Are you all atwitter with excitement over the Iowa caucuses?

Or are you mostly just excited to get closer to the point where we don't have to hear about them anymore? Based on talking to ... one person... I think excitement arises in proportion to support for an individual candidate. I am not for or even against any particular candidate, and I therefore find myself coolly observing the scene with uncanny equanimity. I await the news of what Iowans think is best for us. I would like to thank Iowa. For everything. For all the corn. For the best rest stops on the interstate highway system. And for listening endlessly to politicians so we don't have to.

Meanwhile, if you feel like voting, it's your last day to vote for me here [no, actually it's too late], which I'm reminded of by reading this, where there happens to be a little poll where you can toss me a teentsy vote if you're so inclined and you've got nothing better to do while waiting for Iowa to go through its little ritual.

And, really, what's with Christopher Hitchens gettting so pissy about it?

It's only when you read an honest reporter like Dan Balz that you appreciate the depth and extent of the fraud that is being practiced on us all. "In a primary," as he put it, "voters quietly fill out their ballots and leave. In the caucuses, they are required to come and stay for several hours, and there are no secret ballots. In the presence of friends, neighbors and occasionally strangers, Iowa Democrats vote with their feet, by raising their hands and moving to different parts of the room to signify their support for one candidate or another. … [F]or Democrats, it is not a one-person, one-vote system. … Inducements are allowed; bribes are not." One has to love that last sentence.

Oh, the horror, that people should have to interact with each other in the flesh instead of pushing a button off by themselves. What is the fraud? That they do exactly what they say they do: caucus? Is it undemocratic? Hasn't Iowa democratically chosen to do things this way? Is it wrong that we focus on one state at a time? What could be more American (or, I should say, United Statesian)?

Frankly, it seems that Hitchens is mostly irked that the system — whatever it is — worked out well for Mike Huckabee.

[T]he rest of the United States is a passive spectator while about half of 45 percent of 85,000 or so Republican caucus voters promote a provincial ignoramus and anti-Darwinian to the coveted status of "front-runner" or at least "contender."...

It is impossible that the Republican Party could be saddled with a clown like Huckabee if there were a serious primary in Iowa, let alone if the process were kicked off in Chicago or Los Angeles or Atlanta.