Question; Is the sudden ramping-up of Bloomberg an Establishment conspiracy?

Every year thousands of Americans are indicted by prosecutors in the US for conspiracy: to murder, to rob, to steal, to sell drugs. Every year the US, thousands of people are convicted of such conspiracies and such conspirators overflow our prisons. The grand-daddy of all conspiracy statutes is RICO and it has become a prime tool of both state and federal prosecutors. And on a more mundane mount, every year millions of Americans conspire to throw surprise birthday parties.

And yet, anyone who suggests that two or more people are engaged in a political conspiracy to achieve hidden (and maybe not so hidden) objectives is a conspiracy nut.

Yes, Virginia there are conspiracies and there is an American Establishment that seeks to keep debate and policy within "safe" limits. Bush II was on the fringe of that Establishment and then went completely outré when he ditched Bush I's safe Establishment advisors for the quick fix of the social - and economic - reactionaries.

Hillary was probably once a safe candidate but internal Democratic politics are driving her. along with the Dem Party into a populist mode that threatens to attract the free-falling middle-class and even a portion of Evangelicals who take the social Gospel seriously. Note the spate of comments last week about overlaps between Huckabee and Edward’s appeal.

What's an Establishment to do? We now have the answer: Bloomberg. liberal on social issues, safe on bank account issues.

There is only one problem. We are now facing economic crises (plural) that are unprecedented in scope. FDR's "arsenal of democracy" can't even produce adequate bullet-proof vests and Hummers. The Red States are bearing the brunt of IRAQ casualties. The large, home-owning middle and even lower class have the bulwark of stability in our society and now that class is in fact facing the worst home-owning crisis since the Great Depression. In fact it may even be worse because the numbers and percentages of home-owners is so much greater than the Great Depression.

Bill Clinton was an ideal Establishment candidate but if she is to win the Dem nomination, Hillary will perforce adopt the anti-establishment, populist positions and even Mark Penn is smart-enough to figure out that playing safe and searching for a non-existent middle isn't going to work.

The "center can not hold" so all of a sudden slouching towards Bethlehem is Michael Bloomberg. He may not be some kind of “beast.” But he certainly is no FDR. We need an FDR to do battle with the “economic royalists.”

Of course, Bloomberg is not a conspiracy unless you understand the Establishment is a conspiracy by its nature. It’s never about us, its always about them. Or, as the Matt Damon, Skull and Bones certified, Establishment model character, put it so aptly in "The Good Sheppard; "It's our country, everybody else is a visitor."

John Klotz

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com

As a New York resident, I think Bloomberg has been an effective mayor. He gets stuff done. But his support of Joe, let's bomb Iran, Lieberman has put a damper on my support of Bloomberg. I would not trust him until I hear him propose a plan for peace in the middle east. Right now it looks like both Clinton and Obama would lose the general vote...especially if Bloomberg enters the race. Mike is a pro-Israel liberal (if there can be such a thing)..but if he enters the race it won't be helpful for the Democrats. Good health to Justice Stevens. Buy Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine" and read it. It's really important. I'm out of the country, across the pond for a week. Americans are not popular here. We need to get serious about changing our country.

I'll bet the Colts whip the Yankees. I place a $3-bucky's vise my favorite bookie.

RMP? A 30-foot tunnel to a frozen outhouse in Nat. Geo.?

Glenn can summon Michael B. to sit next to you at a double hole potty house near me?

I was somewhere last eve.

About 6-months ago the outhouse fell down.

RMP? Is Jim White a snowboarder? A mason?

You may bring him here to a place along the Potomac River?

We three-boys can heave-Ho the house upright so that when it snows...at-midnight, we may not freeze at the outhouse potty chair.

I read those back midnight-letters from above.

Karen would love Michele. She's invited too for stewed tomatoes, garlic green beans, and sourkrout. There is some cream cheese with assorted berries left on top. That on top of the chrusty fluffed cheese cake pie, I mean.

Summoner the USA some help? We need a national outhouse plumber who can fix the outdoor dumper.

You are a foots balls fan and retired.

If you lost a leg in the military we can just unscrew the prosthetic device and use it in the wood-stove for to-heat food-stuff and to boil green-tea-water in some burnt tin-pots.

I think it's a theory, a theory of evolution, and I don't accept it

Litmus test....

Failed....

Moron or liar.

End of story.

-- Paul Dirks

Damn Paul, you sure sound like a narrow minded bigot this morning. I'll figure you had a bit much last night --- a good, believable excuse.

Are you saying that only faith in the "Church of Darwin" is acceptable to you? That is as bad as the Cristian literalists that completely hid/missed the mystic message of the perennial philosophy.

The slow, slow, gradualism of Darwinism is based on faith and is not science. Often in the teaching in public school debates we only hear 'church of Darwin' v. 'fundamentalist Christianity' and both are wrong in ever so many ways. Hell, to pick a side between those two is to be a 'moron'.

Lynn Margulis may be the finest evolutionary biologist that humanity as produced, certainly the finest American evolutionary scientist. She was slammed early in her career due to her theories not being 'Darwinist' enough. But she made predictions! Damn, real science among the crap of just-so-stories we normally get from the so-called evolutionary biologists.

In Sudden Origins, University of Pittsburgh Anthropology Professor Jeffrey Schwartz leveled a devastating attack on slow, slow, gradual, point-mutation Darwinism.

Eldredge and Gould, in their "Punctuated equilibria" theory were savage early for being an attack on Darwinism; and yet it is now the very definition of neo-Darwinism.

Hell, even Panspermia makes more sense than Charles Darwin.

Now Dirks, before you make a guesses that you will regret; I am positive that the evidence shows that the Hebrew testament (OT), and the christian testament (NT) contain no history at all, as we moderns understand the term. The planet is older than 4,000 years by a tad. (understatement intended, for those fools who look for quibbles)

There is "fact of evolution" only in the weak form of the definition --- you know, the real one; a change in the genetic composition of a population over time.

In my spiritual view, evolution is central to what was, what is, and what will be. However, Darwin is dead wrong.