Democracy, limited

It's easy to forget, if indeed one was even aware if it at all, that before Ralph Nader became Public Enemy Number One among limousine liberals he was, for a time, one of the most admired and respected voices among ordinary Americans. The recent documentary An Unreasonable Man traces Nader's career from the groundbreaking consumer advocate of the 60's and 70's to his controversial presidential run in 2000 which, to hear partisan Democrats tell it, is solely responsible for the disasters unleashed by George W. Bush.

Nader's breakthrough to the public consciousness came in 1965 when, as a young Washington lawyer, he published Unsafe at Any Speed, a landmark expose of the poor safety records of the American automakers, in particular General Motors, which hired goons to try, in vain, to dig up evidence of personal malfeasance to use against him at the Congressional hearing. In the 1970's, he organized a loose collection of recent college graduates the press called "Nader's Raiders" who tirelessly to protect consumer safety from corporate myopia. It came to an end during the Carter Administration, which failed to pass Nader's dream of a federal Consumer Protection Agency and, according to his critics, sent him on his way to being an egomanical malcontent.

During this time, the enormously popular Nader was often considered a potential candidate for national office, and was supposedly even contacted by the McGovern campaign in 1972, but he found it better to remain outside of the partisan fray. But after Reagan rolled back most of his gains in the 1970s, and Clinton proved equally intractable, the nascent Green Party tapped into Nader's disillusionment and, they hoped, his celebrity for their presidential ticket in 2000. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The film does a fine job of knocking around some of the myths that have persisted about that fated 2000 election season; for example, the idea that Nader purposefully tried to throw the election by focusing his campaign in swing states (Nader's former campaign manager says they spent 28 days in California compared to two and a half in Florida). Then there was Nader's battle with the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private entity sponsored by many of America's biggest corporations which refused to allow him or any other third-party candidate into the all-important debates. When Nader acquires a ticket to view the first debate at the University of Massachusetts from an auxiliary theater, the Commission's hired security guards refuse to let him in,

The basic liberal claim against Nader, as you well know by now, is that he stole voters in key areas who would otherwise have voted for Al Gore. This, of course, is fundamentally undemocratic, since no one is obliged to vote for someone when there is someone better aligned to them available. But, in a way, you can't blame Democrats for believing this, as they have long felt a proprietary right to left-wing votes even as they do very little to actively acknowledge them. As they party continues to lurch rightward into the waiting arms of Big Bidness, they have turned to invoking the spectre of Republican Disaster as reason enough to support their latest mushy effort.

They've also successfully turned any serious discussion of third-party candidates onto a personal evaluation of Nader and his most fervent supporters, who are usually dismissed as unserious stoners. And Nader likely made a mistake by attempting to run again in 2004 as an independent, though the Democrats did show their true colors by going to court to keep him off the ballot in many states (Nader is currently counter-suing). Of course, the Democrats went on to lose a race they should have won easily, and with minimal interference from the Devil Nader; their own incompetence just making them hate him all the more. This is unfortunate because, with the Dems again prepared to nominate the most hawkish, corporate-friendly candidate they can find in the party, a discussion of how to wrest back control is badly needed. (And no, Al Gore isn't going to swoop in and save us; his newfound status as a Progressive White Horse is likely a revision of his 2000 campaign to make Nader seem More Evil.)

Nader also made a mistake in claiming that there is "no difference" at all between the two parties--if indeed he ever said such a thing--because this only plays into the Democrats' hand. Their only play at this point is just keeping left enough of the Republicans to be visible. Though there are, of course, many important ways in which they are indistinguishable. Both are equally invested in the continued perpetuation of the restrictive, winner-take-all two-party system, the anachronistic, undemocratic Electoral College, and the exclusive, money-decides-everything primary system.

For the final word today, I'll turn to the much more eloquent Dennis Perrin.

Critique either these fantasies or the corrupt system that make them necessary, and the liberals will vomit all over you. You are insane, in need of professional help, a Naderite, a Bush supporter, a Christo-fascist, or at the very least a very stupid person who doesn't understand the Two Party System. Is it perfect? No, they'll concede. But that's all there is, all there could conceivably be, so shut the fuck up, vote Dem early and often, and focus all of your critical energies on Michelle Malkin and David Horowitz.

James Wolcott once compared liberal bloggers to 18th century pamphleteers, and indeed there are similarities, primarily in the Publish Yourself realm. But many of those early polemicists were radical democrats who saw a world beyond that of Crown and Church. That world had yet to exist, but this didn't stop them from pushing for its realization in the face of tremendous opposition and derision. They were told by the liberals of their day that direct democracy was a boy's dream, that the radicals needed to grow up and get with the existing program. A world beyond Crown and Church? Tosh, pish-posh, and twaddle.

Today's liberals, many of them, anyway, cannot see a world beyond that of Global Corporate Order, which is why they'll continually serve one of the GCO's control mechanisms, the Democrats. The corporate mules know of and count on this acquiescence every election season. And you wonder why Hillary smiles so much.

An Unreasonable Man trailer.

The crack-up

The Sunday Times magazine yesterday had a lengthy piece by David Kirkpatrick on the growing state of political detoxification of American evangelicals, covering the same general topics I've touched on in the past year or so but with much more detail and exposition. Kirkpatrick in particular cites several examples of the laity revolting against the single-track gospel-as-Kulturkampf message preferred by the powers-that-be. (Another possible explanation is that, being authoritarian followers, they are uneasy with the prospect of no longer being on the winning side.)

The indispensable Jeff Sharlet writing in The Revealer, however, worries that Kirkpatrick's article will be the latest in a long history of declaring conservative evangelicals prematurely dead as a political force. Sharlet points out that the trickling of evangelicals away from the Republican party has less to do with a leftward political drift from their part as much as the Democrats careening rightward to try to win them over. (The DLC-Blue Dog Dems would love nothing more than to trade in their leftist base for docile, corporate-friendly petty bourgeoisie.)

This shake-up has produced some strange and seemingly inexplicable outcome, such as the support for Rudy Giuliani among some evangelicals while others in the Old Guard plot a third-party bid if the thrice-married, pro-choice Giuliani wins the Republican nomination.* Giuliani's popularity, I think, can be atributed to being a Unity Candidate in an otherwise lackluster field; he is the biggest Big "Murica hawk of the bunch, surrounding himself with the likes of Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes, the Architects of the architects that delivered Bush's imperial presidency.

*The possibilities for third-party candidates in 2008 could turn out to be quite intriguing. Will Michael Bloomberg throw his billions into the ring (creating the possibility of a three-way all-New Yorker race)? Will Ron Paul take his newfound national fame to the Libertarian Party ticket--on which he's appeared before? I'll take this opportunity to note the Socialist Party has recently unveiled its 2008 ticket.

EDIT: By the way, not running for President? Lyndon LaRouche.

Over there

Let's all cool our heads for a moment from thinking of how the @^$@$%^@!! Red Sox make us want to kill and eat children and talk about something a little more humorous and agreeable.

The NFL will hold its first ever regular season game in Europe tomorrow when the Giants and Dolphins meet at Wembley Stadium in London. Michael Silver at Yahoo! Sports has a related puff piece on how brilliant and innovative the NFL's marketing plan is. And what does this innovative, brilliant plan entail? Apparently, realizing there is, in fact, a rest of the world.

One doesn't expect the latest attempt by the NFL to get anyone other than bloodthirsty Americans to watch their damn game to be any more successful than the previous tries, but that won't stop the league and its fawning legion of sportswriter lackeys from regaling us with tales of milk and honey in the promised land. Here is Silver in a particularly grand moment of hubris

Sunday's game at Wembley Stadium between the New York Giants and Miami Dolphins is only the beginning, the equivalent of the Beatles' 1964 foray to the States that spawned the British Invasion.

They'll welcome us with tea and scones! "What is this game you call Foot Ball, and why have we never heard of it before!" The goalposts are already on their way, to be set up at Old Trafford and Stanford Bridge by the end of the month!

You'd might as well start calling it the IFL, because it's becoming increasingly clear that the new national pastime is no longer ours to hoard.

"If you want to grow something, you've got to share it," Mark Waller, the NFL's senior vice president of sales and marketing, said Thursday during a break in the conference. "Once this takes root here, and it will, people are going to expect to see the best, in the same way that you know the World Cup is the ultimate for soccer and the Olympics is the ultimate for track and other sports. If (the Super Bowl) travels, it makes you part of what the world is today, which is truly a global community.

Waller here is obliquely referring to the NFL's failed venture to create a developmental league called NFL Europe which was finally scrapped last year after 15 forgettable seasons. At the bitter end, NFL Europe had five of its six teams in Germany, the only country where it could sustain a modicum of interest. He is trying to convince us that the failure of the NFL's international expansion has been due to not sending out NFL-quality product. We will have to remind him that this has not stopped the much more successful export programs of baseball and, particularly, basketball, because no one else, least of all Silver, is going to point this out.

Silver, in fact, wants to go for the whole cow and send the Super Bowl itself overseas. After all, since ordinary fans can't attend the game anyway, who cares where it's held?

Another argument against going overseas is that the Super Bowl draws working-class fans of the competing teams, and they won't be able to afford a trip to London. That may be true for some fans, but not most of the people I see during Super Bowl week, who are paying $500 or more per ticket and seem to have plenty of disposable income. This isn't George Mason reaching the Final Four and a bunch of starving students hopping on Greyhounds; the typical Super Bowl fan, in my anecdotal experience, tends to be Joe from Sales on a company-approved junket, and he'll probably fly to London as readily as he will to Phoenix.

Usually, adopting a tone other than Voice of the Proles is forbidden territory for sportswriters. But this is the NFL we're talking about here, and some things just take precedence. The proles must submit themselves to the Greater Good of the NFL's bottom line. (I will, for now, avoid the appallingly vile first half of that paragraph which I didn't blockquote, which deserves its own book.)

The NFL is less secure as the dominant player in American sports than people realize. Major League Baseball is close to catching the NFL in total revenue, something unthinkable just a few years ago. It has two major problems going forward; the absence of global expansion being one. The other is being tied to the medium of sit-on-your-ass television that is becoming slowly obsolescent. Football came in with the uniquely late-20th-century ubiquity of television and its promise of allowing ordinary folks to see every game their team played with a modest expenditure of effort. It will go out with the exploding accessibility of wireless internet, satellite radio, and digital video recording.

And because only violence-crazed Americans want any part of it.

Baseball Farm

Serious Orwell

The creatures outside looked from Red Sock to Yankee, and from Yankee to Red Sock, and from Red Sock to Yankee again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

World Serious: One last grasp at salvation

In brief, a few reasons to hope the Rockies overcome the odds and spare us the sanctimony of Red Sox Nation:

Coors Field: Even in the days when they were awful, the Rockies have always been a formidable foe at home in the rare air of Denver. The park doesn't play as severe as it once did, thanks to the use of a humidor, but it still packs a wallop on unfamiliar foes. As the Minnesota Twins can tell you, being dominant at home is a great card to have in your pocket in a short series. Unlike those Twins teams, the Rockies don't have the four games at home, but they should have enough to drag out the series and bring it down to the final games where anything can happen. Then there is Coors' famously cavernous outfield....

Defense: The Rockies are not "the best fielding team of all time," which is widely touted in the press because of their all-time high fielding percentage, but they are awfully good, and certainly a fair shot better than the Sox, especially if Boston resorts to playing David Ortiz in the field during the middle three. And there is Manny Ramirez, who may get lost in the Coors outfield and never return. The Rockies defense should also help them to adapt better to Fenway, where they also played a three-game series during the regular season.

A serviceable DH: It's my opinion that AL teams have a bigger advantage regarding DH maneuvering in the World Series because they construct their team with an additional slugging first baseman, while NL teams often have to slot in a light-hitting utility player. Colorado, however, has Ryan Spillborghs available, a very respectable hitter who played most of the final two months of the season in center field.

The weather. Mother Nature is a great randomizer, and the chance for lousy weather in the World Series is once again high (honestly, how much more can the series be pushed back into late fall? Will we eventually have the Winter Classic?). The Rockies practiced in the snow last weekend, though at last check none is forecast for Denver this coming weekend. (Though with these things one should always be careful. Veterans are usually more reliable mudders, and Boston has many more of those.)

They're actually good: Winning 21 baseball games out of 22 is by definition a fluke. But the Rockies current run is also too long to be merely a fluke. A cursory glance at the talent the Rockies have assembled here makes you think they could easily win 95-100 games over a full season. They shouldn't be underestimated just because they needed a torrid run down the stretch (and a lot of help from elsewhere) to sneak into the playoffs.

It's the World Serious. Enough said about that.

Say it ain't so

I've always thought you could basically carve up the Republican Party into three core factions: Big Bidness (neocons and corporations), Small Gummint (paleocons and libertarians) and Big Jeebus (religion and social cons). Like the three superpowers in 1984, these three regularly exchange alliances and modest internecine scuffles which are held together by duct tape and, when the time comes to face the rest of the nation, a mutual love of Big 'Murica.

For example, the current administration is mostly Big Bidness, with a veneer of Big Jeebus for show. This has confused and alienated Small Gummint, and also given them a built-in excuse for its failures. But Big Bidness will never actually care about Small Gummint per se; only as much as Small Gummint serves its interests. Big Bidness also doesn't care about Big Jeebus beyond utilitarian ambition; as soon as Big Jeebus becomes an albatross (with offensive social views that threaten profit prospects) away it will go.

With that in mind, let's take another look at Mike Huckabee. Huckabee should, by all accounts, be the favored son of Big Jeebus in the Republican race. He hits all of their favorite social marks with a gusto hardly anyone has seen before, and does it with a geniality which naturally deflects media attention from his extreme social views. Huckabee cruised to victory at last weekend's Values Voters Summit, a kind of Big Jeebus party congress.

Yet there is something conspicuously absent from this.

Despite his booming popularity with the congregation, Huckabee hasn't yet caught an endorsement from any of the Big Jeebus bigwigs, and his fundraising hasn't followed his rising stock. How could this be, when they could hardly ask for anyone more ideal?

Well, Huckabee has a problem. Two problems, in fact. Big Bidness and Small Gummint. While governor of Arkansas Huckabee crossed the unspeakable threshold guaranteed to immediately unite both of them, he raised taxes and expanded government spending for social programs. Even though Huckabee supports replacing the IRS with a "fair tax" system--a favorite crusade for Small Gummint--they still don't trust him enough, especially when there are nearly a dozen other dogs ready to slobber for them.

But wait, won't Big Jeebus stand up for their man? Would Perkins, Colson, Mohler et.al. buck the flock and back another horse?

Yup.

Because they're not Big Jeebus at all.

What, you thought these guys were right-wingers because of "moral values?" Ho ho, weren't we all taken for suckers. The base is, oh yes. The proles filling the pews on Sunday believe Huckabee's trope that illegal immigration is a byproduct of abortion. Their political clergy may or may not; it isn't required. Their job is to reliably deliver Big Jeebus to Big Bidness (Small Gummint hasn't quite realized it's the junior partner in this relationship yet).

This time, Big Jeebus might have its own plans.

Luckily, Mike Huckabee is no William Jennings Bryan. William Jennings Bryan is the most dangerous man in American politics. Except he's been dead 80 years, and couldn't get on the ballot of either major party if he were alive. Bryan thought a conservative theology led to progressive economic policy. Imagine that! You say you want a class war? Bryan would give you one. He wasn't quite a Christian Socialist, though he was sometimes reasonably close.

Yes, there used to be such creatures. Francis Bellamy was a Christian Socialist. He wrote the original draft of the Pledge of Allegiance, and he didn't even put "under God" in it. The nerve!

Opulence

George Saunders at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, from his new book The Braindead Megaphone.

The Burj Al Arab is the only seven-star hotel in the world, even though the rating system only goes up to five. The most expensive Burj suite goes for twelve thousand dollars a night. The atrium is 590 feet from floor to ceiling, the largest in the world. As you enter, the staff rushes over with cold towels, rosewater for the hands, dates, incense. The smell, the scale, the level of living, fascinated attention you are receiving, makes you realize you have never really been in the lap of true luxury before. All the luxury you have previously had--in New York, L.A.--was stale, Burj-imitative crap. Your entire concept of being inside a building is being altered in real time. The lobby of the Burj is neither inside nor out,. The roof is so far away as to seem like sky. The underbellies of the floors above you grade through countless shades of color from deep blue to, finally, up so high you can barely see it; pale green. Your Guest Services liaison, a humble, pretty Ukrainian, tells you that every gold-colored surface you see during your stay is actual twenty-four-karat gold. Even those four-story columns? Even so, she says. Even the thick, four-story arcs the size of buses that span the columns? All gold, sir, is correct.

Satirist Stephen Colbert's nascent presidential campaign (he claims to be running only in his native state of South Carolina) gives us a brief glance into the dues you owe to be a real-live candidate.

However dismissive Mr. Dawson may be about Mr. Colbert’s plans, he said that he did not believe the Republicans could stop him from seeking both Republican and Democratic delegates.

“There is nothing in our filing that would prohibit him from running on both ballots, if he chose to pay the filing fees,’’ Mr. Dawson said.

And what is that fee? A steep $35,000, said Mr. Dawson.

“The great thing about America,’’ Mr. Dawson said, “is if you can meet the constitutional requirements to run for president of the United States, you can do so. In Mr. Colbert’s case, we look forward to his paying the filing fee before Nov. 1.’’

An unusual public appearance in America for a man who has not been christened an Enemy of the State, but will be. Bolivian president Evo Morales on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Obey

Bob Altemeyer is a Canadian social scientist who has dedicated his career to studying the "authoritarian mindset," both those who seek out power and those who obediently follow it. His work was cited extensively in John Dean's book Conservatives Without Conscience (which I haven't read), and decided to write a brief, non-technical distillation of his ideas and release it as a free PDF (get it here).

I've only read the first chapter, but I have to make a note of something because it reinforces a recurring idea that I was kicking around last month.

Thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev (Thanks so much, Mikhail!) I can show you how
thoroughly some high RWAs sop up the teachings of another set of authorities, their
government. As soon as Gorbachev lifted the restraints on doing psychological
research in the Soviet Union an acquaintance of mine, Andre Kamenshikov,
administered a survey to students at Moscow State University with the same freedom that western researchers take for granted. The students answered the RWA scale and as well a series of questions about who was the “good guy” and who was the “bad guy” in the Cold War. For example, did the USSR start the arms race, or the USA?

Would the United States launch a sneak nuclear attack on the Soviet Union if it knew
it could do so without retaliation? Would the USSR do that to the United States? Does the Soviet Union have the right to invade a neighbor who looks like it might become allied with the United States? Does the USA have that right when one of its neighbors starts cozying up to the USSR? At the same time Andre was doing his study, I asked the same questions at three different American universities.

We found that in both countries the high RWAs believed their government’s
version of the Cold War more than most people did. Their officials wore the white
hats, the authoritarian followers believed, and the other guys were dirty rotten
warmongers. And that’s most interesting, because it means the most cock-sure belligerents in the populations on each side of the Cold War, the ones who hated and blamed each other the most, were in fact the same people, psychologically. If they had grown up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, they probably would have believed the leaders they presently despised, and despised the leaders they now trusted. They’d have been certain the side they presently thought was in the right was in the wrong, and instead embraced the beliefs they currently held in contempt. (boldface mine)

"RWA" is an abbreviation of "right-wing authoritarian," which doesn't necessarily mean the political right, but rather an adherence to convention and tradition; the current Establishment, whatever it may be. I was listening to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's commentary for The Lives of Others when he noted somewhat casually that, after the Berlin Wall fell, many of the old GDR bureaucrats landed upright on the boards of major corporations. It makes one question exactly how sincerely they believed in the official Communist byline they once recited religiously.

The paper is available for free, so I encourage you to go have a read. Of particular interest as well is the result of a global simulation done once with people of little authoritarian bent and another with their high-RWA counterparts. The outcome calls to mind a quote I once saw on the web, paraphrased: "That someone wants to be president is reason enough to declare them unfit for the job."

Yeesh

I was looking back at my blog posts from this year, trying to come up with something suitably representative of my handiwork and lo and behold, it occurs to me that all my writing just sucks nowadays.

What happened?

I'm taking suggestions....

Lords of the manor

I know I haven't done a good enough job convincing everyone to read Joe Bageant's absolutely essential book Deer Hunting with Jesus, but I'm going to make another feeble attempt at it. The first chapter alone, "American Serfs," does more to peel back the veneer of rural white America than several whole tomes written by either urban liberal intellectuals or whitewashed right-wing propaganda.

An excerpt:

Despite globalism, owners of small and medium-sized businesses run much of the heartland. Many of those picturesque towns you whip by on the interstate are small feudal systems, ruled by local networks of moneyed families, bankers, developers, lawyers, and merchants. That part of a community's life you cannot see from the road of from your Marriott hotel room and is certainly does not appear in tourist brochures pushing Winchester's Apple Blossom Festival or the Oktoberfest in your Midwestern town. It is in the interest of these well-heeled conservative provincials to maintain a feudal state with low taxes, few or no local regulations, no unions, a cheap school system, and a chamber of commerce with the state senate on its speed dial. At the same time they dominate most elected offices and municipal boards. It seems only natural that these small business owners, after generations of shaving down the soap bars in the back room and soaking the pork chops in water for extra scale weight, would conclude that America is solely about the quickest buck. "Screw the scenic creek, you tree hugger. I'm getting an Outback Steakhouse franchise. Pave it, baby!"

Members of the business class, that legion of little Rotary Club spark plugs, are vital to the American corporate and political machine. They are where the multinational rip-off of working-class people byt he rich corporations finds its footing at the grassroots level, where they can stymie any increase in the minimum wage or snuff out anything remotely resembling a fair tax structure. Serving on every local government body, this mob of Kiwanis and Rotarians has connections. It can get a hundred acres rozeoned for Wal-Mart or a sewer line to that two-thousand-unit housing developement at taxpayer expense. When it comes to getting things done locally for big business, these folks, with the help of their lawyers, can raise the dead and give sight to the blind. They are God's gift to the big nonunion companies and the chip plants looking for a fresh river to piss cadmium into--the right-wing's can-do boys. They are so far right they will not even eat the left-wing of a chicken

It's a necessary element in maintaining the illusion of the "American Dream" that each of these small communities throughout the country has its own miniature version of the great class hierarchy that pervades the country as a whole. I had a teacher in high school who once boasted that American capitalism had wrought the world's first classless society; the very dream of socialism realized right here!, though that, of course, is not quite what he meant. His vision of a classless society was one in which the aristocracy was accessible to even those of modest means, so long as they were willing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, to use the metaphor the Right is so enamored of. So occasionally they even swallow and induct a new family in to the club.

This has two advantages which has helped to vaccinate the modern aristocracy from the pernicious effects of populism. Giving each little community in the heartland its own little tycoons to admire and ogle is not only a source of local pride but a way to keep them plugged in to the greater American Hologram*. Out in the country they can imagine that, whatever the big-city eggheads are dreaming up to screw them over, it can't have anything to do with money, because our home-bred money would never do anything untoward.

It also saves Big Money from the wrath of all those people who inevitably fail to climb the ladder, like Bageant's friend Buck.

Buck finds there's no room for him at the trough. He is not part of the old-money Byrd family, which owns our local and regional newspapers, or the Lewis family, which owns our conservative talk radio station. And when, after kissing these people's asses all his life, Buck allows himself to realize that it's never going to happen, he turns nasty, breaks bad on the world. He had the right stuff and deserved to be wealthy, so somebody else must be to blame. It must be the welfare bums. It must be all of those taxes for "social programs for minorites," code for "throwing money at blacks and Mexicans." Or tax-and-spend liberals. Or "big governments." It can't possibly be because of the rich elites, because, damnit son, rich is what Buck is trying to be!

This is where the right's new program of cultural populism has worked miracles. In the past, someone like Buck might have realized the inherent injustice facing him trying to ascend the socioeconomic ladder. He doesn't know any drag queens or Muslims, but he does know some millionaires, and they're good white church-going folks like him. Instead of running into the arms of progressive agitators, he falls softly into the new safety net of social conservatives with a new blame game that's more satisfactory to his tribal loyalties.

*Another great invention by the Bageant book

It's never too early

If you are, like me, the token Commie in your family, you know how hard it can be to find appropriate Christmas presents for your loved ones.  Fortunately, Jillian at Sadly, No has found the perfect gift for the wingnut who has everything; a tasteful "God, Country, Capitalism" sticker for their favorite consumption machine!

She adds;

So often, we liberals seem to forget that Jesus was a graduate of the Chicago School of Economics. Our atheistic ways mean that we rarely read His Supply Side Sermon on the Mount, with its stirring and heartfelt claim of blessings for those who manage offshore funds — for theirs will be the Kingdom of No Capital Gains Taxes. This tasteful and decorative magnet can be a reminder of the lessons learned from the parable of the loaves and fishes, when Saint Milton, in a moment of senile dementia, asked Jesus to feed the poor, and Jesus replied, “Though the power to multiply loaves and fishes is within my grasp, the creation of such fiat food would cheapen the supply of actually existing food, and lead to a dangerous spiral of food inflation. The poor shall be fed when Caesar stops taxing the small business owner, allowing him to create more jobs, for which these mooches who follow me will qualify.” The wingnut in your life will be grateful for your recognition of the fact that God is both an American and a capitalist, and will hopefully therefore shut up for at least five minutes about how George Soros is actually Stalin’s first cousin.

Amen, and pass the collection plate...to me!

October baseball

I missed out on posting before the baseball playoffs began last week, which turns out to have been mostly inconsequential as the four division series combined went only one game over the minimum. The Red Sox, Diamondbacks, and Rockies swept the Angels, Cubs, and Phillies respectively, while the Yankees only managed one win against Cleveland. What promised to be a fascinating divisional round with only one repeat playoff team from 2006 (a fact you would have heard much more about were this the NFL) was largely anticlimactic.

The National League pennant will be decided between two teams from the Mountain time zone deploying mostly home-bred young players sprinkled with a random assortment of journeymen. The Colorado Rockies are the whitest and most Jesus-y team left in the playoffs, and by far the hottest, streaking to 16 wins in their last 17 regular season game to force a one-game wildcard tiebreak, then swept Philadelphia in the division series in a matchup featuring two teams making their first playoff appearance since the mid-90s (again, baseball; no parity. Remember that). Arizona fulfilled this blog's prediction of having the NL's best record, though they went about it in an unorthodox fashion, with a season-long run differential in the negative numbers. The Snakes did the world of favor by dismissing Chicago's North Siders in the first round, a result not likely to ease us of Cubs Nation's pathetic monasticism, but which was necessary nonetheless.

We are not out of the woods, however, as over in the heavyweight division American League, the Boston Red Sox, Evil Empire Lite, remain alive and kicking, that designation made more salient by the howls of protest it elicits from the Sawx faithful, forever denying, however futily, the club's increasing resemblance to the Hated Yankees. Facing off against the Sawx shiny, store-bought monolith is a Cleveland team that. like the two National League finalists, consists mostly of young, cheap talent groomed through its farm system. Eventually baseball owners will see a pattern here in about, oh, thirty years. But they need a salary cap, y'know, 'cause low payroll teams can't compete.

Both series are close calls. Both NL teams have major questions after their No. 1 starter, but at least Arizona has veterans, though the Colorado offense is a legitimately all-terrain powerhouse. Nevertheless, the Rocks will have to cool down eventually, and they've had several days off to do so, a fate that felled the streaking Tigers in last years' World Series. Plus, their mammoth home field edge will be negated somewhat by facing a very familiar opponent. 'Zona in six.

Cleveland has a good recipe for postseaon success; two dominant starters in C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona which make them the favorite to win four of the seven games. Unfortunately the other three starts will be made by the much less inspiring duo of Jake Westbrook and the anachronism Paul Byrd. They also have a problem lurking at the back of the bullpen. Thanks to the Proven Closer fallacy, the possibility of a handing one or more key games to Joe Borowski is too great to feel comfortable about. Damn Sawx in seven.