Wednesday morining

[arisbe]

First of all, happy birthday to elementalmuse, one of the few LJ friends I didn't know before whom I have met in real life, assuming the reality of that seeming continent over there on the other side of the Hudson.

I am alone in my cube, and will be so until Christmas. The cube next door is unoccupied and will be for the rest of the year, reducing the burden of hysteria and abuse, not only on my humble workstation, but on the Northwest corner of the twelfth floor.

Nevertheless I am not, for various reasons, in a particularly good mood. Must be the weather. Or the time of year.

I don't even feel like forwarding my usual political quotes. Though I will invite those who are interested in such things to look at Jim Lobe's take on developments at the White House.

It does seem fairly certain that the unspeakable Neocons are on their way out, having done immeasurable damage to the nation and to the world.

Though the Democrats may bring them back in if the Likudnik jihadists, the Forth World Warriors, manage to stop Dean and carry the general election.

I need to update and expand my 9/11 essay.

I was down in Ground Zero Saturday for the first time since (I suppose) September 10, '01, riding the PATH to Grove Street and back, leaving from and returning to the very bottom of the World Trade Center site. I must do it again.

Grove Street, where my paternal grandfather was born a century and a quarter ago.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

If Cheney backs out next year, I wonder who will be tapped to take his place? If the neocons have truly lost their influence by next year, a few conceivable scenarios include:

James Baker
Colin Powell
John McCain

each of which would do serious loop-de-loops to the Presidential race.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

There is some talk of George Pataki of New York, who would add geographic balance, and is able to work with folks more liberal than he is.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

That would be an interesting choice too, but I don't see how a Bush/Pataki administration would work.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I don't either.

BUSH--just as much as the "neocons"

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

Frank, if the Dems don't nominate Dean, I believe that his supporters--and I now count myself as one; I like the way he's campaigned, and believe it reflects independence and initiative--will just go ahead and begin to construct a 3rd Pary movement. This time, it's either Dean or Bush: no other Democrat, and no possibility of another 3rd Party--or "Green"--candidate. So you don't have to worry about the "neocons" coming back with Lieberman or anybody else. And there's more the matter with Bush than just his partiality for these people: he's an economic elitist, and he's partial to Christian Fundamentalist interpretations of geopolitics. In other words, he's scary in his own right, without the "neocons."

Re: BUSH--just as much as the "neocons"

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I don't see Dean accepting a third party nomination if the Dems turn him down.

My depressing thought is that a sadder but wiser Bush might be the lesser of two great evils.

Re: BUSH--just as much as the "neocons"

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

That IS a very depressing thought for me--principally because I don't see any possibility of THIS Bush becoming "wiser"; he's a badly educated, spoiled "classist"--the very real product of country-club Republican and tacitly racist politics in the South, and that means he LOATHES people of a lower socio-economic status than his, believing they're lazy, shiftless and with NO RIGHT to be activist politically. (You BUY your rights to "activism" in the hierarchic-minded South.)

Re: BUSH--just as much as the "neocons"

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I imagine that he doesn't like to be lied to any more than I do, and that he is as pissed off at his handlers as I am at him -- and has a little more weight to throw around.

Re: BUSH--just as much as the "neocons"

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

Why do you believe he was "lied" to? The objectives of the "neocons" was clear even before he took office? They PUBLISHED what they believed in, for God's sake! Are you claiming that it was THEY who MADE UP the "weapons of mass destruction" story, and got it past the CIA, thereby leading W.Bush and Colin Powell down the prim-rose path? That'd be quite a conspiracy theory to have to swallow.

[rengal.livejournal.com]

"Grove Street, where my paternal grandfather was born a century and a quarter ago."

It must be very cool to live in a place with familial roots.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

Across the river, anyway.

I work on Barclay Street, close to where the ferry house used to be. After working late on the Hoboken docks my father used to take the ferry into Manhattan and go to St. Andrews where they had a special early mass for the printers who had just put out the first edition of the daily papers, which were then headquartered in lower Manhattan. The newspapers are gone now, and the church is surrounded by courthouses and prisons. My pastor, Father John (or Juan) of the Russian Church, is a chaplain at the Federal House of Detention next door. As you go into St. Andrews you walk in under under the words (in Latin) Blessed are they that walk in the law of the Lord.