Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Remakes often get an undeserved bad rap. Some vastly outshine the original. The best are often far from literally faithful -- they reset the parameters of the original, for sparkling contrastive effects. After all, as Hegel might point out, some scripts play better as farce than as tragedy.

Case in point: my favorite screwball comedy is a remake: "His Girl Friday", as you prolly know. Howard Hawks took the fantastic script of "Front Page" more or less intact, but he got Grant to be the sociopathic editor and cast a gal as the star reporter.

Which brings us to another remake, the '08 prez run. This one superficially looks like a weird inverted remake of '68, but I fear 'twill prove only a doleful echo of that cataclysmic election year. We got a role inversion and a party reversal, but that ain't likely to be enough, now is it?

Mother Clinton as the man from San Clemente, and the Republican party as the sodden hack-infested vehicle of history, too successful for its own viability -- and yes, there's the bit about the fall of the beast that rings a reversal too: imagine the fury in the penthouse if this end scene spells happy days ahead for bums not Babbits.

But it won't, will it? If you hope to see this ex-juggernaut of American fleece politics take a porch-hound beating from the people it conned for 28 years... forget about it. We gotta look out another 4 years for the real topsy-turvy, a '12 that's no remake but a path breaker, a '12 that avenges '72. Here and now, this whole playout. through St Hill's consecration by the voting mudpeople majority, looks to be nothing but a nasty ass-twisted boring predictable remake, a bomb run from here to November next, maybe the nastiest bomb run since Dick's own streak to re-election victory culminated with a literal bomb run we now call "Christmas over Hanoi".

Nothing seems likely to produce a Clean Gene moment -- Tet, or a rockin' till he's whacked RFK, or a shot to heaven MLK, or the riot in Chi, or anything but the Hilhouse in the final spotlight shot. This after all is the coming apart of the Republican party, not the Great Society party. This will be like a Disney remake of MGM's Cleopatra, where riots, if they occur, will be simulations that'll show up outside some recount room in Canton, Ohio -- riots in white shirts and ties, riots staffed by a gaggle of Newt Gingrich clones.

There was a time when conservatives used to commonly insult liberals with an accusation that they were empty “pomo relativists.”

Big Prog Blog

The Democrats are empty pomo relativists. That’s one reason why the insult works so well.

The Republican is a simple creature. He sees Clinton kick the bloody guts out of small countries. So it’s only fair for Bush to get a turn. Clinton got his chance to extraodinarily rendition evildoers. Bush deserves his chance at that too. The Republican sees Clinton pass security state legislation, but the Democrats howl with dismay when Bush does, even though their leaders go along with him. The Republican rages against RINOs, but lines up behind them just the same at election time. He sees the Democrats rage against DINOs, but line up behind them just the same. The Republican reads “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!” to his kids. The Democrat reads “Why Mommy is a Democrat” to his. The Democrat has his bad faith, Nader-baiting dolchstosslegende. Therefore the Republican is entitled to have his bad faith prog-baiting dolchstosslegende. But the Democrats cavil about that, proving to the Republicans once again that they’re miserably dishonest and unfair.

The Republican knows that Democrats are not only just like him — feckless, wrathful, infantilized, incapable of acting on their convictions — they’re also hypocrites who enjoy deluding themselves about the way the real world works. So when a wingnut überdude calls them names, they’ve got it coming and better just suck it up, the whining so-and-sos. They’ll have their chance for payback in the Clinton Restoration.

The Republican world view is a stupid, simplistic and vicious one, but it is arguably more coherent than the Democrat’s.

And that’s a very sad thing :’-(

I seem to write a lot of stuff triggered by Bobby Reich. He's kind of a Faust to me. His latest book, titled Supercapitalism, might as well be titled Sub-corporatism: the state of America in the age of boardroom trollocracy.

There's nothing newsy here on the social panorama front. I recall some cynical balkanite's (was it Luttwak?) "turbo-capitalism" notion of decade ago, providing profiles in power not far from Bobby's "Beware the scial menace of the border-busting, firewall-breaking, clean and decent reg-crushing, wage-slendering, continent-hopping, limited-liability, total surplus-gathering, profit-max outfits! They're.. errr... sociopathic!"

Indeed -- and then some, eh?

What prompts this post is a Reich-suggested rectificationary action: allow the overmatched civic sector to fund up for the common-cause fights against the behemoths in the glass towers -- through nothing less than IRS-certified tax-credit dollars! Yes, we the weebles, under Plan Reich, could each year donate up to one thousand dollars of our income-tax liability to any IRS-certified advocation shop of our own personal private choosing!

The implied intent, wish, hope and prayer: if we the weebles couple this with tossing out "corporate money" from the public square debates we'll get back our Madisonian congress.

Hmmmmm. Madison as in James -- or Madison as in Avenue?

In a system like ours, the civic sector and the commercial sector twine together like breeding snakes. Ponder this: have you ever seen an ad for soap as silly as "General Betray-us" two-sheet? Nothing is more shameless, more unselfconciously sanctimonious, than a new-age secular beggar's schtick. And to fund "party" campaigns and otherwise influence Hill votes? Yikes!

Then again -- diverting, say, $100 billion of Uncle-headed dollars into a burgeoning "non-corporate" advocacy community has its upside. Playing hide the banana among all these start up pluralizing fundseekers oughta spawn more profiteering policy cut-outs than the Cold War spawned Red bugs -- a full employment program goo-goo meritocrats.

Apologies to readers for the lack of activity 'round here lately. The siteminder has been traveling more than usual (and enjoying it less).

There is some benefit to be had, however, in getting shucked out of my Upper West Side hideyhole like an oyster out of its shell, painful as the process may be for the oyster. My travels have extended to California, where I have become aware, sooner than I otherwise might (though not as soon as I should) of an interesting development in the arcane world of electoral procedure.

Here's how the New York Times introduces it. Note well the "framing" provided by the lede graf:

Republican donors are pumping new life into a proposed ballot initiative, considered all but dead by Democrats a month ago, that would alter the way electoral votes are apportioned in California to the benefit of Republican presidential candidates.

Another fiendish Republican plot! Aiiee! What more do you need to know?

If you're perversely curious enough about the details to keep reading, you'll need a bit of patience. The actual design of the infernal machine is not supplied until the fifth graf, after some snoozeworthy radar-scattering chaff about the funding and staffing of the initiative:

The initiative would ask voters to replace California’s winner-take-all system of allocating its 55 electoral college votes with one that parses the votes by Congressional district. It has attracted strong opposition from Democrats because it would transform California from a reliably Democratic state in presidential elections by handing the Republican nominee roughly 20 votes from safe Republican districts.

"Handing"! "Parsing!" You have to parse this loaded, propagandistic language a couple of times yourself before you realize that this initiative actually would make the notoriously and ludicrously undemocratic electoral-college machinery noticeably more democratic, with a small 'd'. It would tend to allocate the state's electoral votes in closer proportion to the popular vote. And thus, it is a deadly threat to the Democrats with the big 'D'.

The latter, needless to say, are crying foul at the top of their lungs. What passes for "left" talk radio -- a feeble, querulous crickets' chorus, like the Trojan alter-kakers tzitzing about Helen at the Scaean Gate -- is as hot with indignation as its thin pale blood will permit. The Party machinery is revved:

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/197156

Until recently, Democrats were attempting something similar in North Carolina. But Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean quietly convinced the Tar Heel Democrats to stop, saying he did not want to set a precedent Republicans could use to justify their efforts in California....[W]hile Democrats might gain as many as 7 electoral votes in North Carolina, they could end up losing as many as 22 in California.

The Kosnik reaction is predictable but nevertheless amusing, if you have a cruel, Cervantean sense of humour. Here's one of the sputtering Sanchos by way of comic relief:

07-0032 - The California Theft Initiative - Links to Text and Useful Sites
by Zoltan
Fri Nov 16, 2007 at 07:23:13 AM PST

Many Kossacks have diaried on the GOP attempt to steal the 2008 presidential elections by unfairly securing about 20 electoral votes in California for the GOP in November, 2008, by means of ballot initiative 07-0032. Suffice it to say that, if passed, 07-0032 would allocate electoral votes in California on the basis of the winners of each congressional district, rather than on the basis of the overal winner in the state, which would almost certainly guarantee 20 otherwise unattainable electoral votes for the Republican nominee.

Recently I made a significant personal discovery. Folks, your Painiac is... a self-awarded honorary Lutheran.

It happened while eyeing my way through this early passage in the great man's "Bondage of the Will," a thunderous polemical response to a lacey free-will-o-the-wisp tract by that Prufrock of the dawn years of our blightful age, sister Erasmus of the universal humanist conception.

Here's Marty -- a direct address to the mild-in-the-middle sage of the low countries:

"You [doc Erasmus] find so little satisfaction in assertions that you would rather take up the skeptic's position wherever... the Church's decisions permit.... Though you gladly submit your judgement to these authorities [sc. the Church catholic] in all that they lay down, whether you follow it or not, that is the outlook that appeals to you.... To take no pleasure in assertion is not the mark of a Christian heart. Indeed one must delight in assertions to be a Christian at all."

There Marty had me. Long reign Lutheran assertiveness! Let it empower all convinced hearts of whatever ideology to radiate hope in eventual salvation.

Dear brothers and sisters, the Democratic Party is now our very own whore of Babylon, her big tent our secular captivity. Go out into this world and act accordingly.

(Editor's note: Apologies to Owen -- this post got lost in the editorial shuffle some days ago and only re-surfaced now.)

http://counterpunch.com/roberts11072007.html

Paul C Roberts is a supply-train, liberty-legion dude -- part of the bloc of rights, frights, and Trotskyites that Comrade Cockburn has assembled editorially over at Counterpunch. He's still a Johnny One-note, like he was back during the Reagan restoration, but now it's anti-globalization, open-border de-industrialization, and, Lord above, anti-overseas-basification -- and he's no imperial dollar guy either. To wit:

"The macho super patriots who support the Bush regime still haven't caught on that US superpower status rests on the dollar being the reserve currency, not on a military unable to occupy Baghdad."

Very true, dear boy, very very true. But the bases are there for a purpose even sidesaddle Adlai well understood: our empire, the corporate America-style empire, like all empires, needs to shoot its way around the periphery. Any made-in-USA Globality, Inc. requires Uncle's blitz machine.

This line shows Paul C's hand:

"If the dollar were not the world currency, the US would have to earn enough foreign currencies to pay for its 737 oversees bases, an impossibility considering America's $800 billion trade deficit.... When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, foreigners will cease to finance the US trade and budget deficits, and the American Empire along with its wars will disappear overnight."

Nice as that sounds, it ain't gonna happen, pal. First of all the dollar is the imperial currency. The one with the blitz machine behind it is always the reserve currency, so it will remain the main currency in both active or reserve duty. Our major trading partners know this well, and know there can be no ifs ands or buts: another reserve currency (say that synthetic chimaeric Frankenberry freak, the Euro) will be the vice reserve currency at best.

But I like Roberts' policy Rx: bring home the bases!

"Perhaps the answer lies in those 737 overseas bases. If those bases were brought home and shared among the 50 states, each state would gain 15 new military bases. Imagine what this would mean: The end of the housing slump. A reduction in the trade deficit.

And the end of the war on terror....

All of the dollars currently spent abroad to support 737 overseas bases would be spent at home. Income for foreigners would become income for Americans, and the trade deficit would shrink. The impact of the 737 military base payrolls on the US economy would end the housing crisis and bring back the 140,000 highly paid financial services jobs, the loss of which this year has cost the US $42 billion in consumer income. Foreclosures and bankruptcies would plummet...."

I've scooped myself, of course: the bases are not some pair of useless gold-plated figures on top of a wedding cake we can no longer afford -- they are the guardians of the cake. Paul C's warning -- "The Romans brought on their own demise, but it took them centuries. Bush has finished America in a mere 7 years" -- has an inversion: maybe Rome was Rome, and had an empire that lasted centuries, even after Catholics took over, because it had... bases everywhere!

Can we afford 'em? Portugal couldn't -- but we ain't Portugal.

Meant to post something about this story back when it first appeared, but maybe it's still worth chewing on:

As the congressional session lurches toward a close, Democrats are confronting some demoralizing arithmetic on Iraq.... the only war legislation enacted during this Congress has been to give the president exactly what he wants, and exactly what he has had for the past five years: more money, with no limitations.

...[P]ublic opinion about the war — while still dominated by opposition to a military adventure most people think was a mistake — has risen modestly in recent weeks, according to several nonpartisan polls....

The changing views probably have little to do with Congress, said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“You have also had the near absence of the war coverage in the last months, and since the coverage is generally negative, the less coverage, the less negative communications that reaches people’s living rooms.”

Pew reported Friday that only 16 percent of Americans name the Iraq war as the news story that first comes to mind today — a huge shift.

... Meanwhile, both sides must contemplate the most dispiriting piece of Iraq arithmetic of all.

At the start of the year, there had been 3,003 U.S. military casualties in Iraq.

Now there have been 3,860 — already making this the deadliest year of the five-year military campaign.

So... why has the war story suddenly dropped off the media radar? Is it conceivably because... the Congressional campaign is over, and the Presidential camapigns are avoiding the topic?

I think it was Richard Pryor, back in the days when the poor man was funny, who had a routine about a man and woman in bed. The man, erm, reaches fulfilment quickly and leaves his partner, erm, high and dry. She expresses frustration, and he responds smugly, "I got mine, you get yours."

The Democrats got theirs a year ago by exploiting and, to some extent, encouraging public dissatisfaction with the war. But now it's steady as she goes, don't rock the boat, don't put Hillrack on the spot. The Republicans are so bollixed that victory in '08 for the Dems appears to be merely a question of not fucking up. The last thing they want now is a public het up about a war they intend to continue.

So how do we "get ours"? Start by finding a different bedmate.

Stop the presses. A group of "prominent historians" have endorsed the world-historical Barack Obama. A friend of mine, whose unenviable job it is to keep his finger on the psychic pulse of Academe, sent me this item from Inside Higher Education (and thank God I'm now outside it):

... [A] group of prominent historians on Monday issued a joint endorsement of Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency. The endorsement, released through the History News Network, was organized by Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University, and Ralph E. Luker....The scholars who signed included... other A-list scholars in the field....

[Obama] has raised far more money from academics than have other candidates and he has plenty of academic connections himself — he taught at the University of Chicago law school and his wife, Michelle, held a series of positions at the University of Chicago Hospitals ....

One professor who was approached and who did not sign on is Maurice Isserman.... “Edwards is the most appealing candidate at the moment,” Isserman wrote. “It’s not just the vacuous ‘new generation’ rhetoric emanating from the Obama camp that disturbs me — worse is his flirtation with the notion of a ‘Social Security crisis.’ Let’s leave the Republican talking points to the Republicans for a change. Of course, I’d take him in a heartbeat over Hillary, just as (I suspect) I will be taking Hillary The Inevitable in a nano-second over whichever scary guy the Republicans finally go with.”

Another historian who passed, Casey N. Blake of Columbia University, said... “While I am likely to vote for Obama in the New York primary, I am reluctant to endorse any candidate in my professional capacity as a historian.”

I think we all owe Professor Casey a huge debt of gratitude for sparing us the crushing weight of his "professional capacity as a historian," as we grope our benighted, uncredentialled way toward the voting booth. On the other hand, Isserman's banal lesser-evillism tends to diminish the prestige of even a "prominent" historian's opinion.

Candor obliges me to add that Obama's connections with the University Of Chicago would certainly suffice to make him anathema to me, if he hadn't already been anathema to me.

If you're a mean-spirited person, you'll want to read the "prominent historians'" Obamaphile manifesto:

http://hnn.us/articles/44958.html

... [A] president can alter the mood of the nation, making changes possible that once seemed improbable. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and kept the nation united; Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Americans to embrace Social Security and more democratic workplaces; John F. Kennedy advanced civil rights and an anti-poverty program.

JFK did all that, guys? Funny, I thought that was LBJ. But that's the difference between an amateur, like me, and a "prominent" historian, I guess. Their Prominences continue:

Barack Obama has the potential to be that kind of president....

... meaning, of course, a JFK kind of president. Man, that's all we need, isn't it? Another fuckin' JFK: He of the "missile gap," the Bay of Pigs, and, last but certainly not least, Vietnam.

Michael Kazin, the point man for this claque of academic Obama groupies, has quite a history himself. I have his life of W J Bryan on a shelf somewhere -- tried reading it, and found it so platitudinous and snoozeworthy that I put it on the list of books to be read only while suffering from the most desperate insomnia. But I kinda thought I remembered him, back in '03, playing a very equivocal role in the runup to the Big 'Raq Attack, and a wee bit of Googling told me my memory isn't completely shot:

http://www.counterpunch.org/hand02102003.html

[In a Washington Post op-ed] Kazin inexplicably makes some broad generalizations about the left that exist only in the fantasies of Bill O'Reilly and his fans. Sadly, in recent months, we've grown accustomed to Kazin's crowd creating straw men on the left so that they can easily knock them down and look reasonable in the eyes of the major media.

Early in his article, Kazin, who sits on the editorial board of Dissent magazine, says "no one in the current peace movement has put forth a moral vision that might unite and sustain it beyond the precipice of war."

Alas, the Post piece seems to have fallen into the Memory Hole; at an rate I can't find it.

Kazin is perhaps best known for trashing Howard Zinn. I never found Zinn's work terribly compelling myself, but after reading Kazin's jeremiad against him, I'm ready to swear an oath of blood-brotherhood with the man. This is from Dissent magazine, subject of a famous Woody Allen joke:

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=385

... most Populists cheered Bryan and voted for him because he shared their enemies and their vision of a producers' republic. Unlike Zinn, they grasped the dilemma of third parties in the American electoral system, which Richard Hofstadter likened to honeybees, "once they have stung, they die." And to bewail the fact that liberal Democrats saw an advantage to supporting rights for unions and minorities is a stunning feat of historical naiveté. Short of revolution, a strategic alliance with one element of "the Establishment" is the only way social movements ever make lasting changes in law and public policy.

Zinn's conception of American elites is akin to the medieval church's image of the Devil.

I'm working on a theory that any time a liberal like Kazin accuses you of having found a substitute for religion, then you're on the right track. But more of that anon.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b56079a8-9b71-11dc-8aad-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Larry Summers has banged the drum and shaken the rattles -- the Starving season cometh swift upon us: "The odds now favour a US recession!" He speaks in charcoal gray of course, but the content is unmistakable: it will "slow growth significantly on a global basis."

Now you all prolly agree with me that this Crisco-faced prick with eyes as sharp as diamonds carries behind that face a brain as close as one gets these days to a thinker in chief, a maker of medicine memes within "the plain folks' party". He's "our doc macro" for such as follow the lead of the Clintons and Obamas and Edwardses and so on. So when he sees a real good shot at a bluesy future for "the rest of this decade and beyond" -- well, it ain't, er, hopeful. Example, Homer family-wise: "Nationwide, house prices could fall from their previous peaks by as much as 25 per cent over the next several years." Ugga-bugga!

Now Larry has his remedy ready of course. I'ts got plenty of angelic detail, no doubt, but here's the short version: "Feed the credit hogs, feed 'em good, feed 'em fast and furious, give the fat fuckers all the Uncle sucker support they want" -- but make sure you wear a sober censorious sceptical expression while you do so:

"We do not have comparable experiences on which to base predictions about what this will mean for the overall economy, but it is hard to believe declines of anything like this magnitude will not lead to a dramatic slowing in the consumer spending that has driven the economy in recent years....it is now clear that only a small part of the financial distress that must be worked through has yet been faced.... These figures take no account of the likelihood that losses will spread to the credit card, auto and commercial property sectors. Nor do they recognise the large volume of financial instruments that depend for their high ratings on guarantees provided by credit insurers whose own health is now very much in doubt.... [T]he capacity of the financial system to provide credit in support of new investment on the scale necessary to maintain economic expansion is in increasing doubt. ..The extent of the flight to quality and its expected persistence was powerfully demonstrated last week...."

(By the way, "flight to quality" means flight to sterile rentier wealth storage -- i.e. capital class hoarding.)

Sum up of the action ahead:

"Banks and other financial intermediaries will inevitably curtail new lending as they are hit by a perfect storm of declining capital due to mark-to-market losses, involuntary balance sheet expansion as various backstop facilities are called, and greatly reduced confidence in the creditworthiness of traditional borrowers as the economy turns downwards and asset prices fall."

"Then there are the potentially adverse effects on confidence of a sharply falling dollar, rising energy costs.... lower global growth as economic slowdown and a falling dollar cause the US no longer to fulfil its traditional role of importer of last resort."

Policy Rx? Well, at the outset, the proviso "All of this may not be enough to avert a recession" -- especially one that powerful interests prolly find healthful -- but beyond that, numero uno is, up the Wall Street bail to the max:

"In such an environment, economic policy needs to be governed by the clear and public recognition that restoring the normal functioning of the financial system and containing any damage its breakdown may do the real economy is the central macro-economic and financial challenge facing the US."

Now by the light of Keynes and humanity, we carry through best in times of trouble by "maintaining demand" -- but not in quite the classic Keynesian way, but by means of "cost of capital" reduction which

"means the Fed has to get ahead of the curve and recognise – as the market already has – that levels of the Fed Funds rate that were neutral when the financial system was working normally are quite contractionary today."

I.e.: cut the Fed funds rate, like Greenspaniel did to "counter" the last El-Contracto. And by jingo, if that's not enough, -- as it really wasn't last time, till households went on the usury-gunned buying binge that by its unsustainable effective demand increase set up today's little schmuck-outta-luck contretemps -- if that's not enough, we need to ready the real Keynesian elixir: more and deeper federal deficit finance. Or as Larry puts it, "As important as long-run deficit reduction is, if the situation worsens, [fiscal policy] can provide... immediate temporary stimulus through spending or tax benefits."

... and not to Republican favorites that won't spend it, but to "low- and middle-income families" who will .

Larry quickly gets to the crux: let's not punish the evildoers!

"The time for worrying about imprudent lending is past.... The priority now has to be maintaining the flow of credit."

To Homer and Blondie, . translation: send in Uncle's credit card. Or, as Larry puts it:

"There needs to be a comprehensive approach taken to maintaining demand in the housing market to the maximum extent possible. The government operating through the Federal Housing Administration, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or through some kind of direct lending, needs to assure that there is a continuing flow of reasonably priced loans to credit worthy home purchasers. At the same time there need to be templates established for the restructuring of mortgages to homeowners who cannot afford their resets, so every case does not have to be managed individually."

The pointy hat frown face now appears:

"The current main policy [Republican] thrust – the so-called 'super conduit', in which banks co-operate to take on the assets of troubled investment vehicles – has never been publicly explained in any detail by the US Treasury."

Read: a major rip is in progress.

"On the information available, the “super conduit” has worrying similarities with Japanese banking practices of the 1990s...."

... not to mention, closer to home, the S&L bail of the Bush I years.

"for lack of transparency, suppression of genuine market pricing of bad credits, and inhibiting effect on new lending."

I note Larry the porcine avenger is not willing to drop the axe here and call a wicked grand theft by its last name. Instead, the fudgey fuck wiggles off this loose-ender:

"Perhaps there is a strong case for [the super conduit] but that case has yet to be made.

"

While reading Paul Krugman's latest pamphlet, "Conscience of a Liberal," it occured to me Paul don't get the democracy thing.

A liberal elite used the New Deal to reform "American society" from the top down, i.e. through the power of the Federal government. Paul sees this result, and not only does he, like his Creator, call this outcome "good", he also calls it... democratic.

I guess this is 'cause he sees its "goodness" as good for the lower three fifths of the nation -- the majority <>en soi if not pour soi.

Liberals always know what's best for you, just like business men know what's best for them.

Now we all know FDR wanted a party re-alignment -- a liberal and a conservative duopoly -- after the emergence of the Repug/Dixiecrat de facto majority in '37. So he tried to purge the Dixies out of his party, and merge with the repug progressives -- right? But he failed, or at least died before he could succeed.

Truman barely kept the team on the field; Kennedy was a beacon without a searchlight; but, err, Johnson succeeded, and that's where Paul K don't get the real deal.

A liberal vision might not always or mostly or even often be the choice of the electoral majority, and in fact it wasn't from about '46 to '64.

The liberal elite during that long spell of cold war and hot wages was acting from power through power as much as ever, but on a population that wanted no more New Deals -- only the same old New Deal. Hell, it was working for them, right?

Then after the Dallas martyrdom, Lyndon took Clio's sudden real opening and made a second big push; and again the majority said no mas, and this time, unlike the last time, the Dixiecrats left and the bicoastal liberal elite after 68-72 had to deal with their semi-permanent minority party status, as did the populist Dem Bryanists after '96-00, and the Republican Babbits after 32-36.

Paul may want to conflate best for the majority with the workings of democracy but he can't get away with it here -- not at the center of empire, at least.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/world/americas/30venez.html?hp

Morning light? Not yet... but.. the phone is ringing. I stumble, I grope, I answer it. A voice all too well known sez "Viva Hugo!", belches, and *click* hangs up.

Mr Y again, of course, my confidential informant at Foggy Bottom. He won't play oracle for us, at least not about the pending Chavez topple folly III (or is it IV?). So here's my tackle.

Hugo is too strong still. He'll win the referendum on Sunday. There will be lots of persiflage but no coup -- though judging by the Times setup above, there'll be plenty of solemn head-wagging about "possible irregularities."

But when all is said and done by Xmas time, the smoke and mirror machines will leave only the taste of burnt oranges. Call it a fire drill for the Clinton treatment to come.