Reduced circumstances, indeed.  Bernard Shaw and Duranty and Anna Louise Strong, and John Reed, and Wells, and The Webbs and hundreds of other “Progressive” swells from the West, had The Soviet Union to worship as the perfect society.  It represented the kind of control they wished for themselves, even after the evidence of Stalin and enforced famine.  No matter.

Now there isn’t much left for their kind, for today’s fancy generation of leftist aristocrats , except the macabre pantomime of revolutionary grotesqueries, like Cuba and Venezuela  (and Islamofascism, wherever it’s found).  These Lilliputian dictatorships give them hope for their own miniature talents and grand authoritarian fantasies.   It’s a question of perspective.  No one would mistake a Kennedy for a Shaw,  a Wells or a Duranty (even a JIMMY Duranty), or a lowlife sweat-rag Chavez for a hero….except another Kennedy. 

(John Derbyshire in “Still Useful, Still Idiotic” - “Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face, there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100% literacy”)

And This to clarify Pat’s rumination on why he voted for George W. Bush….the first time.  I’d forgotten why, myself.   The second time…well, John Kerry.  Kerry was simply below the bar  of reasonable consideration for any national office, including the one he currently holds.   A vote for him was a sprint past reality,  a leap into the abyss.  NO thinking human being could do such a thing.

Woke up this mornin’, got yourself a gun…Pelosi could wind up at Satriale’s Pork Store.

And finally, “other immigrants” are keeping Social Security afloat.  How do you say “Thank You” in fifty languages?