Stop Me Before I Vote Again

This obvious cerebration was prompted by reading a piece by the ever more delightful Chalmers Johnson

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

Johnson has learned, in the golden setting sun years of his life, just how vast and naughty Uncle's empire has become over the last 60 years, and in his Blowback trilogy, he puts ole Sam through quite a nice pranging.

But it's really too fatalistic, and as a result, despite its fin-de-civilization Weltschmerz, actually far too optimistic. Start with this quote he grabs from one Anatol Lieven:

U.S. global power, as presently conceived by the overwhelming majority of the U.S. establishment, is unsustainable. . . The empire can no longer raise enough taxes or soldiers, it is increasingly indebted, and key vassal states are no longer reliable. . . The result is that the empire can no longer pay for enough of the professional troops it needs to fulfill its self-assumed imperial tasks.

After a solemn accounting of the details of our near half-trillion imperial security budget, and of our massive $800 billion trade gap, and our Asian finance plan, and our reckless tax-free Babbit profit fantasia, he concludes:

... if the American people do not find a way to choose democracy over empire -- at least our imperial venture will end not with a nuclear bang but a financial whimper.

Nope, barring a meteor sent by Yahweh himself, I fear Uncle's show has a long long run ahead of it. "No one can stop us now, baby" -- at least not till we cross over the far horizon where, yes indeed, the huge indefinite shape of a nemesis surely waits. But hey, mates, that horizon must be measured in half-century units -- unless we the teeming weebles find a way to put a stop to this Barnum-and-Bailey style grand guignol by blowing a few main boilers here at home.

http://counterpunch.com/cohn02012007.html

Offensive military action against Iran would be illegal under the United Nations Charter, which requires that members settle international disputes by peaceful means. The UN Charter is a treaty ratified by the US and thus part of American law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. Under the Charter, a country can attack another only in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council....

Congress should immediately pass a binding resolution reaffirming the United States' legal obligations and informing the Bush administration that it will not concur in any invasion or military action against Iran, would refuse to approve any funding for it, and would consider actions taken in contravention of the resolution as impeachable offenses.

Answer: big-tenting is exactly what puts the evil in lesser evil. It's plain as Hillary's breakfast face that until all we left-votin' legionnaires shout "fuck the big tent or we fuck you" the so-called "progressive" caucus' bluff can't be called.

Now, when we scream at 'em "you measly back-street pimps, you're supping with Senator Gill-Man himself, the creature from the Bridgeport lagoon!" they reply -- with a calm and studied sanctimony -- "But folks! Our party is a big-tent party, 'cause big-tent parties are winning parties, and winning parties are... well... they win, you see. Don't you?"

Bullshit. You can't hide back there anymore, Barney and company. We want you jumping off that garbage scow, now! That's right, split, you bastards, split -- bust the donks back to also-ran status.

Recall Lyndon's line -- "Better we keep those fuckers on the inside pissin' out...."? Well, you dickweeds need to be "on the outside, pissin' in."

Damn, dude, was that one helluva Presidential campaign kickoff, or what? Who'd think that a boring old bastard like Joe Biden could pull out humdingers like his characterization of fellow fascism-enabler Barack "O-bomb-Iran-a" Obama -- “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”?

And, while I'm at it, just what is it that makes this old creep doing a piss-poor job of imitating a stereotypical gray-haired distinguished Senator think he has a crack at winning the Democrapic Nomination, let alone the White House? Really, man, what dull-assed old geezer. Y'know, it's been maybe seven, eight years now, and I still can't figure out how this undistinguished blowhard got famous.

I'll give the guy this, though; he's really outstanding at huffing and puffing and blustering and wagging his dick at everyone and still managing to say nothing that hadn't been already said weeks before by some other useless Democrapic hack.

The image above reminds me uncannily of someone, or a combination of someones. The hair is Danny Kaye, and the side-of-beef face is maybe a distant, feeble-minded cousin of old Joe Dzugashvili.

http://media.brookings.edu/MediaArchive/comm/events/20070126Hoyer.wmv

(Don't watch the video unless you're a glutton for punishment; Hoyer is so deathly dull he makes Joe Biden look like William Jennings Bryan. This image, strange and unsettling as it is, barely begins to convey the man's creepy, leaden, golem-like demeanor. He acts like he's under remote control from a distant location -- Jerusalem, perhaps? -- over a very low-bandwidth satellite link.)

His interminable speech boiled down to this: it was a good idea to go into Iraq, but the Administration fucked it up. First, they gave the wrong reason -- preemption based on WMDs that "turned out" not to exist (as if Steny and all his congressional colleagues weren't perfectly well aware, all along, that they didn't exist). Steny thought our pretext should have been a different one: namely, the fact that the late Saddam Hussein failed to comply with various UN resolutions. One wonders whether it has occurred to Steny that this same pretext would also serve quite nicely for an invasion of Israel.

Not only did the Admiistration fuck up the pretext, according to Steny, they also fucked up the execution. And what was the problem? Our old friend "boots on the ground," extravagantly vulgarized by Steny. He took the number of troops used in Mr Clinton's dear little Serbian war -- which he considers, of course, our finest hour in recent memory -- divided that by the population of Kosovo (not Serbia, oddly), then multiplied by the population of Iraq, and came up with half a million troops. Fifty divisions! That's the ticket! (The United States Army currently has ten active divisions.)

So. Next time one of your Democratic-party friends starts telling what the Democrats would or would not have done, you can tell them what their House majority leader at least says he would have done. I bet your friend will cling to his illusions rather than believe what his own honchos are saying.

http://www.andnetwork.com/index?service=direct/0/Home/recent.titleStory&sp=l173151

More than 10 blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon... Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in ... "It's a hoax - and it's not funny," said Gov. Deval Patrick, who said he will speak to the state's attorney general "about what recourse we may have."

Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" ... "They have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia," [said Turner Broadcasting].

To which I would respond -- do you have to ask?

Volunteer by writing direct to me: mjs [attt] smithbowen.net.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-chait14jan14,1,4802828.column?track=rss

It's by Johnny Chait, warmonger and prat-boy first class of Empire.

I don't want to accuse American doves of rooting for the United States to lose in Iraq.... they understand the dire consequences of defeat....

... the [doves'] urge to gloat is powerful and some of them do seem to be having a grand time in the wake of being vindicated...

Radar magazine recently published an article bemoaning the fact that pro-war liberal pundits [read: people like me] have not been drummed out of the profession for their error....

It's not hard to imagine where this is going, is it?

This pusillanimous tower toady wants to retain his liberal pundit auctoritas despite all his egregious war pandering. And since the best defense is always a good offense, his approach is to attack the doves' record of failed prognosticating in prior wars. Implication: so what if they got this one right -- even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

But in particular -- and yes, Johnny has a very particular rival in mind -- he wants us to forget about elevating "lefty foreign policy guru Jonathan Schell" to anything resembling auctoritas.

Schell recently had the gloatful impudence to sniff

'There doesn't seem to be a rush to find the people who were right about Iraq [like me] and install them in the mainstream media.'

Well, that certainly sounds like it might have an impact on Johnnie's bottom line.

GWOT EXPOSED AS FARCE BY AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE

Compared to this spooky cellar cavity pallorous clown kappery, the yippies look like yuppies. You were strainlessly superior -- the boomer press lynchery was putty in your hands.

The mayor looked like some officious dribble straw-boss out of Moon Mullins.

You made us all a cartoon strip. You, baby, are the three-D -- we're the flatlanders. You played us all like Gretsky and Orr.

Well, how's this for openers: a firm fierce jabbing finger of scorn and derision at our Unitary Prez and top-kick decider. Nyaah, nyahh, you, like, suck at trade, duude.

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=254186

He's presided over a long series of blunders and lost opportunities for trade expansion.

...agreements ... marked by politically motivated attempts to polarize trade along partisan lines ... concentrate trade sacrifices in Democratic constituencies while avoiding reform of special privileges for Republican-leaning industrial and agribusiness lobbies.

In a country where loss of a job often means the loss of health insurance and pensions, and a calamitous decline in living standards, it's no accident that many Americans perceive national trade policy as indifferent and adrift, and don't trust their leaders to negotiate or enforce sound trade deals.

Okay. So now George and company have demolished huge hunks of our industrial base, like it's a college frat prank. What can we vital center types do to help? Wait for it:

Fortunately, key Democrats in Congress.... understand the false choices so often posed in the trade debate and are looking ahead toward new and fresh approaches... First, a short-term renewal of Trade Promotion Authority for the sole purpose of concluding the Doha Round.

In conjunction with a progressive farm bill, completing Doha is the best opportunity to capture new markets and jobs.

That's all well and good if you got a portfolio, or a top trans-nat executive position -- but for us just-gettin'-by on the job types, here's the real beefsteak: "a significant down-payment on a new social contract." A "down payment," get it? Not actual bigger, better, broader, faster-acting collision mats for the inevitable stream of losers -- and certainly not a full

comprehensive socal compact that includes universal health coverage, universal pensions, a reformed unemployment insurance system, and other economic security measures for middle-class families.

"Congress ... make(s) the support for health insurance and job placement now available to trade-displaced workers through Trade Adjustment Assistance open to all dislocated workers"

Pretty small beer, right? So far (and frankly, to my surprise) beyond egg-facing the boy emperor, these Dembo trogs don't seem to feel a strong and compelling need to stretch leftwards or down, toward us little angry folks, and paint themselves as the kind, patronly alternative to the Bushco steamroller. Mark my words though, they will, and sooner rather than later, I see a stampede a-comin' our way -- wise men bearing us... gifts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/us/politics/05edwards.html?th&emc=th

He's in racing form, sez the Gray Lady, but she draws this sober conclusion:

Mr. Edwards is a credible contender, like anyone running an insurgency against the establishment candidate, he will not be able to fall back on the top-tier institutional and financial support that will rescue Mrs. Clinton if she should stumble in the early states where Mr. Edwards appears strongest.

I guess you are judged by the company you're forced into, and if it's the thin high air of the candidate summit, where only Mother Clinton and a covert corporate conjury we call Obama can cavort -- well then, I guess our Johnny is doing it under-doggy style.

PS -- Gomer Edwards would still keep the Patriot Act, so long as its domestic super-snooper prick gets lopped off. How long would that bargaining chip last, I wonder?

I'm still tickled about the Aqua Teen Hunger Force stunt in Boston.

http://www.bostonist.com/archives/2007/02/01/aqua_teen_hunger_attack_the_aftermath.php

A nation harrumphs in indignant sputter, as slap-happy hoaxsters unrepentantly quack, "What, me g-wot?" Wouldn't it be wonderful if deliberate emulation followed their inadvertence? Call it the mock heard round the world.

Boston, the city that once stood alone and unafraid, now stands as an emblem of hunkered abject official hysterics. Freaks and geeks, beware, if your pranks happen to fall into the faultless metallic grip of the Beantown security heavyweights.

But even after all the big heat, the bluster and the squeeze, these two miscreant millenial post-Seattle nihilists in dreadlocks and paint-stained jeans saw fit to mock their way out of the jam and into the hearts of anti-Big Brothers everywhere.

Mock the g-wot! Mock the g-wot!

The scam is to frog-march a bunch of healthy 20-year-olds into a for-profit insurance system that each year they'll pay into way way more than they'll get out. Extract billions from 'em, and say it's for their own good.

Pretty slick, huh?

To make a long story short, Southern Gentleman John Edwards (or rather, his handlers) hired a pair of liberal feminist bloggers to work for his campaign. His ostensible goal was to tap the vein of young, hip "netroots" bloggers-- not to mention their bales of money. What could go wrong? Both Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon) and Melissa McEwen (Shakespeare's Sister) are popular bloggers and thoughtful, often humorous writers. They love to wittily rip on Bush and his cronies.

Both aparently went ga-ga for Johnny's Neo Society brand of faux-healthcare for all and promises to bomb Iran to smithereens for its own good. Naturally these do just about nothing to set him apart from the rest of the hopefuls the Prog Blogs drool over, but no matter. Perhaps he paid the best, had the nicest teeth, or something like that.

The liberal blogosphere loves nothing more than a doomed recovery project, as we all remember from 2004. Proggies don't want a straighforward path to their supposed goals of peace, harmony and an iPod in every back pocket. They don't want an actual anti-war candidate. There's romance and intrigue in backing a candidate like Edwards, with his aw-shucks charm and skill at stirring oratory;Not to mention his borderline Himmler-esque vow to gently persuade a war-weary public that a few million more bloodied corpses on our hands are just what we need to boost our self-esteem. Every Liberal/Progressive feminist blogger worth her salt would kill for such an abundance of drama in the Tammy Wynette-Patsy Cline vein. There's nothing like being handmaiden to a handsome, slick-haired hawk who has clearly given much deep thought to the efficacy of dropping bombs on helpless foreginers. You can feel something real for a guy like that.

Poor Dennis Kucinich. If I wasn't so justifiably pissed off at him these days, it would be easy to spare him some pity. The poor fellow is as close to bonafide Left as you can get in the Big Tent these days. Yet time and time again he stands alone by the punchbowl with only his pocket protector for company while the pretty girls run off to drool over some yob in a DLC varsity sweater. Weird Al tried, but aparently even he couldn't make nerds cool enough for the in-house Prog set. Maybe if you got that guy who used to be half of the White Stripes to remake your image, Dennis. But I digress.

Everything was going great for a few days-- Until a couple of Right Wing clowns decided to kick up a fuss about the obvious moral depravity of any God-loving, bomb-dropping family man who'd think of letting potty-mouthed liberal feminists anywhere near his campaign. Within a day, the cry went up all over the liberal blogosphere to rally to the bloggers' defense and, of course, all that is good and right in Progville. It was so beautiful that even an avowed Crank like myself could only maintain her cynical, stone-hearted fascade for so long. In the name of the Sisterhood, I sat down and I wrote Johnny the Churchy Southern Hawk this email:

Dear Johnny,

Please do not bomb Iran. It's too expensive and very rude and it won't make your penis grow any bigger. Really, it won't. Can't you just invite Bin Laden and AIPAC and the Saudi royal family over for a barbecue and a few rounds of poker instead ?

Sincerely,

The Crank

P.S. --Please do not fire Ms. Marcotte and Ms. McEwen. They are stand-up feminists and surely two of the finest minds the blogosphere has to offer. You will find both women invaluable as you dupe their peers into surrendering yet more money to giant insurance companies who will in turn cover our illnesses and anti-depressants. If and when they feel like it. These two savvy thinkers will also help to place the most humane, feminist spin possible on bombing the bejeezus out of nuke-loving, terrorist-coddling women and kids overseas. Plus they probably have bills to pay. Senator, have a heart !

Dear Progressive Blogging Friends,

Thank You for your thoughtful email. I love you and your money, The talent and resources you spend ceaselessly and unquestioningly on behalf of the Democratic Party are invaluable to me. Rest assured that I plan to keep the two bloggers on at least until I've gotten as much cred as I can possibly wring from them. Once I have at least the Veep nomination sewn up, they will be quietly hustled out the back door. I will never so much as mention them again.

Sincerely,

Johnny Edwards

P.S.-- You write pretty good for a filthy Nader-worshipping Yankee.

Mr. Smith, am I getting paid for this ?

(BTW -- I want to thank the folks at the excellent blog Opera Glasses and Popcorn for helping me get my thoughts straight.)

Every so often a contraband copy of the New York Times will be left lying around, like a basking copperhead, on my kitchen table, and my bleary morning eye will land upon it before I've had enough coffee to realize the danger. Once I start reading, of course, it's too late.

I got bit this way a few days ago by a review, from the busy pen of Michigan Kakufoni, or whatever her name is, that Carlos the Jackal among book-assassins. Michigan was dealing very severely with the ludicrous Dinesh D'Souza. "Willfully incendiary... preposterous... embarrassing," she called Dinesh's latest flight of fancy, The Enemy At Home, a "partisan screed... of illogical arguments, distorted and cherry-picked information, ridiculous generalizations and nutty asides." This from a woman who, the week before, treated "Chucky" Schumer's partisan screed with the greatest deference, though all the strictures just quoted might be applied with equal justice to it.

Michigan and her editors gave the clownish D'Souza thirty column inches of detailed refutation, plus a rather endearing author photo, credited to one Dixie D'Souza -- sounds like a Carl Hiaasen heroine, doesn't it? -- that makes jug-earned Dinesh look like Rowan Atkinson in the role of Mr Bean.

What cries out for explanation here is why the Times would pay so much attention to such a silly book. Evidently, even though Dinesh is a raving loony, he's still enough of a somebody to merit attention, and his ideas, crazy as they are, must be taken seriously enough to argue with.

Michigan's lede establishes Dinesh's credentials as "the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University" -- honest, she put that whole jawbreaker into her first sentence. And she allows as how John Philip D'Souza's 1991 Illiberal Education "did have some illuminating points... about the excesses of political correctness on college campuses." But now, she says, the former illuminator has turned himself into "the Ann Coulter of the think-tank set," and, most damning of all, he has written a book that is -- brace yourself -- "irresponsible."

Dinesh, I think, has constituted himself, in Michigan's eyes, as something like a rogue cop. While he was plying his nightstick against the vagaries of the campus left, such as it is, he had a useful, if modest, MP's berth in the American ideological fleet -- whose flagship is the mighty dreadnought wherein Michigan herself sails the seas of thought. But now Dinesh has gone for a buccaneer, popgunning at "mainstream politicians like Hillary Clinton, Robert Byrd and Jimmy Carter," at Garry Wills and Seymour Hersh, and at -- oho! -- "several New York Times columnists."

It's amazing, really, how many levels of gatekeepers we seem to need. Those must be some very vulnerable gates. Let's not even mention the educational gatekeepers; but even after you've squeaked through the sheepskin gate, like Giles Goat-Boy, there are agents, and editors, and publishers, all of whom have the thumb down by default. And if you get through that crowd -- if, for example, Bill Buckley is taken with your dusky, sloe-eyed, moon-faced charm -- you still have to deal with the Millikan Cacafuegoes.

Of course, the Mulligans are a comparatively small peril after all your other adventures. It's as if Odysseus should pass through Scylla and Charybdis and storm and shipwreck and finally crawl ashore to confront the fangs of a really angry miniature poodle, yapping on and on through thirty column inches of who-cares prose.

I don't suppose McGillicuddy will have much effect on Dinesh's bottom line -- in fact, her carpet-chewing will probably stand him in good stead among his reference group. Come to think of it, I greatly envy old Dinesh. If only I could make Miching Millecho that angry!

On the other hand -- if I'd have to cozy up to Bill Buckley to get there -- well, I'd consider it. But surely, surely! there's another way?

There was a lot of surprised pwog-blog chatter about this -- how on earth could something so downscale and obscurantist as a groupuscule of Catholic hammerheads get the Injun sign over thoroughly modern Johnnie? These folks need to get some historical perspective. Before there was the AIPAC Policy Conference, there was... the Al Smith Dinner.

One wonders when some Catlick pol will at long last out these pederastic ghouls for their clandestine, behind-the-sacristy-curtain knife-throwing. It's well past time for those in the center of the arena to stop worring about the wrath of these vicious queens from Crowtown.

PS -- The real lead meatball here seems to be our old friend William A Donahue, head of the Catholic League:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Donohue

Now that all the Huguenots are dead, it's secular pornocrats he and his reborn league are after.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802337.html?referrer=email

according to the Washpost's big character booster, this new group, calling itself Enough, aims

to tap into the grass-roots awareness and sense of rage generated by the Darfur crisis and create a social and political network that can identify potential wide-scale atrocities, particularly in Africa, and stop them before they occur.

Questions, questions, questions. Which role will they play? Will it be...

1) Long range intervention precursors?

or

2) Last-minute bums-rushers?

Place your bets. I'm puttin' all I got on number 2. What the GWOT needs now is another "last chance for salvation" good-guy, hair-trigger, gun-play Greek chorus.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40

Yes, Obama plays rocket man for The Man, a real corporate media meteor arching across the political skies, lifting heads and minds from our 24/7 mud-blood-and-beer circus minimus down here below.

My favorite bit:

And what do African Americans get out of the deal? Far less than nothing. By assisting white Americans to believe that painless absolution of collective responsibility for the past and current national sins can be achieved by looking kindly on an ingratiating Black man's presidential candidacy, Obama has become an active participant in the Great Diversion. He repeatedly reinforces the notion that noisy “partisan politics” is what’s wrong with America, rather than rapacious corporations, structural and overt racism, and rampaging militarism.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/08/impeachment_at_our_peril.php

Constitutional patricide! This oedipal stuff really unnerves me. It's always a bad sign.

Impeachment At Our Peril

Impeachment would be a suitable punishment.... Still, congressional Democrats ought to resist the calls to engage in constitutional patricide....

The key question is not whether there is a case, but whether it should be prosecuted. The Democrats would do so at their peril—and at risk to their agenda.... [I]mpeachment will force its proponents to act as extremists.

Patricide, though... I share J Alva's horror. The last father-figure President we had was Dwight Eisenhower. This gang, it's more like George and Dick's Excellent Adventure. It's scary to imagine the museum of neo-Roman civic sculpture in David Corn's head -- all those marble togas and pecs and stern expressions.

Apropos the Iraq-upation: "We need to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in."

It's a perfect humanist empire phrase, isn't it? The obvious response from the anti-empire side: But Obie -- it's really not our call, is it? It's the Iraqi people's call; and if -- as I'm sure is the case -- they want us to scram, then we just oughta scram. Anything else -- in particular, staying solely for "their own good" and solely at our own expense, 'cause we owe it to them to... do the right thing. Even if it's thankless! Even if the world will revile us!

Bullshit, Obie.

We are home invaders there, not foster parents. If there's domestic abuse there now -- and even if there'll be way way more after we leave -- well, that tragedy of choice will still be on our heads, and the only thing we can do by staying is make it worse.

We owe Iraq reparations, not armed mediation, not a donkey-infested, responsible, humanely-motivated, open-ended bloodletting.

Any further Uncle Sam brutality, any further occupation, is a second round of criminality. And it's even worse than the first round, because at this point, nobody can deploy that scanty fig-leaf of innocence, "we wuz lied to." Everybody knows what's what in Iraq now, and nobody can pretend not to, and every day's new tally of dead and maimed lies right at the door of the people who want to be "careful getting out."

These stars are the better angels of a class and their consummation is betrayal, self-contradiction, the pious wish with hideous brutal consquences.

The vast goo-goo "me boomer, you profane" post-Woodstock wave has crested, with this result, this Hollywood ending.

But behold and beware: the goddess of history is too mighty to be maudlin. This promise of a Hollywood ending is a fraud, a saleable confection, strictly for profit only.

So go, you better-off boomers -- go out into the streets, and rage against the candy coated nightmare machine.

Go, and sin no more.

http://www.harpers.org/RepublicOrEmpire.html

It's a digest of his latest and last volume in the Blowback trilogy, Nemesis, a book of 300-odd pages, which I streaked, standing up at a bookstore last night.

Much of it got my bowels gurgling, but I'm bugged on one point -- enough for this post, anyway -- and this line from the Harper's article gets right onto that bug's back:

"Like the British after World War II, the United States could choose to keep its democracy by giving up its empire."

Giving up its empire? Swearing off it? By choice? Is that what the Brits did? Is that what Chalmers means -- or did Homer just nod?

Beacuse of course the Brits did nothing of the sort. Yes, in one beastly place after another, all across the planet, after '45, they folded up their Victorian charm schools, and like an exposed snake oil salesman, fled for cover. But Chuck, they didn't jump, they were pushed -- and pulled, twisted, and kicked, not just by the lesser breeds, but also by brawny Cousin Jonathan.

And even so, they are hardly in retirement. They may no longer command the major world courts as singles players, but they still play doubles on the imperial circuit, with Uncle Overhead Slam as partner in chief.

Let's agree on one fact here: ever since old Europe's 19th century empires all beat each other senseless between 1914 and 1945, and even before that useful bogey, Russia's Marxoidal figment, disintegrated in '89, we earthlings have been living either under, against, in, or through a unitary global empire doing business as America the Exceptional. My dear, and deeply esteemed, professor Johnson, empires of any sort -- even shabby, crumbling ones like the Brits ran prior to '45, and let alone unitary ones like Uncle Hedge runs today -- just can't take honorable leave of their global obligations, depredations and gainful exactions. The very idea is pure Disneyesque Tinkerbell hallucineering. Shame on you, dearest Chuck. You know better, and say as much in your trilogy, over and over. Doom is the beat of your narrative's drum throughout -- and rightly so.

Yeah, it's tempting to think that Uncle Sam might join some nonexistent little Britain in imperial rehab -- that the American titan might morph into some kinda of hulking Tom Jefferson in spurs. But Chucky, you must know that that was out of the question probably 30 years before 1896.

Headline impossible:

Weebles to Wall Street:
LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF!

The Nation magazine is ready to rumble, though. Here's a recent bit of pulpit oratory, taking its text from the Upper West Side's favorite bad writer:

Into 2008

On the eve of the 1992 elections, novelist E.L. Doctorow reminded Nation readers why the bizarre and troubling pageants known as presidential elections matter so deeply. "The President we get is the country we get.... He is the artificer of our malleable national soul." ... the President has become "the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. One four-year term may find us at reasonable peace with one another, working things out, and the next, trampling on each other for our scraps of bread."

It's hard to imagine that after this spectacular plunge into bathos, there might be still deeper abysses ahead. But The Nation unerringly finds 'em:

The early [Democratic Presidential] favorites come hearteningly close, for the first time in our history, to actually "looking like America."

The huge shadow of the chief executive is part of what has deformed our political system....

Let us imagine, and insist upon, the election of a President with the broad heart, the sharp but open mind and the principled passion to seize the opportunity that now exists for a long-term political realignment in America--who can set not only Democrats but a strong national majority back on track toward the goals of equality, opportunity, true democracy and social justice.

I wish I knew who actually wrote this slab of rodomontade. Pwoggies have a strange susceptibility to the corniest flag-waving -- I suppose that's one reason why that trumpery, vulgar blowhard John F Kennedy is still held in such high regard.

Perhaps one reason for this perverse taste is the anaesthetic effect of self-administered Fourth of July rhetoric. Patriotism is the opiate of the liberals. In this case, the fumes of the pipe have apparently obscured the Nation editorialist's self-contradiction from his own awareness. On the one hand, the swollen Presidency has "deformed our political system" -- from what shapely former form, I wonder, and when did the deformation occur? -- but on the other hand, our salvation lies in a "President with a broad heart, a sharp but open mind," and all the other anatomical qualifications for a savior -- a manly brow (particularly if she's a woman), a chiseled chin, and oh let's hope, liquid liberal eyes brimming with the tears of deep and earnest feeling.

It'd be worth what comes after just to see the looks on the faces of Hillary/Obama/Kucinich/Emmanuel/Pelosi/McAuliffe when they realize their scaremongering didn't work anymore, and that we're about to plow this baby in hard.

Talk about "strategic voting". Yee-hah, time to seize the plane! God Is Great!

http://counterpunch.com/simmons02152007.html

... a slobbering "way it was and sure ain't now" wallow over the duo of Steadman and Thompson. They was wild, baby, wild, and confrontational to THE MAN, and oh there are none such now... in this age of Smallville conformity and cubicle-contrived and -timed hilarity.

Horseshit, pard -- pure Kentuck horseshit.

My man Hunter oughta pee burning waste ichor down his throat tonight. Has this guff not noticed we got a new generation of wizards? Did he not reflect on the recent G-WOT mockery here in Beantown? And that quality of calm superiority... I loved Hunter dearly, but he never never reached that sweet spot.

Okay, I know -- on the one hand, for those two fuzzballs, it was effortless. But on the other hand, it takes tons of lost time and mangling souls to produce them two -- generations' worth of taxiing around the runway.

My message to the likes of the brass fart that wrote that piece about ole Hunter and Ralph -- dreary self-pitying birds like him oughta go hunker on a perch somewhere far, far away, and keep their bills clamped shut.

We got to step away from the front lights boomer boom, and let the next wave, and the next after that, pound and blast this sandy shore into whatever new shapes it can take.

Well, come to think of it, maybe it is one. The piece of us that's cutting into the rest of the world's hide 24/7 -- maybe that really is our civilization: our monster from the collective id, our beautiful novelty machine, our ten thousand points of hyper-innovational, by all means availible, insistently iconoclastical-- in short our Faustian imperative to kaizen every fucking thing in our way. It's as if we have an unconditional license for new kicks, new highs, no insights, no majesties -- all marketable, of course, all new ways to construct our latest neat notion of a better self.

We do this by slum-clearing all in our way. We build on the rubble we make out of everyone elses' souls. And then, what else -- we're surprised, and hurt, deeply hurt, when this makes our progressive enlightened caring altruistic fun culture seem poisonous to all other civilizations.

We are profane to all sacred ways, even our own of three minutes ago, and we go about the globe doing "decent" violence in the name of a genteel free-for-all indecency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/world/europe/15russia.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

This time round, seems Putin's boyz are slimfasting its N-party system. My favorite quote, from one activist facing Putin's crafty particide wave: It would be like if California had an election and only five Republican Parties could run. Wellll, as Doddering Ronnie might have said, what's wrong with that? Maybe they can fall all over each other. Maybe they'll all be as different from each other as the Karamazov boys were.

And besides, with 5 Republican parties, that's still three Republican parties more than California has got.

Conventional pwoggie wisdom is that the worst our long-eared representatives are guilty of is cowardice: they cut off funds for the Iraq romp, they pay a price at the polls. But where does that idea come from?

If a fund cutoff translates into lost votes in '08 for the jackassery -- show us what canvassing sample says so, or else I gotta figure you crypto empire donks pulled it right out of your assholes.

Who knows any actual human being who wants us out of Iraq -- but who doesn't want the Dems even trying to pull the plug?

And who in hell wants the troops back? Who wants us to fund a longer campaign there, let alone a buildup? Who? Who?

Show me the numbers, you phoney bastards!

"HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN:
Your Jackass Slate For 2008!"

Well, here we are not even six months after The Most Important Election Since The Last Mass Extinction Event and, like Christmas commercials during the World Series, the Democratic "stars" have already announced their intentions to make political hay out of the disasters they allowed to happen for the past five years -- that is to say, announced their candidacies for the 2008 Presidential Fracas which, as any Democrat will tell you, will be The Most Important Election Since The Earth Cooled To A Temperature Conducive To Life.

So, what's more to say, gang, except let's get on with the slagging -- uhh...that is, let's look at some quick, elegant analyses of the "major" candidates (so far) on your Jackass Slate For 2008!

EDWARDS:

http://www.sinkers.org/posters/democrats08/edwards08.jpg

Ballsiest of the bunch, for sure, announcing the week after Christmas, and while doing what was obviously a staged photo op around New Orleans, pretending to help clean up a wrecked, wasted neighborhood and help some people get their lives back together, all while announcing for Big White Massuh's House. Am I the only one here who, on seeing this guy for the first time, could only think that here was the new Beautiful Hair Breck Boy, and that if he were a C&W singer, he'd be getting more ass on the road in a month than most regular guys get in a lifetime, and just where the hell did he come from, anyway?
THE FINAL ANALYSIS: HE'S GOT BETTER HAIR.

HILLARY:

http://www.sinkers.org/posters/democrats08/hillary08.jpg

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary! What else could I possibly say about Hillary that hasn't already been said about the sensation of having red-hot steel needles driven into your eyeballs? Anyone who's seen the YouTube clip of Hillary meeting with Code Weak...uh, Code Pink back in '03, or heard her speechifying in the past month, will tell you that her skills at telling people shit they want to hear are still par excellence. Just five minutes of Hillary and you'll know how the pancake feels when they lay on the Aunt Jemima. Will this be our '90s Nostalgia -- CNN once again being the Clinton News Network, NBC once again being Nothing But Clinton?
THE FINAL ANALYSIS: SHE'LL PANDER TO ANYONE.

KUCINICH:

http://www.sinkers.org/posters/democrats08/kucinich08.jpg

(Full Disclosure: Your Cartoonist has been a hardcore Deadhead since 1978.)

Y'know, when Dennis Kucinich launched his "insurgent" candidacy in '04, I first thought "well, hot damn! He sure as hell won't win, but at least he'll put the fear of god in those DLC hoods!" This was, of course, before hearing about -- and witnessing -- his miserable, craven performance at the Democratic Convention, his supporters having their "Kucinich'08" signs ripped from their hands and replaced with Kerry signs by DNC goons without any apparent sign of protest. No bolting the Convention, no boycott of the vote, no nothing, just Dennis Kucinich leading his merry band of phony "progressives" over the cliff with John Kerry (and Code Weak bringing up the rear). And now, as if this lack of effort was actually appreciated, here's Dennis The Menace, back again, to suck all the life out of the American peace cargo cult -- uh, American peace movement.
THE FINAL ANALYSIS: HE'LL WASTE THE LEFT'S TIME.

OBAMA:

http://www.sinkers.org/posters/democrats08/obama08.jpg

(Full Disclosure: Your Cartoonist was drooled on by the Washington Post in 2002.)

Who else here saw Barack Obama's beaming mug in the paper or on TV right about the time of the '04 Democratic Convention and thought, "Who the hell is this guy, and why are they drooling over him like he was a goddamn' rock'n'roll star?" I mean, seriously, the guy was basically a nobody, then suddenly he was all over the goddamn' place -- kinda like a political version of an American Idol winner. No years of living on club gigs and peanut-butter sandwiches, no paying dues on the road as a backup act, just wham! You're a star! Did anyone else here also find themselves reading the drooling and thinking, darkly, that the Donks were already grooming Obama for '08, and that he was here not to actually do anything for African America, but to give Geezin' Old White Liberal America something to feel good about -- so they can go back to not really giving a shit about what's happening to black and brown people in this country and when anybody calls them on it, they can say "hey, gimme a break! I voted for Barack Obama!" The only Black constituency I can think of who'd possibly go for Obama would be what I like to call the "Ebony Magazine Demographic".
THE FINAL ANALYSIS: HE'S NOT "TOO BLACK".

Code Pink Meets Hillary, March 2003:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYATbsu2cP8

http://nevadathunder.com/?p=3371

The piece seems to have been ripped off from The New Republic, and what it mostly goes to show -- unintentionally, of course -- is just how un-opposed to the war the Democratic Party was, even after Nixon took over the management of it:

In 1970, during the Vietnam war, an amendment to the military procurement authorization act introduced by Republican Mark Hatfield and Democrat George McGovern proposed that, unless President Nixon sought and won a declaration of war from Congress, no money could be spent after the end of the year “for any purposes other than to pay costs relating to the withdrawal of all United States forces.” Of course, withdrawing forces is not cutting funding for them (in fact, it might have turned out to be more expensive in the short term), and Hatfield-McGovern never got more than 42 votes in the Senate–even though, in its second go-round in 1971, 73 percent of the public supported it.

The first time the Senate actually voted to suspend funding for American military activities in Vietnam was in the summer of 1973, two months after the last American combat brigades left, by the terms of a peace treaty Nixon negotiated. That amendment passed by a veto-proof majority–encompassing Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals–of 64 to 26....

Early in 1974, Nixon requested a support package for the South Vietnamese that included $474 million in emergency military aid. The Senate Armed Services Committee balked and approved about half. A liberal coup? Hardly. One of the critics was Senator Barry Goldwater. “We can scratch South Vietnam,” he said. “It is imminent that South Vietnam is going to fall into the hands of North Vietnam.” The House turned down the president’s emergency aid request 177 to 154; the majority included 50 Republicans....

Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975. Washington should follow a similar strategy now [in Iraq], but this time finish the job properly.

Huge indignation about this from the Dems. Don't throw us in that briar patch. What a nice cover for them. Their liberal true-believer base is infinitely credulous that the yahoo inanity, out there in their tens of poorly-educated millions, live on such invisible foreskin music. And so, of course, the poor donkey's flank must be guarded, and that means... well, you fill it in. The dance of mutual enablement continues, without missing a step.

Here, for example, is The Nation's ace beltway scout:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/22/the_democrats_iraq_civil_war.php

A few days ago , a senior Capitol Hill Democratic aide called to tell me he was worried. The aide feared that his party would soon find itself split over the Iraq war.

Progressive House Democrats are pushing for a cutoff in funding, he said, not caring that such legislation would put their colleagues from less-liberal districts in a bind. Moderate Democrats, the aide said, will not likely want to vote against military spending for Iraq and face the criticism (justified or not) that they are not supporting the troops. Even though the war is unpopular and Bush and the Republicans are on the run, we’ll be dividing ourselves, said the aide, who works for a legislator who favors a funding cutoff.

The following day, a prominent liberal thinker in Washington told me he was concerned that Democratic leaders and antiwar activists are swinging behind Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha’s plan to attach restrictions to Iraq war funding. Murtha’s proposal would prohibit money from being used to deploy troops to Iraq who are not fully equipped, fully trained and fully rested. That plan cannot win a majority, this thinker said; putting it up to a vote would only rip apart the party. The Democrats, consequently, would look weak and not achieve anything, but they still would give the Republicans the chance to accuse them of undermining the soldiers in the field. Couldn’t antiwar Democrats and activists, this liberal asked, find a more mature and sophisticated strategy?

It's only to be expected -- obviously a counterattack is needed since the prog-pop steamroller is crushing everything in sight, mind-share-wise. Alarm bells are ringing loudly. The orcs of magical liberalism, once so confidently streaming forth from the Clinton NewDem/DLC Orthanc are now in ignominious retreat, those marvelous gravy train years of the high 90's long forgotten by the jobbled masses.

But Third Way has the antidote. If you'd rather not wade thru any more Third Way swamp than you have to, here's a quick takedown by Tom Palley:

http://www.thomaspalley.com/

Now I know Tom's usually a far too ponderous grappler for real folks to dine out on, what with his smokestack English grunting and gripping and his all-too-conspicuous cast-iron union suit, but here his blend is oddly perfect.

And if that's still too much, here's some quick notes for my fellow ADHD types.

Thirdies message these lies till they feel like facts:

1. America's middle class is far wealthier than neopopulists believe or say.

   In fact, of course, the bottom 60%'s wages are sleeping on a 25-year rollaway cot.

2. The huge trade gap, despite clownish appearances to the contrary, is really the dark side of very good news for us jobbled second stringers, pikers, duffers and bottom feeders.
3. All that house debt is good for us, too!

Don't mind that big white thing out there up ahead -- it's prolly an ice cream barge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001575.html?referrer=email

It's about the "left" attack on Ellen Tauscher, and it's like one of those wonderful movies that has all the character actors you really like: my fave Cal gal, Jane Harman; Hoyer; la Nan; even Kos and Moveon.

Act One: the all-fours netroots attack:

Progressive blogs -- including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher -- were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its "Worst Offender." And in Tauscher's East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq.

Pelosi has clashed with Tauscher in the past, but she's now eager to hold together her diverse caucus ...So far, Pelosi and her leadership team seem determined to protect Tauscher and her 60 New Democrats -- up from 47 before the election. In fact, the day after Working for Us, the new progressive political action committee, targeted Tauscher, Pelosi sought her out at a caucus meeting and assured her: "I'm not going to let this happen." House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) spent 20 minutes complaining to Working for Us founder Steve Rosenthal, who swiftly removed the hit list of "Worst Offenders" from the group's Web site.

"Absolutely, we could take her out," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga -- better known as Kos -- the Bay Area blogger behind the influential Daily Kos site

Despite a long career as a friend of war and killer trade agreements, the cultural lib defense tries to cover her flank with green pink and caring:

"..liberal groups such as the Children's Defense Fund and the League of Conservation Voters give Tauscher impeccable report cards, while the National Rifle Association gives her straight F's."

It's about Iraq, stupid!

"We need her to stand up and end this war," said Joi. She and her Code Pink colleagues recently told Tauscher that if she wouldn't support a bill calling for total withdrawal from Iraq within six months, they'd occupy one of her district offices."

Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, made it clear that Working for Us didn't work for him.

"Our majority can disappear in a wisp," he told the members. "I'm the sheriff of the incumbent-protection program, and if you need help, let me know. In Blue America, there's no room for PACs to chase vulnerable members they have differences with."

Tauscher soon met for a glass of wine with Andy Stern, the feisty liberal who runs the Service Employees International Union; he assured her of his union's support.

Kos points to Harman as a perfect example of how the Net roots can keep Democrats in line. He said Harman used to be a constant irritant, a go-to quote for reporters looking for a Democrat to tweak liberals -- until she had to fight off a primary challenge from the left in 2006. "She's been great ever since," he said. Now Harman even writes on the liberal Huffington Post blog

Having served in the majority and the minority, I can tell you, the majority is better.

http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/02/19/activists-heat-up-for-employee-free-choice-act-week-of-action

As members of Congress return home for the Presidents Day recess, working families are launching a Week of Action to push for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

• Establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations...
• Providing mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes....
• Allowing employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation...

The road ahead to "job choice" will only shorten when these union cadre get out of the lobby and over to the job site. Only when they themselves are willing to get their own fat asses arrested for doin' a little direct de facto enforcement of workers' rights, will the tower boys take notice and the public respond.

Job sites are like lunch counters and front seats on the bus -- you got to occupy 'em and not budge, if you expect to have any chance of making them yours by right.

http://counterpunch.com/roberts02192007.html

Paul's what you'd call an off-the-reservation 80's supply-sider. Like better-known guys who play economist/prophet of doom on TV, Paul likes to rage against the transnational project to de-industrialize America, job-strip the nation's skilled and educated, and generally run this graceful land down to Haitian status. That is to say, Paul is running with the right-flank libertarians as part of the present rising tide of national populism.

Unfortunately, his economics leaves much to be desired. Of course, as my dad, Wild Bill Paine, always said, "cheerleaders don't have to do the blocking and tackling, son" -- so I guess it don't matter much when Paul, trying to explain why the real global system just don't work like in the textbooks, writes of "the two conditions on which comparative advantage depends":

• Capital must be immobile internationally and seek its comparative advantage in the domestic economy, not move across international borders in search of lowest factor cost
• Countries have different relative cost ratios of producing tradable goods"

And as for number one -- having met the pillar, here's the post: for condition number one to hold, we would need to wipe out the entire international credit system. So the Roberts sine qua non conditions for international trade are a combination of the impossible, with the wildly, futilely excessive.

Having said that, though, I have to admit the piece is a nice attack on the shameless trans-nat shilling of one Michael Porter, of Harvard Yard and something called the Council on Competitiveness. Even if Porter's economics is barely press-room quality, at least he knows who's behind all this job massacreeing:

This argument [by the aforementioned Coun on Comp] shows that the report is written from the standpoint of what is good for global firms, not what is good for America.

It made some sense when General Motors claimed that what is good for General Motors is good for America, because when the claim was made General Motors produced in America with American labor. It makes no sense to make this claim today when what is good for a company is achieved at the expense of the American work force.

Seems like a long time ago now that blow-me Bill was able to sell his line -- "play by the rules and our party will do you for the rest."

That DLC joyride hit a big deep dark pothole, rounding the bend into the new century. Lotta geeps suddenly had a "this is all total bullshit" moment, and the Clinton line needs a makeover.

But the tower trolls' smiling hopeful apologists at Third Way offer -- what? The promise of a fresh deck? A new dealer?

Nope. Third Way has some new rules of the game for us.

TW proves to their own satisfaction that this old deck of ours ain't really stacked... well at least not so bad... at least, errr... nothing like so bad as these right out of Nowheresville, barefoot, ringwormed, new populists are trying to make out. But still, the junior woodchucks generously allow, we as "progressive realists" know there's always room for improvement. Excelsior, cries the pious monk.

If we can't change God's and freedom's deck, we can try changing, or rather mending err mending our own habits, can't we? So without any further delay, let's give a warm rube welcome to Third Way's tablets from the mountaintop, a new covenant with the Yahweh of international capital. Working title: from lunchpail, to laptop, to scrap heap in one continuous kaizen motion.

Step one: face it, it's not enough to work hard anymore. Now you gotta work smart too. In particular, forget a raise if you ain't got no 4-year college degree. You are headed straight downmarket, pal to Tiajuana wages. And oh, keep this in mind -- even after you aquire that 4-year sheepskin, better convert that student loan into a 401K as fast as possible. You're gonna need it, 'cause retirements are getting longer and the dance of death way way costlier.

And don't, whatever you do, look back, and don't look ahead. Because the old and infirm are growing faster and faster than the young and firm.

So, Third Way tells us, I got your job site strategy right here. Think portablity, disposability, scrapability. That's you, your job, and your benefits. Under the new "you're on your own, asshole" rules, from day one to night zero. And oh, you'll need to prefigure a dry-gulch retirement and health plan.

Well, what can we say? Brace for whitewater, gang. And don't blame the corporations, please. They're endangered species, the sperm whales of profit, and they have come under a new set of brutal market-inflicted rules, too, just like you -- poor babies.

In a nutshell: because the pirate gun is at their head, and the wolf is at their executive bathroom door, there can be no more Mister Nice Guy.

If you thought Mister Burns was a bummer, try 21st century market reality, as seen from behind the corner office desk. Can you spell merciless? This is not Madison Avenue hype here. Competition these days is really, really merciless. No more fat dumb and happy lifetime leapfrogging, no more generous pay envelopes at Santa time. There are too many lean and hungry Asian corporations, TW warns us, out there on the global prowl, ready to eat my lunch, your lunch, and your coffee break too, also your spouse's job and happy hour and.... In fact, you, all of you, can expect to get downsized and innovated out the back door, and sent off on a jaunt of ever less opportune job opportunities. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick -- and I mean 24/7, or Jack be sleepin' on a heating grate, cause Mister Moto bit off his balls.

To generalize the Third Way vision: we are now in a sea to shining sea, totally integrated earthwide economy, where its not enough to make something. Not at all. Production is for starvers. Today, only corporations that make themselves perpetual creators of neat new stuff can expect to meet the same payroll tomorrow they met just yesterday. So the Third Way rule of effective survival play: plan on hoppin' in and out of Strip Mall Tech, uppin' your skill bank, just to keep even.

You'll need new skeeeelz more often than a new car,to land on your feet at your new outfit. Oh, and by the way -- the outfit-to-outfit hop looks to be getting only faster and faster, and the skill set strips will be leaving you nakeder and nakeder.

Fuck Third Way and the horses' rules they rode in on. Come that inevitable next job whack, just shoot your boss on the way out and let the Clintonian effective-death-penalty state take care of you. At least you'll get three squares and central heat until you've exhausted. your appeals. And when the end comes, it'll be the most competent and effective medical treatment you'll ever get.

I. Thinking the unthinkable

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/14838

Adults in the United States are divided on who should certify medical insurance coverage, according to a poll by Zogby Interactive. 35 per cent of respondents think the issue is the primary purview of the federal government, 31 per cent leave it up to each individual, and 15 per cent believe employers should be responsible.

II. The sorrows of Brand X

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/14842

Republican Rudy Giuliani holds an advantage over three prospective Democratic presidential nominees in the United States, according to a poll by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. 48 per cent of respondents would vote for the former New York City mayor in 2008, while 43 per cent would support New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Giuliani holds a seven-point edge over Illinois senator Barack Obama, and an eight-point advantage over former North Carolina senator John Edwards.

III. Les douleurs du Brand X, a la Francaise

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/14840

Hillary's poor showing is mirrored -- on a much more stylish and elegant plane, of course -- by the sleek Segolene Royal, a supposed Socialist somewhat in the Bernie Sanders mode, though nicer-looking:

Nicolas Sarkozy holds a larger lead in France’s presidential race, according to a poll by Ipsos published in Le Point. 33 per cent of respondents would vote for the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) contender in this year’s election. Ségolène Royal of the Socialist Party (PS) is second with 23 per cent, followed by Union for French Democracy (UDF) leader François Bayrou with 16 per cent, and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front (FN) with 13 per cent....In a prospective run-off scenario, Sarkozy holds an eight-point advantage over Royal.

New Republic to Cut Back Publication Schedule

The New Republic, the thinning left-leaning weekly magazine whose circulation has plunged in the era of the Web, is overhauling itself.... CanWest Global Communications, a Canadian media conglomerate that had been a minority shareholder in The New Republic, is now the majority owner. Martin Peretz, the editor-in-chief, is retaining his one-quarter interest. “Having a corporation in the ownership mix, and at a publishing company at that, is a much greater guarantee for the financial future of the magazine,” Mr. Peretz said today. “It just seemed to me, given my own intellectual and moral synergies with Leornard Asper, a very good partnership.” Mr. Asper, the chief executive of CanWest, was not immediately available for comment.

I'm not sure exactly what the apparently imminent demise of the New Republic portends, but it's good news in any case. TNR was never an organ of the Right -- in a perverse way, the Times ignoramus actually got it sort of correct, without knowing how or why, when she called it a "left-leaning" rag. Of course you have to understand "left" here in its peculiar Times sense, as a synonym for "liberal."

TNR always formed part of the institutional apparatus of American liberalism, not American "conservatism" (to use, for the moment, another word in a common but nonetheless peculiar sense). TNR's function was to provide cover for the liberals' thirty-year romance with... with... -- oh, what the hell, I'm going to let my inner sectarian take wing and call them The Forces Of Reaction. I know it sounds like something out of Monthly Review, but at least it uses words in a straighforward, un-peculiar sense.

So. A few possibilities:

1) TNR is no longer needed. The aforementioned romance has been well and truly consummated by the mighty schlong of the aforementioned F's of R, and the liberals -- all six of them -- have settled more or less contentedly into the life of a cellblock byotch.

2) TNR has exhausted whatever credibility it ever had, even among the infinitely gullible punters of American liberalism, and some other means will have to be found for them to fool themselves that they're splitting the difference.

3) Liberalism has decided to turn from its wickedness and live again.

We can probably discount #3, or at least I hope we can. My own hope is that TNR, having been one of the instruments of the liberals' auto-euthanasia, is now following them into that good night.

Frankly, I don't give a shit. Whatever it morphs to, it won't be anti-empire. It won't be "away all bases and boats away" globally. It won't be "yankee go home and stay home and sin with explosives no more."

But because I owe you some gossip, here's an update from Foggy Bottom. Yes, it's from the source-n-a-tor himself, Comrade Y of le service etranger pousse-gateau. He'd been at one of those embassy parties sucking down the Martinis, and he called me up last night, full of prepster bonhomie. "Fort Kurd ain't enough, Paine!"

"I see."

"No you don't, Paine. The position a la mode last summer -- you know, fall back under a cloud of red white and blue bluster to bases in Kurdistan and let the sectarian arab civil war sort itself out -- not lookin' so swell now, mon vieux."

"Y! Were you at the French embassy?"

"How'd you know? Anyway, the Shia can't be allowed to win the "lower Iraq" gig any more than they can in Lebanon -- in fact, call Arab Iraq Lebanon times eight. Uncle has a long term area problem containing Iran, and that problem looks far worse now, after the Hezi-wezis made the Tel Aviv catamounts look like pussycats.

"The present nightmare -- a brutal core of Shia runing amok from the Gulf up past Basra and past Baghdad to the oily skirts of Kurdistan itself. Yikes! We got a dog in the hunt after all. Far from attacking Iran, Uncle's having trouble figuring out how to defend the gulf!

"Oddly, the building boom underway along the Arab littoral dwarfs even Chinese efforts. Example: for one sheikville, more office space completed this coming year than all -- that's right, all -- the office space in existence in downtown San Francisco.

"War zone -- boom zone -- war zone -- boom zone -- the trans-nats are at this stuff 24/7.

"Oh, and by the way, there will be no hot war with the Iranians. It's all just hot air. You can take that to the bank, Paine. I got a little spool of micro film here you'd just love to see, buddy."

"Y! Watch it, will ya? Not on the phone!"

"Nemmine, Paine, nemmine... I'm not scared... I've got insurance... I know where the bodies are buried, bro."

I worry about the guy sometimes.

2. No funds appropriated or otherwise available to any Federal department or agency may be obligated or expended to use, sell, or transfer any cluster munitions unless--

(1) the submunitions of the cluster munitions have a 99 percent or higher functioning rate;

(2) the policy applicable to the use, or the agreement applicable to the sale or transfer, of such cluster munitions specifies that the cluster munitions will only be used against clearly defined military targets...

3. The President may waive the requirement under section 2(1) if, prior to the use, sale, or transfer of cluster munitions, the President--

(1) certifies that it is vital to protect the security of the United States; and

(2) not later than 30 days after making such certification, submits to the appropriate congressional committees a report....

This toothless bill adds some tech detail to last year's Feinstein/Leahy amendment, which simply specified that cluster bombs were not to be used against civilians. (Neither bill, of course, contains any provision for enforcing this ban.) Last year's amendment failed in the Senate, 70-30, with fifteen Democrats voting against it:

• Bayh
• Biden
• Clinton
• Dodd
• Inouye
• Landrieu
• Lautenberg
• Lieberman
• Lincoln
• Nelson (FL)
• Nelson (NE)
• Pryor
• Rockefeller
• Salazar
• Schumer

“Perhaps unfortunately, the issue of cluster munitions came about so prominently by Israel’s use or misuse of cluster munitions in its conflict with Hezbollah,” Colby Goodman, a program manager at Amnesty International, said. “It was seen by some as a focus on criticizing Israel...."

Obama, in an uncharacteristic display of relative ballsiness, actually voted for the amendment last year. Perhaps on account of that, The Hill says

... Obama has a tougher row to hoe with Jewish voters. A survey last week by the Jerusalem newspaper Ha’aretz ranked him 17th out of 17 presidential candidates on a scale of friendliness to Israel.

[Ha-Aretz's] chief Washington correspondent, Shmuel Rosner, said... "His supporters will come mainly from the left wing of the Democratic Party and from the African-American community — from constituencies which are traditionally not that supportive of Israel."

Clinton and Schumer and the rest of last year's cluster-bomb fan club may get a little wiggle room on this year's amendment. The Hill reports that

AIPAC is not taking a position on the cluster-bomb curbs this year, according to a spokesman for the group. Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein offered conditional approval of the Feinstein-Leahy bill: “I have no problem ensuring that our allies receive more effective and efficient cluster bombs … unless it would impact on our allies receiving cluster bombs they need at critical times."

You may not want to believe it, but the DLC is still in charge of the party in the form of the New Democrat and Blue Dog caucuses, as well as a whole crew of consultants warning the party off of dealing with Iraq. Business lobbyist centrists rule the roost, with progressives pushed to the side everywhere from the think tank world to Congress to the Presidentials (no, there is no progressive in the race, and though several have instincts that way no one has developed yet into a genuine liberal).

Matt isn't willing to go quite as far as David Sirota, though:

The Associated Press today tells the story of how Democrats in Washington clearly do not want to end the Iraq War.... The renewed refusal by Democrats to use their majority in even the most basic way to stop the war is a declaration that the new majority is not close to using even the most basic powers afforded to it to stop or slow down the war. In other words, in backing off, the Democrats have just weeks after the 2006 anti-war election mandate effectively declared themselves as supportive of the Bush administration's stay-the-course policy - a truly sickening act of cowardice.

Matt has a solution to the problem, and man is it a bold one:

The mechanism for doing so is criticism, and perhaps primary challenges against some prominent Democrats who are among the worst of our obstacles.

When I hear the phrase "primary challenge" I go for my Browning.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/print?id=2908624

Among the Democrats, Clinton still leads, but by less of a margin than last month, given a seven-point gain in support for Barack Obama. His advance has come overwhelmingly among African-Americans, many of whom likely have learned more about Obama in recent news coverage.

Clinton's support, meanwhile, slipped by five points. The reason, again, is entirely blacks. In ABC/Post polls in December and January, she led Obama among African-Americans by 60-20 percent. Today it's a 44-30 percent race among blacks, with Obama in front.

Naah, don't get your hopes up, Smith. Barack will make the necessary obeisances, surely, and get himself certified kosher by our favorite cluster-bomb customer. Or Hillary will find a way to take him out before he can cause too much trouble. Or maybe the whole story is a Triangle Productions film from start to finish, in which everybody knows their lines already, and whose leaden denouement is a Clinton-Obama ticket.

Nope, the race is over, and as often happens, the wiry, intense black dude took first place. Oby-wan has the black vote swinging behind him, and what has St Hill got left but the troops of Fort Zion? And there's no particular reason for them to stick with her, either -- like the Bedouins they enjoy chasing around the wadis, the Zion cavalry will gallop to the oasis with the sweetest water. Lose your donors, lose your chance.

I wonder if she'll even wait to be Muskieed (a la '72) and Humphreyed (a la '60) all at once, in the first spasm of prima-caucal action? Yeah, I think she prolly will, even if she don't need a beating like that. She'll charge into it, get the full robo-soak, and probably not take it well either -- "I guess you'll have mo more Hill-Rod to fuck around with anymore, will ya, guys?"

She won't take the vice gig. She'll be hoping, with some reason, that the drawn booth curtain will Al-Smith the dark-skinned chap, and 12 is her lucky number, anyway.

So who else can veep it? Will the higher wisdom of the party of the people, the whole people, and nothing like the people go full scramble and anoint... Pelosi?! Or pull back to Clark?

Oby-Clark looks like the better bet to me -- keep a mean snake-head cracker lookin' in over Oby's left shoulder, while Wall Street Bobby Rubin keeps a half nelson on the black guy's signing arm.

And there it is, fellow citizens: our land of mile-wide, inch-deep symbolic gestures, with this one nomination, can put paid to the black blood debt. And if the half-African meritoid actually gets Whitehoused to pilot the invisible earth empire -- well then, the tables will be turned, and black folks will owe us big-hearted Caucasians a debt they can never hope to repay.