Waiting for the Rapture or Avoiding Work

Today's when the Rapture happens and then it will be seven years of woe so we've been told by those who study such things. I find it strangely coincidental that this all is timed with a two-term Obama presidency.

Fox News surprised even me with the assertions that President Obama stepped in the New York governor's race because he fears Rudy Guliani in 2012. I thought it was Jon Huntsman and that's why he sent him to China.

"Tan Man" Boehner says that Obama's heathcare plan is dead. Other conservatives say there is a 75% chance it will pass but this will mean a 66% chance the Republicans will take back the House in 2010. Pick your poison.

Eric Cantor says that if the elections were held today the Republicans would win back the House. This may well be true but while there has been shifting polls for the Democrats, there are no indications and in fact quite the contrary that Republicans have gained any traction among the population. House Republican Leaders' polling is an abysmal 13% and 18% on a great day. It's hard to take Cantor's remarks seriously. Charlie Cook is beating the drums that Democrats will lose about 25 seats next year. AP is also beating the drums that 35 seats will change parties. It's a great profession if you can get work--anyone can play.

I think Mitt Romney seriously hurt his chances with his showing at the Values Summit. Ted Kennedy wrote in True Compass about his race against Mitt that he had a "tin-ear". I think that's about right. First, his allusion that Obama is somehow like Jimmy Carter doesn't make it. The only other person talking this way is Dick Morris, who has lost his mind. I also think there is nothing Mitt can say or do that will win him acceptance from the Religious Right. He should stop trying. Now he's against the bank bailouts when he was for them. Trying to pander doesn't really work here--they never liked you anyway.

Olympia Snowe, Republican from Maine (which may be a new party), let the cat out of the bag in an interview with the New York Times. She agrees with me that President Obama is a moderate and cites all her conversations with him. Of course, she will have to be excommunicated by Michael Steele.

Although we have to admit that Tan Man slipped and became a RINO, when he acknowledged that President Obama was not a socialist and he won't call him one.

The Values Summit conducted another one of its polls about the burning issues of the day. Number 1 is abortion; Number 2 is protecting freedom of religion. Gay marriage didn't rev people's jets this year as it did in 2007. Maybe there is progress.

My take on President Obama's media marathon--he did it because he could. You know deep down he always wanted to hit all networks during one day. It's the politician's dream and a worthy Guinness Book record. And he scored across the board. Does it mean anything--probably not. I also suspect he wanted to set the table before he spends his entire week on foreign policy with the G-8 summit, the United Nations General Assembly and his meeting with the Israelis and Palestinians. Everytime he is somehow engaged in foreign policy all hell breaks out at home--even during the campaign. He must sense the pattern now.

The best news of the Fall--James Ellroy new novel is en route, the first of a new American trilogy. His obsession with writing about his mother's murder and the hiatus he took probably did him some good but I found it frustrating as a loyal reader. I even have his first editions when they were released first as paperbacks before they became hardcovers. How about that.

For those of us who are fans of the late, always great J.G. Ballard, his collected stories are now out in hardcover with an intro by Martin Amis. A British edition came out a couple of years ago. I haven't compared to see the difference. But his greatest writing is there.

The New York Times Magazine did a wonderful piece on the discovery, contents and the publishing process of psychotherapy's Holy Grail--C.G. Jung's Red Book, the diaries of his self-induced hallucinations complete with pictures.

Bertrand M. Patenaude's book Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary documents the final days of the revolutionary. With the death of Irving Kristol, the godfather of the neoconservative movement, it is so strange to read in the Trotsky book so many of the names associated in the public's mind with the anti-communist activities during the Cold War. Kristol was a Trotskyite before a liberal and before a conservative. James Burnham, co-founder with Bill Buckley of the National Review; Max Shachtman, mentor of Al Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers and Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy; Albert Glotzer, old SDer and secretary to Trotsky for a brief period; Sidney Hook , not a Trotskyist; and John Dewey, who brought his prestige to an international inquiry into the Stalin show trials. One is reminded that the successful intellectual warfare against Communist came from the Democratic Left and former Trotskyists. It's useful to remember that conservatives and the religious right thought we already had lost the Cold War because our society was --already--so decadent and debauched. Sounds sort of familiar.

The book is better than just a trigger on my memories of past people. It is a wonderful story of Trotsky's exile to Mexico and his immersion into the scene with Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera. A part of the story that has been untold is the fate of Trotsky's family who were left behind in the Soviet Union and their re-emergence in the post-Communist Russia.