Reduced as we are to a choice between smarmy and loathsome,it is disturbing to realize that part of the reason for Romney's stiffness and discordant address is that he is not the facile and suave pretender that is our Prez.

Learning in astonishment that Romney plans to run as the man who can save the tattered economic lives of "ordinary americans", we can anticipate that only the full tilt boogie return of Obama Agonistes can overcome the voters' susceptibility (already well shown) to repeated high priced agitprop. 

So much heat as attended the substance of the Ryan Budget that some may have failed to note that his budget resolution carries a reconciliation motion.

The same filibuster defense that was ultimately successfully used to obviate the Repugnants' intractable resistance to any policy with Prez's name on it, including one with Heritage Foundation Grandparents (viz, individual health insurance mandate...)

As we shuffle along the slough of despond, occasionally raising our tired eyes to the cryptic countenance of Anthony Kennedy, who has been rendered by the vagaries of retirement and  poor health into the emperor of the universe, may we not look, once more, to the imagination of FDR for a remedy.

Once before an embattled president sought to rally the people to their own salvation, once before "nine old men" placed their flabby bodies athwart the road to progress, once before the salutary interventions of the democratic branches of our government were rendered useless and impotent by hidebound ideologues and partisan shills.

Then FDR took the court to the edge of the abyss, and showed them what lay at the bottom, if they persisted in their most pernicious error