IT'S A RACE!

Hard to believe that the there are only six weeks left until all Oscar-eligible films for the 2006 year will have bowed in at least one cinema. This year was a puzzling one..... Movie Summer 2006 was one of the weakest in memory (what does it say of a summer when not only one of the best films, but one of the most exciting films, is..... a movie about global warming?!?!?), and yet, nearly as soon as the leaves began to turn, so did film year 2006 take a turn... for the better. Five movies I've seen that have come out in October and November alone - The Departed, Borat, The Prestige, Casino Royale, and The Queen - are first-rate films to varying degrees. One (The Departed) is worthy of at least a Best Picture and Best Director nomination (if only critics would realize that they no longer sound "cool" when they say "The Departed is Scorsese's best film since Goodfellas, but that's not saying much!" - they sound rehearsed)and several acting nominations; another (the Queen) might as well be anointed the film that receives the Oscar for Best Actress (Helen Mirren) now. And the potential group of nominees includes.... Kate Winslet, Judi Dench, Meryl Streep AND Cate Blanchett.. A remarkable turnaround.

I'd be remiss in writing any column about the Academy Awards if I did not mention a man whose name has long been associated with Oscar - a five-time nominee, and this year's winner of the "We Know You're Going to Die So We're Giving You This Award, Even Though Giving It To Paul Newman Made Us Look Like Morons" award: Robert Altman, who passed away yesterday. I've only seen two Altman films in their entirety - Gosford Park (2001) and Short Cuts (1993), but both, Short Cuts in particular, were superlative. I regret not having seen M*A*S*H* (1970) and Nashville (1975) while he was still alive, if only so that I could have realized while he still drew breath the enormity of thie man's talent.

One thing that frequently bothered me where Robert Altman was concerned is that he was branded a misogynist by so-called reputable critics. These critics cite the film "Dr. T and the Women" as Count I in their indictment. I must say that I find this charge unfair- not only unfair, but befuddling. Altman's films - "Three Women", "Nashville"and "Short Cuts" - don't just have sympathetic, well-written female roles; these roles sparkle with humanity - with the spontaneity and life that has been called "Altmanesque". I can still remember Helen Mirren breaking down at the end of Gosford Park...."At least you have one".... Or Lily Tomlin in Short Cuts, embracing her lover (Tom Waits), alkyism and all.

Real bigotry - alas, the Michael Richards kind - has a way of presenting itself, in a manner that leaves no doubt as to its presence. Altman was the living embodiement of the phrase "maverick" among American directors - one whose zestful loathing of the studio system was organic rather than affected, a feeling earned rather than affected. People fear this type of person, and imagine that if they truly knew what it meant to speak one's mind, bigotry would come out of their mouths - so it must have come out of his as well.

Altman was said by several critics to have loved his characters more than any other director ever has. Of course, I wouldn't know if this was true - nor would the people who made the comments - but what a special observation.... aout this ost special of directors.

By the way, I'm watching "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" now. What an achievment in its own right this movie was! The film managed to invoke genuine dread, and pathos (the perfectly choreographed devastation with which we are hit as Cedric Diggory returns to the real world is an unforgettale five seconds of film), and... as I have noticed for the first time, revlusion - in that I find it disturbing how free with their hands the professors are when it comes to striking students with them. True, the scenes, where Harry or Ron have their heads shoved down upon a table by Professor Snape are meant to be comical (I think), but others involving similar - and the only word I can call it is "abuse" - are not meant to evoke any feeling, I think - they just kind of sit there, hovering over the movie, bestriding it like an anomalous fog.

One feeling that Potter IV does capture well - and here, I must sadly invoke the adage "One doesn't have to bite the donut to know it's sweet" - is the spirit of adolescent love. I've been witness to the many shades of this spirit - as it is expressed by people who claim to be experiencing "love" many times, just as the bridesmaid who is never a bridge gets a heady whiff of the real thing but cannot keep her own supply. I cannot believe that at my age, I am watching films where people less than half of my age are experiencing emotions that on an organic level, I've never felt. The embarrassment is so overwhelming that it zips across, around, and within my mind in bursts of awkwardness, but never sits still long enough to marinate. I suppose my mind has constructed a defense mechanism in this manner. Whether this s a good thing is a different issue altogether.

KARL ROVE GOES TO COLLEGE

I stumbled across an interesting, yet unsurprising fact a few minutes ago:

Liberals have the highest education level of any typology group ­ 49% are college graduates and 26% have some postgraduate education. [Pew Research - voter demographics 2004]

This statistic, by the way, explains why the majority of universities tend to have faculties who are "liberal-minded". (By the way, the word "liberal" describes a characteristic, not a virtue or vice. 40 years of relentless fearmongering and hatemongering have actually convinced people otherwise - mainly people who have nowhere near these education levels).

Nowadays, and for quite some time, we have heard conservatives squawk about how higher education is controlled by "'dem lib-ruls". Often times, when someone is angry about a situation, one will at least try to come up with ways of trying to alleviate or change it. Not these folks. Conservatives - deep-down and not so deep down - LOVE the fact that colleges and universities are "lib-rul".

Why? Because if they were not, there would be less - a lot less - for these folks to demagogue about. Republican demagoguery consists of, and I know I've said this phrase before - but it nails it so well I'll use it again - "making you afraid of something and telling you who's to blame for it". In this case, we have a group of Republican elites (liberals, in Republicans' fake formulation, are the "elites" - another instance of purposeful projection) blaring about how 'dem lib-ruls are brainwashing college students.

Such talk wettens the dreams of the barca-lounger butt fucking wife-beating set, which will not analyze this statement for factual accuracy - both because they are incapable of doing so, and because the hate and fear that has been stirred up in them will prevent them from doing so.

A pity, of course, and a joke. Think about the premise they're swallowing: "Lib-ruls are brainwashing today's college students". Oh, really? Then why is lib-rul considered such a dirty word by these same students just a few years after they graduate? How are we to account for, then, the presence of a myriad of business schools, science departments, and medical schools that teach an either overtly conservative philosophy or that lack a political agenda? If this brainwashing were so effective, why is it that people get more conservative as they get older, and begin to foam at the mouth at the prospect of their taxes being raised as soon as they leave college?

The very notion that the lib-ruls are brainwashing today's college students shows the utter contempt that the Republicans have for younger people. Why, they almost treat this group like... their own base!

Liberals are more well-educated and thus tend to self-select themselves for university teaching positions. If conservatives REALLY felt threatened by lib-rul brainwashing - if they really felt that something needed to be done to combat this abomination, then one would think that they would try to enhance their levels of education so that conservative professors would be hired. But noo, of course. No such efforts have been made. Why? Because Republicans wouldn't be able to demagogue the issue were there something resembling parity on college campuses.

The notion that li-bruls have been brainwashing young people on college campuses implies, among other things, that students' minds are extremely suspectible to being brainwashed. And yet, for all of the hue and cry over such alleged brainwashing, guess what rich conservative people have been doing with their rich conservative children? Sending them to the exact schools (code: The Ivy League) that is responsible for the brainwashing! The diaper dandies of these children do not become brainwashed there. Rather, they learn while they are there how to bash the schools for being too lib-rul and become the Republican pundits of tomorrow. If the situation of brainwashing were so insidious, would these children really be sent to these schools? No, of course not. Money and prestige count more than the potential for your child to be brainwashed -especially since on account of having that money, your child can grow up to be the kind of thug that feeds the Republican noise machine.

The "real" areas where Republicans complain the brainwashing occurs - the sociology department, the multicultural living centers, and so on - are, surprise, the areas with which they are least familiar, because they avoid them. True, the Republican children who graduate these Ivy League schools have the world at their feet when they graduate and thus can get a degree in government and can get other Mickey Mouse degrees that expose them to the potential brainwashing - but does one really CARE about being brainwashed when one knows the law school and the law firm job of one's choice -i.e. the embodiement of the way the world works - namely, on conservative terms, is waiting within a matter of years? Please.

Rethugs have it within their power to eradicate or greatly reduce the "lib-rul" influence in higher education. They won't (the party favors revelation over research and is less well-educated and hence makes for a poorer professorship class), and can't (because if they did, they wouldn't have anything to complain about). So next time a Republican natters on about the corrupting influence of librulism in higher education, just say to him: "I know a situation that would make you even more angry - i.e. really angry - if the influence of librulism disappeared".

The response to this comment - however formulated (silence, squeamishness, or contentiousness) will tell you all that you need to know. After all, reptiles do not play things close to the vest.

A BRIEF FIT OF SANITY

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist
.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together".
-Dwight Eisenhower, 1961 Farewell Address

THE HIGH COST OF LOW-GRADE MORONS

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/17/edwards.ps3.ap/index.html

Nice to know that Wal-Mart has its budgetary priorities straight.

WHERE'S YOUR COOKIE?

From Kevin Bohn
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Cookies mailed to the U.S. Supreme Court last year contained enough rat poison to kill all nine justices, retired member Sandra Day O'Connor said at a conference last week.

Barbara Joan March, a 60-year-old Connecticut woman, was sentenced last month to 15 years in prison. She sent 14 threatening letters in April 2005 -- each with a baked good or piece of candy laced with rat poison -- to a variety of federal officials: the nine Supreme Court justices; FBI Director Robert Mueller; his deputy; the chief of naval operations; the Air Force chief of staff and the chief of staff of the Army.

March pleaded guilty in March to 14 counts of mailing injurious articles.

March's plea received little public attention until O'Connor discussed it last week.

"Every member of the Supreme Court received a wonderful package of home-baked cookies, and I don't know why, (but) the staff decided to analyze them," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram quoted O'Connor as saying at the legal conference November 10 in the Dallas area. "Each one contained enough poison to kill the entire membership of the court."

The letters did not seem to pose much of a real danger since the threatening note told the recipients the food was poisoned. In court papers submitted with the plea agreement, prosecutors said each of the envelopes contained a one-page typewritten letter stating either "I am" or "We are" followed by "going to kill you. This is poisoned."
Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg said the poison packages never reached the chambers of the justices.

All mail sent to the court is screened, and there has been heightened security since anthrax-laced letters were sent to members of Congress and the media in 2001. The Supreme Court also received some suspicious packages at the time, forcing it to shut down for a short period of time. Those packages turned out to be harmless.

Authorities said March included fake handwritten signatures of the purported senders of the letters whose names and return addresses were typed both in the body of the letter and on the envelopes.

Prosecutors said the purported senders live throughout the United States, and were connected to March in various ways, including being classmates, a former co-worker and a former roommate.

Prosecutors said handwritten documents recovered in March's apartment "reflect that she engaged in considerable planning in order to prepare and send the letters," including making a detailed list of the purported senders and an apparent to-do list
**********************************************************************************
Yet one more reason - apparently more are still needed - why the right is still scarier than the left in this country. They don't hate "judicial activism" - they hate judges. God, for a second in time, I actually felt sorry for Sandra Day O'Connor, as vile as she is. Further comment is thus not required.

A BRIEF PROGRAMMING REMINDER

Not that anyone should need reminding, but statements like these are just further proof - what author Raymond Carvey once called "gravy" - of the fact that the Republican Party truly is like no other:

"And I want to tell you something, and I'm going to say it to you loud and clear. The radical homosexual agenda will not stop until religion is outlawed in this country. Make no mistake about it. They're all not nice decorators. You better get it through your head before it's too late. They threaten your very survival. They went after the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is now caving into the homosexual mafia. They will not stop until they force their agenda down your throats. Gay marriage is just the tip of the iceberg. They want full and total subjugation of this society to their agenda. Now, if you want that and if you don't think it's a threat -- believe me, that is what's going to occur in this country," - radio talk-show host, Michael Savage (who is Jewish, and whose real name is "Michael Weiner") with 8 million listeners daily.

As a certain blogger says, "Substitute the word "Jew" for "homosexual" and see how it reads".

I must also say that I am deeply troubled by the insta-comparison many on the right make, implicitly or explicitly, of ideas and people to Hitler. This "add hate and stir" invective is all the more alarming considering many Jewish righists are tossing it around. One need merely look at Charles Krauthammer's column on any given day to discover who his new Hitler of the week is (Look - it's Ahmadinejad in the middle of January! Say, isn't that Nancy Pelosi in the first week of September?). "Little Green Footballs", a site frequented and maintained by many Jewish ultra-rightists, also has a Hitler of the Week program in good standing, but has gone one step further: it has advocated so many ideas that have a Hitleresque ring that it has been dubbed "Little Green Nazis". Curiously, the site has not tried to distance itself from this label, or offer arguments as to why it doesn't apply. To Paul Wolfowitz, Saddam was Hitler. Richard Perle Necklace believes that any number of moolahs (er, mullahs) are Hitler. And, of course, to all of these folks, whoever doesn't want to bomb Iraq off the face of the map is Neville Chamberlain.

These facile labels are used to demonize, to, as The American President noted, "make you afraid of something, and to tell you who is to blame for it. The labelers are the "intellectual" heirs to the Jews who helped to popularize the term "feminazis". In the presence of these labels, rationale thought disappears and hate takes over. After all, as Roger Ebert once said, "After you call someone a feminazi, what else is there left to say about her?"

There was only one Hitler. There will always only be one Hitler. It is often said that individual Jews (said to be of "liberal" persuasion, mostly) try to "cash in" on the Holocaust - what with, the argument goes, their "memorials", their acquisition of Nazi-confiscated art, and so on. But the right - as per usual, gets a free pass when it does something ACTUALLY VILE - misleadingly summoning historical tragedy for purely reductive purposes. These people, who claim to have learned (what?) from the Holocaust, and to have been "aggrieved" by it (no doubt because they've never set foot in a synagogue and are Jewish in all of the wrong ways), would do well to remember that the name "Hitler" is an abomination. Not a label. These folks keep telling us to "Never Forget", but by flippantly passing around Hitler's name at every turn, they are helping to destroy the singularity of shadow that should be associated with the Holocaust. Shame on them.

19-HATEY-4

I had forgotten the following term:

In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the "Two Minutes Hate" (alternatively two minute hate) is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting The Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them and the principles of democracy.

The film and its accompanying auditory and visual cues (which include a grinding noise that Orwell describes as "of some monstrous machine running without oil") are a form of brainwashing to Party members, attempting to whip them into a frenzy of hatred and loathing for Emmanuel Goldstein and the current enemy superstate. Apparently, it is not unknown for those caught up in the hate to physically assault the telescreen, as Julia does during the scene. The movie, as it progresses becomes more surreal, with Goldstein's face morphing into a sheep as enemy soldiers advance on the viewers, before one such soldier charges at the screen, machine gun blazing. He morphs, finally, into the face of Big Brother at the end of the two minutes. At the end, the mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted viewers chant "BB" over and over again, ritualistically.

Orwell's obvious reference in the sequence is to the utter demonization of an enemy during a time of war and the exultation of the cult of personality of the leaders of totalitarian states. Parallels (in form, if not content) to the Two Minutes Hate can be seen in real-world propaganda films from World War II. The Two Minutes Hate may also be seen as the totalitarian state's appropriation and perversion of the real-world British observence, the Two Minutes Silence on Remembrance Day, instituted in memory of war dead after World War I.[1]

In one such Two Minutes Hate, the audience is introduced to Inner Party member and key character O'Brien.
The famous 1984 Apple Computer commercial presumably takes place at a Two Minute Hate.
Hate week is an extrapolation of this period into an annual weeklong festival

************************************************************************************
So, what should I call the Fox News Channel and the Republican Party in light of my remembrance? The Two-Minute NOT Hate? The Two Millennia Hate? The Time-Loop Hate? The Hate Where Time Has No Meaning? The Hate That Ceases to Obey the Laws of the Time-Hate Continuum? From Hate to Z? Someday Later, Maybe Not Hater? Sooner and Hater? The Hatamax Tape That Never Runs Out of Space? The Hate That Lasts as Long as a Warren Hatey Film? The Hate That Squeals Like Ned Hatey? The Hate-i (short i) Channel? The Fair Weather Channel? Non-Elimihate? Blind Hate? Hate is Enough?

WE DISTORT, WE ELIDE

An internal memo sent by Fux News, the network whose motto is: "We do the non-thinking for you so you don't have to do it yourself":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/14/fox-news-internal-memo-_n_34128.html

It's not the obvious bias that's the biggest problem I have with FUX (although that is a bias; Fox News viewers have, it has been proven, to have more misconceptions about the facts behind important world events than viewers of any other network); it's the smashmouth hypocrisy.

There's never a barca-lounge blowtorch when you need one.

BOOBY TRAP

DATA: "By my calculations, we no longer have sufficient momentum to clear the debris field".
PICARD: (sarcastic sotto voce): "Thank you, Mr. Data".
-Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Booby Trap"

In this episode, the Enterprise encounters a thousand year-old vessel built by a race called the Promellians (any similarity in spelling to "Prometheus" is purely a coincidence). The vessel, the jewel of the Promellian fleet, is found admist a giant debris field. The Promellians, a thousand years ago, were at war with the peoples of another planet. For reasons the script does not explain, the other planet decided to gain the upper, and final, hand, in a most ingenious manner. It planted, for lack of a more technobabbly explanation, energy harnesses into the debris - select pieces of it. Thus, when a ship entered the debris field, it would, unknowingly approach a piece of debris, and the energy the ship consumed through flying would be absorbed by the harnesses, which in turn would act like a magnet, repulsing the ship and thus preventing it from escaping the debris field.

What is perceived to be the CGI (double meaning here) "solution" to this "booby trap" is discussed is hit upon by the crew of the Enterprise D, which becomes ensnared in the debris field as it is exploring the Promellian vessel: try to use as much of the ship's power to make the ship go as fast as possible, so that the ship can overpower the debris field and escape it. The crew, after it attempts this, learns that "powering up" causes it to lose energy as the debris field saps that energy. Eventually, the energy loss will become sufficiently critical such that the shields will go offline and the crew will then be exposed to lethal radiation, followed by death (the latter of which, as someone once said, is worse, because your options decrease).

Finally, Geordi figures out a way out of a seemingly insoluble paradox (the paradox being that if the ship stays put, it stays trapped; if it tries to escape as it would try to escape a fleeing vessel - which it often did, considering Captain Picard is of French ancesrty - then it would become trapped): shut down literally every system on the computer and pilot the ship manually. In this way, the harnesses will not be triggered, and the minimal (but no more) amount of momentum sufficient to overcome inertia will result in escape. Picard manually pilots the ship (and as he does so, makes the above wonderfully curt remark to Data) as described, and the ship escapes.

Lesson? Avoid necrophilia? I suppose so. The real lesson, which, in the best tradition of Star Trek, is given in a way that is implied if you're looking for it, rather than stated, is that, as Arthur Conan Doyle once said, "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth". And the improbable truth is sometimes the simple, elegant solution you'd dismiss out of hand the quickest - that is, if it had ever even crossed your mind. Don't become so embroiled in a mental or physical trap by pushing when pushing clearly no longer works. Look for new solutions and new approaches. Find them. Force them. As one of the characters did not say simply because the episode spoke the words for him, "Try it. You've got nothing to lose".

"THE FIRST DUTY"

If only some in our military could take a cue:

PICARD:
Do you remember the day you first came aboard this ship? Your mother brought you to the bridge...
WESLEY:
Yes.
PICARD You even sat in my chair. It annoyed me at first... a presumptuous child playing on my ship. But I never forgot the way you knew every control and display before you ever set foot on the bridge. You acted like you belonged there.
WESLEY (quiet):
I remember.
PICARD:
Later... when I decided to make you an acting ensign, I was convinced you would be an outstanding officer. I've never questioned that conviction... until now.

Picard turns and moves in on Wesley... finally standing only a couple inches away from Wesley even as his voice drops down to nearly a whisper.

PICARD:
The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth... be it scientific truth, historical truth, or personal truth. It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based. If you cannot find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened... you do not deserve to wear that uniform.

MARS ANNOYS!

The implications of Election 2006 have finally sank in:

Gay, Mexican and Islamist terrorist activist judges will be raising rich people's taxes as they are performing abortions on stem cells, while ravenous Mexicans impregnate our white women while simultaneously taking our guns away and officially starting a "war on Christmas" as they impose gay marriage on everyone. Why did so many patriotic Americans like myself, vote for that?

Like I always say, voters are irrational beings. And if a thing is worth being fearmongered, it's worth being....... hatemongered as well. Just ask Karl Rove.

DICKSEE

"The obvious result of last night's returns is the complete historical and geographical inversion of what was once the Republican Party. Nixon's cynical Southern strategy has now been played out to the nth degree - and, after a good period of opportunistic success, it has failed. All the states Lincoln fought against are now the bastions of his own party. And most of the rest of the country - especially the sane, common sense conservatives of the MidWest whence Lincoln himself hailed - have been forced into the Democratic camp. Formerly solid, freedom-loving Republican states, like California, are now overwhelmingly Democratic.
The GOP is now very much the party of Dixie; and the consequence of this election is that the Congressional leadership is even more Southern than it was before. The irony is that it was the moderate Republicans who were disproportionately punished electorally by the extremists in their midst. And so the party that lost because of its extremists now sees itself more dominated by the extremists. Nixon's cynical ploy - played beyond the extreme by Rove - has, in other words, come back to haunt and defeat his party in the end. Because it over-reached".
-Andrew Sullivan

SPINNING SLOP

The Myth of the Six-Year Itch
The laws of history didn't doom the Republicans.
By David Greenberg
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006, at 5:33 PM ET

Whenever the party in power takes a hit in the midterms, it takes refuge in the past. Since the governing party almost always loses seats in off-year races, the president is said merely to have fallen prey to the ineluctable tides of history—much in the way that presidents who face economic depressions disown any blame by fingering the all-powerful "business cycle."

In particular, parties that incur setbacks in their presidents' second terms like to hide behind the "six-year itch," to use an ungainly term favored by political scientists. Typically a president's second-term off-year losses outstrip his first-term losses, and it's tempting to imagine some iron law of history at work—a structural force that has afflicted even popular presidents, such as Dwight Eisenhower in 1958 and Ronald Reagan in 1986. George Will, for one, made this argument on ABC last night. (As did other reliable republican bleaters - i.e., Ken Mehlman, Bill Bennett, and so on. Anything but having to think).

But plans to invoke the six-year itch ought to be scratched. Politics has no iron laws: As circumstances change, so does political behavior. (Significantly, Bush in 2002 and Bill Clinton in 1998 both defied the trends, suggesting that gerrymandering, microtargeting, polarization, or other factors have scrambled historical patterns.) What's more, there have been too few sixth-year elections to be statistically meaningful. Most important, the variables in any given election—wars, recessions, scandals, social crises—matter more than tendencies built in to the system. On inspection, the six-year itch resembles less a chronic disease than a phantom illness on the order of chronic fatigue syndrome.

To be sure, certain structural forces do favor the nonpresidential party in the midterms. According to a theory of "surge and decline," presidents have coattails when they're elected, carrying into office their party-mates. But (to shift metaphors) when those legislators have to run a play without the president as their offensive line, many get thrown for a loss. Ronald Reagan's sixth-year setbacks fit this pattern: The Republicans gained control of the Senate in Reagan's 1980 landslide but lost it—despite the absence of scandal, recession, or other disaster—in 1986.

More provocatively, legal scholar Akhil Amar has suggested in America's Constitution: A Biography that the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two terms, ratified in 1951, has weakened second-term presidents. It's well-known that second-term presidents become embroiled in scandal: Nixon with Watergate, Reagan with Iran-Contra, Clinton with Lewinsky, Bush with faulty prewar intelligence (among other issues). One explanation is that re-elected presidents grow arrogant and reckless, as Nixon certainly did. But Amar suggests another reason: The 22nd Amendment effectively makes second-termers four-year lame ducks, unable to exact retribution upon antagonists on the Hill—thereby encouraging congressional investigations and commanding less party loyalty. By the same logic, the president is arguably now less able to pass legislation and otherwise work his will in his sixth year, thus deepening his midterm losses.

Nonetheless, in almost every case of a six-year itch, Occam's Razor suggests more direct reasons for a president's party's losses. In 1874, for example, the Democrats made big gains in Republican President Ulysses Grant's second term. Yet they plainly benefited from the financial panic of 1873, as well as from the Credit Mobilier scandal—considered the third-worst presidential scandal after Watergate and Teapot Dome.
In 1938, the six-year itch did seem to be at work in the defeats that the Democrats endured after scoring routs not only in 1932 and 1936 but also—bucking historical trends—in the off-year contests of 1934. Yet again, more proximate causes abound. Franklin Roosevelt blundered in 1937 when he proposed a massive overhaul of the Supreme Court to get it to uphold his New Deal legislation. Moreover, after much progress in reducing joblessness and reviving public confidence, he cut government spending to bring the budget into balance, thereby kicking the economy back into recession. By 1938, the unemployed had swelled from 5 million to 12 million, crippling the Democrats in November.

Even in 1958, when the widely beloved Eisenhower lost 48 House and 13 Senate seats, contemporary events, more than structural dynamics, were at fault. Most significantly, the severe economic downturn that year hit especially hard in the Midwest, depressing turnout among Eisenhower's most natural constituents. Besides, the Soviet Union had launched just Sputnik, spurring a panic about the state of American defense, education, and—most important—nerve and morale. This disillusionment with Ike's governance was an early expression of the now-canonical critique of his presidency—what the journalist William Shannon termed "The Great Postponement."

A similar disillusionment may have been in effect his year, as historian Niall Ferguson argued before the election. There's also a whiff of 1966 in the air, as I've noted elsewhere—1966 was another year in which voters rebelled (in a second-year, not a sixth-year, election) against one-party rule. This year, the discontent that exit polls found with what they labeled "corruption" should be more properly understood as a rebuke to the general arrogance of the unchecked Republican Party. Think of corruption in Lord Acton's sense.

In retrospect, though, the Republicans' losses seem most similar to those in three other midterm races: 1918, 1950 (not properly a sixth-year midterm, since Harry Truman entered the presidency in 1945 through accession, not election), and 1942 (technically a "10th-year" itch). All of those setbacks came amid wars. In 1950, Republicans painted the controversial adventure in Korea as a result of Truman's weakness. In 1942, Democrats suffered when World War II was going poorly in both the Pacific and European theaters. In 1918, the Allies were nearing victory in World War I, but there was much resentment in the land, especially after Woodrow Wilson, having promised to keep the United States out of war, now explicitly called on Americans to vote Democratic as a show of support for his policies.

Wars help presidents so long as the rally-round-the-flag effect holds up. The Iraq war did so for Bush in 2002 and even 2004 (though by then it was becoming uncertain whether the Iraq war was helping or hurting Bush). On the other hand, a conflict that has no clear end in sight vexes Americans of all political stripes, summoning up deep strains of both conservative isolationism and liberal anti-imperialism. As my Rutgers colleague Ross K. Baker, a congressional expert, wrote last spring, "Combat fatigue is not a condition found only on the battlefield; it is also an affliction that has often been diagnosed in the voting booth." If there's a history lesson to be drawn from this year's election results, that one would be closest to the mark.

RUNNING THE TABLE

The Botcher-in-Chief: While a majority in the Senate may hang on recounting Jim Webb's victory in Virginia, the worst numbers for Republicans are not subject to recount. National exit polls provide graphic detail of what happened Tuesday to Karl Rove's dream of a Republican majority: The middle fell out.

In 2004, the GOP had the Democratic Party on the ropes. Democrats lost people over 30, high-school grads, college grads, and voters in every income category over $30,000. The Democratic coalition was down to two groups with nothing else in common: dropouts and post-docs.

What a difference two years make. In 2006, Democrats won or tied every age group, every education level, and every income group below $100,000. Nearly half the electorate identified themselves as moderates, and Democrats won them by a whopping 61 percent to 38 percent. After a long, six-year vacation, the voting bloc Democrats have always needed to be a majority party—the middle class—finally came home.

That translates into roughly a 53 percent to 45 percent margin in the national vote. As Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues must have thought waking up this morning—quite a majority, Madam, if we can keep it.

Will Democrats recognize what it takes to hold onto that middle-class majority? Will Republicans recognize that it's gone missing? For both sides, that's harder than it looks, and more important than many on either side will want to admit.

For Democrats, the first crucial step is that while millions of Americans on Tuesday bought a Democratic House (and maybe two), voters bought it on spec. Democrats will need to post two good years—in the Congress and the presidential race—in order to close the deal.

Democratic leaders in Congress got off to a good start Tuesday night and Wednesday morning in doing what an overreaching White House keeps failing to do: defining their mission and giving clear benchmarks for success. Michael Kinsley may find Democrats' campaign agenda wanting—he should read the book instead!—and Jacob Weisberg is right that too many Democrats have forgotten that the United States can't create jobs without trade. But the Democrats' 2006 agenda has one great virtue: It tries to promise a handful of sensible steps (ethics reforms, a minimum wage increase, pay-as-you-go rules, the 9/11 Commission recommendations) that a new majority can actually deliver. Each of those promises is an opportunity to make a modest repayment on the trust that has just been given them.

For Republicans, 2006 can be a crushing blow—or, under the circumstances, the best thing that could have happened to them. As a governing philosophy, Bushism has been doomed to failure from the outset. The math never worked, because you can't keep spending the same money you're giving away, especially when you never had it in the first place. The theory never worked, either. Bush promised to be a reformer with results, but you'll never be serious about reform or results if you're not serious about government in the first place.

All that kept Bushism alive was the illusion of political expediency—and Democrats' willingness to walk into the traps Karl Rove was setting. In the long run, Republicans are better off finding out that their failed governing theory is a political flop, too. This election will force them to go back to the drawing board and try to come up with a plan that is good for the country, not just a couple elections.

In contrast to Democratic leaders, who succeeded in striking measured tones at their post-election press appearances, President Bush's news conference didn't do much to contain yesterday's damage. To escape being pinned, he probably needs to follow Schwarzenegger's lead and pursue bipartisanship with gusto. Today wasn't even a half-Arnold.

The president even stumbled when he tried to tell John Dickerson's joke about Democrats and their drapes, blowing his chance at self-deprecation by rushing the punch line. Last week, John Kerry said botching a war is worse than botching a joke. Now Bush has really hit bottom: He has done both. ...

HOW RICH

"When we bought the son of a bitch, we expected him to stay bought!"
-Republican power broker expressing his disappointment over Teddy Roosevelt's independent streak

It may be a political axiom that if you are a Republican, there is a good chance you might be rich (in dollars, if not in anything else). But the converse is not true, as it turns out:

The Rich Aren't Republican Anymore
How Democrats won the election by stealing wealthy voters from the GOP.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006, at 12:58 PM ET

The Rich Aren't Republican AnymoreHow Democrats won the election by stealing wealthy voters from the GOP.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006, at 12:58 PM ET

On the campaign trail, President Bush and Vice President Cheney argued that voting for Democratic candidates would be bad for people with high incomes. Returning Democrats to control of the House, Cheney said, would mean installing tax-raising Rep. Charles Rangel at the helm of the House ways and means committee and making Rep. Barney Frank chairman of the House financial services committee. The not-so-subtle implications: Elect these guys and they'll raise taxes, regulate the investment world, and funnel the proceeds to undeserving black people and gay Jews.

It didn't work. One of the many dynamics in play this fall was the phenomenon of Bushenfreude, angry, well-off, well-educated yuppies, generally clustered on the coasts, who were funneling windfalls from Bush tax cuts into the campaigns of Democrats and preparing to vote for those who would raise taxes on their capital gains, their incomes, and their estates (gotta love the law of unintended consequences).

Was Bushenfreude a decisive factor in the Democratic victory? Perhaps not. In Bushenfreude's ground zero, Connecticut's 4th Congressional district, Republican Chris Shays hung on by his fingernails and beat back well-funded challenger Diane Farrell for the second election in a row. Ned Lamont, another pissed-off Connecticut yuppie, likewise failed.

But a look at the rather crude exit polls show that the House Republicans didn't get much of a return on all the pandering they've done to the wealthy. And it's quite possible that the defection of angry rich folks might have helped tipped the balance in places like the Rhode Island and Virginia Senate races, and Republican house losses in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Arizona. Back in 2000, Bush referred to "the haves, and the have mores," as "my base." (No doubt one of the few times when he simltaneously was being honest and when he was aware of the fact that he was being honest) Today? Not so much.

Because we're in an age of mass affluence, and because wealthier people tend to vote more frequently than poorer people do, the voting behavior of the rich can be almost as significant as the political donations they make. In 2006, on a nationwide basis, those making more than $100,000 constituted 23 percent of voters, up from 19 percent in 2004. And far more of them suffer from Bushenfreude now than did in 2004. The outbreak, an epidemic on the coasts, is spreading slowly to the Midwest and the South.

The exit polls aggregate votes for the House on a broad geographic basis: East, West, Midwest, and South. Yesterday, the poll for the House vote in the East showed that the 25 percent of the electorate making over $100,000 went big for Democrats overall, 57-42, compared with a 49-48 margin in 2004. In 2006, those making between $150,000 and $200,000 voted for Democratic candidates by a whopping 63-37 majority, and those making more than $200,000 went Democratic by a slim 50-48 margin. That's a huge shift from 2004, when Republicans took the $150,000 to $200,000 demographic 50-48 and rang up a huge victory among the over $200,000 set: 56-40. In 2006, Democratic candidates racked up big wins among college graduates—63-35, compared with 55-42 in 2004—and among those with postgraduate degrees—68-31, compared with 58-38 in 2004. (I need not draw the obvious implication, which can be stated through the writing of a single word. Hint: it starts with a t and ends with a k).

A similar dynamic could be seen in the House vote in the West, where Democrats won the high-income demographics by smaller majorities: 53-45 in the $100,000 to $150,000 slice; 50-46 in the $150,000 to $200,000 segment, and 52-48 in the over $200,000 category. Again, that represents a big shift from 2004, when Republicans won the $100,000 to $150,000 group 51-48 and took the over $200,000 group 54-46. In 2006, Democratic candidates increased their margins in the West among college graduates and those with post-graduate degrees—anthropologists at Berkeley, yes, but also MBAs, lawyers, and doctors.

In the South, where households with more than $100,000 in annual income were 23 percent of the voters, Republicans also saw significant erosion. The $100,000 to $150,000 group went Republican 59-39, the $150,000 to $200,000 crowd went Republican 67-33, and the over $200,000 set voted Republican 58-38. But that's a big comedown from 2004, when the $100,000 to $150,000 group went Republican 71-29, and those making more than $200,000 voted Republican by nearly 3-to-1. (What do you call a rich bigot? Answer: a Republican - still).

In the Midwest in 2006, where the affluent are a less-significant voting bloc (households with more than $100,000 were only 18 percent of the voters), things held to typical form. Those making more than $100,000 voted Republican 56-44, down only slightly from the 58-41 in the same income group Republicans received in 2004.

On a nationwide basis, the wealthy still vote Republican. But not by much. According to the 2006 exit poll, on a nationwide basis, of all homes making more than $100,000, Republican House candidates received a 51-47 majority, and among those making more than $200,000, Republicans racked up a 53-46 majority. Here's the irony: As the number and relative weight of the wealthy grow, their incomes rising in part because Republicans have cut taxes on their incomes and capital gains, they're proving themselves less likely to vote their economic interests. Somewhere in Manhattan today, the agent for a National Review writer is surely circulating a book proposal: What's the Matter With Greenwich?
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What a pathetic lot these Republicans are. Their reptile brains, such as they are, are so reflexively conditioned to favor this one group of people that Republicans will continue to favor this group even as the group puts them out of business. Such behavior mirrors Republican behavior in general: labeling something, stereotyping it to death, hating it, making you afraid of it, and telling you who is to blame for it, all the while forgetting what "it" is.

AND THE WINNER IS...

Welcome home, America. It's good to have you back.

THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION...EVER

Yes, it is true. To borrow a page from the Republican playbook of declamations, a vote for Republicans tomorrow is a vote for the beginning of the embalming of the Constitution. Are we better off than we were 2 years ago? No. Four? No. Six? No. Things have only gotten worse in the last six years; real wages have stagnated; the middle class tax burden has increased; the deficit has skyrocketed; corporations have raided employee pension funds; CEO salaries (before the CEOs go to jail) have become stratospheric; the environment has been raped by Gale Norton and the thugs at the EPA; influence peddling, bribery and kickbacks - all involving Republicans - has infected the Congress to such a point that there is now a cancer on it; dissent has been stifled, as has science and thinking; we've been scaremongered, fearmongered and hatemongered by a President who is the most divisive President in history. Billions of dollars have beeen wasted on a "war" for which no plans were made, for corporate welfare, on drug companies who wrote Medicare Part D; on a failed "war on drugs" and on a failed effort to secure our borders. The value of the dollar has fallen. The trade deficit is at an all-time high. We're ranked even worse now than two years ago on measures such as infant mortality, and science and math ability. The poverty rate has increased. The percentage of Americans without health care has increased. Government has drastically cut back on student loan funding while the price of a college education has soared. No Child Left Behind is a joke.

What has our President done? He's bleated, blurted, bungled and barked his way through six years as outsourcing has become a national pastime for his administration; as oil companies, gas companies and lobbyists have been stuffed with so much pork that they've turned porcine; as truth itself is now seen as "spin"; as we are losing the war in Afghanistan, and losing the Cold War aganst Korea and Iran. Of course, we're losing the real war in Iraq. Along with that loss is the loss of billions of dollars in government fraud and waste incurred in the Iraq invasion unaccounted for; the loss of Presidential respect for people who can string a sentence together, who can read and be articulate; the loss of 3000 American lives in Iraq - an amount that has eclipsed the number that died on Sept.11; the loss of miners' lives due to lax safety encouraged and awarded by this administration; the loss of a great city because it is predominantly black; the loss of manufacturing jobs and indeed all service industry jobs except for jobs in the health care industry.

Americans work longer and harder than they did six years ago for less benefits and less job security. Meanwhile, crime rates and the abortion rate, both of which were reduced in the Clinton years, have experienced a cutback in diminution. Our intelligence services have experienced a cutback in diminution of idiocy. Our military has stretched to the breaking point. Our Congress and Supreme Court have flatly obligated their constitutional responsibility to check the Executive Branch, which shits all over them and tells them it tastes good. The other two branches in turn reply, "Please Sir, may I have some more". More college and high school dropouts, more unwanted teenage pregnancies, more teenagers experimenting with drugs, more Presidential secrecy, more executive signing statements, more torture, more Constitutional raping.

I've just touched the tip of the tip of the iceberg here. If one or both Houses does not revert to Democratic control tomorrow, God knows what will become of this country. These people must be stopped. Get out and vote to throw the fucking bums out. To wipe the smirk off Karl Rove's and George Bush's faces. To give Dick Cheney something to really scowl about. To metaphorically bash these people's fucking lizard brains in. Because that's the only way they'll "get it" - and I don't mean ACTUALLY get it - but rather just "be forced into a position where their ability to increase the pain they've inflicted on this country can be reduced".

If you vote for two more years of this, don't you DARE complain to me as your misery grows and your freedoms disappear. Don't complain to me how the President, who believes it is his doing that there hasn't been attack on American soil since 9/11, has decided to punish us for this "victory" by hating us for our freedom. Yes, that's right - the terrorists don't hate us for our freedom. But George Bush does, and don't blame me when his hatred waxes to the point of mouth-foamitude.

Gore Vidal has been around since 1925. He's just written his last book. He is, of course, demonized by the right-wing slime machine because he dares to suggest that America not engage in foreign entanglements. Because he suggests this, he is branded anti-Semitic (anyone who knows about the man's career knows that he is certainly not, but for some reason, people today don't associate anit-Semitism with hatred of Jews but rather only with failure to be totally, thoroughly and mindlessly "pro-Israel", whatever that means). How typical of a hypocritical culture that enjoys not thinking and non-thinking.

Gore has some words about what is now today's election. While he tends to, as an English teacher once told me I did, "get caught up in rhetoric", his words are stark, solemn, serious and true:

"We’re facing the most important election in my lifetime—which does not quite extend back to that of Abraham Lincoln, but it’s pretty close. There’ll be nothing more important in the voting line that one can foresee that will come our way while any of us is still hobbling around. This will determine whether we regain the republic which we have lost over the last five years.

The coup d’etat was so rapid that even I, who am ready for such things ... I thought, these people are going to make a grab for it. But I thought, my heavens, there’s still the courts.... Even a shameless Supreme Court is not going to back up the loss of habeas corpus....

So, my fellow countrymen, as I sit here, not yet at Gettysburg, I have a notion that this is the most important vote that you’ll probably ever cast. Because should this gang of thugs continue in the two houses of Congress, there isn’t any chance of getting the Constitution back....

This is the last chance, really, by getting some new chairpersons to head committees in the House ... to have a clean sweep, which, in normal times, if we’d ever enjoyed them, would have happened by now. Now it has got to happen, or welcome to the Third Reich".

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The Third Reich was as much a way of "governing" as it was a system that operationalized who should be exterminated. Bush is not Hitler. But. Read about what fascism is - truly is. We're creeping closer to a fascist state every day, and as we do so, the terrorists ARE winning. The notion that we can't fight the terrorists AND maintain our civil liberties is a false choice. There are so many false choices thrown out by this pustule of a Congress. But today is our chance to make the right choice: for the love of God, for the love of America, for the love of ourselves, throw the fucking bums out!

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

TAMPA - U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, who has made past comments that raised questions about her religious sensitivity, prayed in a telephone prayer service recently that God would "bring the hearts and minds of our Jewish brothers and sisters into alignment."

A Harris spokeswoman said Friday that the Longboat Key Republican, who has advocated electing Christian officeholders, was talking about converting Jews to vote Republican, not to Christianity.

Ummmm, what's the difference?

OVERHEARD....

"The nightmares are that you're gonna let the winning run scoreon a ground ball through your legs".

-Bill Buckner, in a TV Interview before Game 1 of the 1986 World Series.


You can't make this stuff up.