no updated intelligence or calls to action? Why were Mueller and Ashcroft warning us of something dramatic while Ridge was downplaying the news and while the administration was making it clear that there would be no change in the terror alert status?

And then there was another equally vexing question. Why was Ashcroft making the announcement in the first place? Isn’t that now the job of Ridge and the Dept of Homeland Security?

Update: At first I was tempted to echo many others and suggest this may have just been an election season move. But according the latest reports, it could have be worse than that.

The election to decide whether a first term president will get a shot at a second often comes down to one key factor: The incumbent. Couple that with a few other issues (the media noise focused on Bush, the early stage of the race, the level to which some on the left are consumed with a hatred of Bush that makes Kerry nearly irrelevant, the lack of a Kerry running mate, a somewhat careful Dem campaign so far, and of course, Fantasia) and it’s not at all surprising that many more people are decidedly against Bush than decidedly for Kerry.

Taegan over at Political Wire provides an interesting summary of recent polls:

Percent still undecided on Bush, Kerry:
Zogby: 1%, 21%
Quinnipiac: 2%, 16%
Newsweek: 8%, 14%
Annenberg: 12%, 21%
CBS News: 16%, 35%

At this point (pre-convention, pre-debate, pre-summer), these numbers probably aren’t that bad for Kerry. But it is critical that they change over the next few months. I continue to believe that, while the incumbent is to a certain extent the star of any re-election bid, a just say no vote will not be enough.

As I touched upon in my earlier post On The Fence (scenes from the campaign’s front lines), it’s important that Democrats acknowledge that this definition issue is quite real and quite important.

It’s also worth noting that the undecided numbers in the Kerry column are decidedly bad news for the President’s campaign crew. They’ve spent an unprecedented amount of dough trying to get people to decide that Kerry will not cut it. So far, the payoff has been, I’m sure, less than they had hoped for.

Ultimately, the biggest question facing both sides of the election might be: How could anyone be undecided about anything or anyone at this point?

The true believers were decided at birth. The believers have been decided since Florida. The sort of believers have been decided since Iraq. Even the “I caught a bit of the news while flipping between the WWE and Family Feud reruns on the Gameshow Network” have decided by now.

The handful of people left are the ones who could determine the outcome of this election.

And there’s the rub. In the next several months, political insiders must figure out a way to convince the people who they can’t possibly understand to see things their way. Now that should be fun to watch.