[I dedicate this essay to the untold millions who suffered as a result of Milton Friedman’s creation of an intellectual bulwark for economic brutality. On 11/16/06, Friedman died of heart failure, an ironic cause of death for a heartless individual.]

We have reached the deplorable circumstance where in large measure a very powerful few are in possession of the earth's resources, the land and its riches and all the franchises and other privileges that yield a return. These positions are maintained virtually without taxation; they are immune to the demands made on others. The very poor, who have nothing, are the object of compulsory charity. And the rest -- the workers, the middle-class, the backbone of the country -- are made to support the lot by their labor.
----Agnes George de Mille (granddaughter of Henry George), New York, 1979

Note that Ms. George de Mille penned her observations before the patron saint of the “have mores” established residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In less than three decades, a Friedman-inspired Reagan and his successors made astounding gains for the “very powerful” de Mille described.

There's a lot of post-election analysis going around. Mostly, it's self-serving damage control on the part of pundits who didn't have a clue this was coming and Washington politicians who, as recently as May, were opposing Howard Dean's “50 State Strategy”. One of those was Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

We in the trenches just received a message from Nancy Pelosi, on behalf of that same DCCC. It was a thank you note that listed six noncontroversial, meaningless goals for the 2006 Congress, cooked up for the consumption of the gullible faithful. Being faithful but less gullible, I am sending my own agenda back to Washington. It only has one item: “We're still not happy. We did not return you to power so you can have photo-ops in the White House with the most dangerous lame-duck president in American history. We elected you to fight him. If you are not doing that, you are wasting our time.”

Tony Blair told it like it was the other day - well, almost. What he did was demonstrate that the echo of truth often drowns out even its most shameless evasions.

"There's a deliberate strategy," he told David Frost, ". . . to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

Of course, he was talking about Iraq, where "al-Qaida with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other," were strangling democracy in its cradle, turning a nice invasion ugly. He wasn't talking about Great Britain or the United States, where a cabal of liars and fanatics fobbed off a high-tech war on a public that assented only because they believed it would be easy and cheap. But he could have been.

The Bush administration, despite its repudiation in the midterm elections, is now preparing to ask Congress for another $127 billion or so to feed that failed war. And they'll probably get it, even as the opposition tepidly debates timetables for withdrawal and agonizes over the fate of our "mission."

WHY did all manly gifts in Webster fail?
He wrote on Nature's grandest brow, For Sale.
--Emerson

A Tale of Two Conyers

PART I

Congressman John Conyers, "The Constitution in Crisis", December 2005:
"In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.