. Obligations elsewhere require that this week's post be somewhat edited versions of observations sent hither and yon during the week concerning how bad things are, how they got that way and what happens next.

The best thing to come from this, in the long run I think, is that it puts to rest the foolish idea propagated by David Stockman and others in the Reagan years that we can enjoy the benefits of the New Deal without its programs and its rules. The philosophical debates about the government's role in the economy and our lives which the GOP and its echo chamber in DC want to have, ended sometime in mid 1933. Somebody should tell the Beltway folks this. Or not.
Somehow the tensions over Vietnam War and the civil rights movement , and Jimmy Carter being panty waist, made people think that we didn't need an FDR style government anymore.  Even Nixon and Presidents Eisenhower and Ford knew better but these assholes who had been smarting for a chance to get back the toys Pres Roosevelt took from them.  Our generation, constantly pissed off at the prior one, did not fully appreciate the struggles of the past since we did not live through them.

Now we have and the polling out there shows the old New Deal coalition starting to come back together, minus the south, but with the disenfranchised of 1932 now a huge part of the electorate to replace what we lost.  President Roosevelt, who has been spinning in that grave for so long, would be so happy except that we bleeped up so much of the careful system he put in place to prevent what happened from happening again, with the predicatble consequences.

Thank God for G W Bush, playing the part of Herbert Hoover.  And, as Rachel Maddow has noted  they called them Hoovervilles for a good reason.

You hear stories about people putting a big picture of the President up in their workplace, home, or both.  These are the same type of people who used to hang pictures of President Kennedy (maybe with a "Jesus picture").  They did not hang pictures of presidents on their walls since then, until now.  And they are doing it in Indiana, too.

The President is the best spokesman for his administration.  No question. The best Presidents are that way (and one of the worst, the Great Reagan was, too, but that's because most of the government, then, were ideoolgues and crooks).   And in the same way that Harry Hopkins seemed to cause trouble for FDR, and Bobby Kennedy for President Kennedy, Hillary Clinton for President Clinton. there are a few that could maybe take a quieter role, but I saw Rahm on Face the Nation last week and he is damned good.  Not as polished as the President and certainly not as soothing, but he is direct and on message.

 A Rush/Rahm debate would draw an audience of millions and ruin Limbaugh forever, but not worth the bother