John Montgomery Presents This Week's	November 18, 2000	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	More Election Creeps
	Which Gasbag Will Deflate First?

Now I know how Bill Murray felt in Groundhog Day. Each day is exactly the same as the one before it with no end in sight. Every morning I rush out to get the paper, hoping that through some overnight miracle, one of these wankers will have seen the light and proclaimed, "I now realize that my opponent is right. I really am a loser and the country will be in a hell of a mess if I become president. I quit."

But no. Nothing is different today than it was a week ago. Recounts, hand recounts, hand outs, hand jobs. Dimpled chads, pregnant chads, chads by the scads, we've been had. We trust the people, see you in court. Each day brings more spin, more outrage, more polarization, more confusion.

I've had my fill. My barf bag runneth over. My internal political clock was set to November 8. That was when I was going to insult the winner, ridicule the loser and move on to something more entertaining. But now, after two weeks, there's still no winner. And guess what? There's no possible way for anyone to emerge from this mess as a winner. Whoever finally prevails will have a country split right down the middle.  Half the people are going to be pissed off for the next four years, thinking that the new president is a major league asshole who stole the election. We also have a congress split 50/50 with rabid partisans on both sides who aren't going to work together on anything.  I'm also split 50/50. Half of me wants to puke in the morning after reading the paper and the other half wants to puke at night after the 11 PM news.

We've seen enough louts and bounders in the last two weeks to fill a hole the size of the gap in George W Bush's military record, but a few of them warrant special recognition:

• Florida's Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair, Katherine Harris, kept threatening to certify the election for George while the hand recounts (which she ruled illegal) were still going on. At the end of the week, the Florida Supreme Court told her to chill. If Katherine wants to file another lawsuit, it ought to be against the plastic surgeon who performed that sloppy facelift on her.

• Jesse Jackson, who sees the world through racism colored glasses, performed his standard trick of predicting where the most TV cameras are going to be on a given day and arriving there simultaneously. He rabble-roused and pot-stirred in Florida for no apparent reason and gave the Republicans one more excuse to say, "See? I told you so!"

• Slimy ex-exterminator Tom Delay of Texas, the House Majority Whip, has been educating his cohorts on how Congress can overturn the results in Florida if they don't like them. If Tom ever goes back to exterminating, it will be difficult not to root for the cockroaches.

• Old fashioned duel with guns and seconds - George wins.
• Spitting contest - George wins.
• Back-slapping, good-old-boy, get drunk and drive home contest - George wins.
• "Who has the most obnoxious, overbearing assistants" contest - George wins.

• Throw 'em in the ring and let 'em duke it out - Al wins.
• Schwantz contest - Al wins. Big time.
• Who can say, "It's not about who wins, it's about justice and fairness" with the straightest face - Al wins.
• Whose hair would you most like to mess up but only if you had rubber gloves on - Al wins.