Given that a free-for-all, say-what-you-like opportunity has not been offered here at The Dark Wraith Forums in a while, the time is now for such fun, frivolity, and wholly off-topic commentary.

As if off-topic commentary is not to be expected on every thread, here.

To kick things off, I shall propose a time of new directions is at hand. On the other hand — the one holding no illusions of hope — nothing will change. I stand by my frequent assertions that the Obama presidency will be marked by authoritarianism without the incompetence so uniformly and magnificently honed by the Bush Administration. Prospects for a comprehensive, lasting settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians are dim at best: Obama's White House Chief of Staff, the man who will serve as a highly effective gatekeeper to the President, is Rahm Emanuel, a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist described by an elder leader of such organizations as being of "good Irgun stock," referring as he was to the work of Rahm's father in the terrorist group called Irgun, so savage in its brutality in the first half of the 20th Century that the Polish government, trying as it was to fund a region into which Polish Jews could be settled away from the onslaught of the Nazis, finally cut off funding.

But maybe Rahm Emanuel is different. Maybe he will abide a vision of his superior that seeks a peace where everyone comes out better off for having forsworn the cyclical violence that inevitably comes with occupation of a land in which far too many people do not want the occupation force. Besides, Barack Obama is a fellow whom I, myself, have described as having his own mind and will, regardless of what others, even those close to him, think. It might not matter what Rahm or anyone else has in mind if a comprehensive, fair settlement of the conflict is what he wants.

Ah, but then there's Dennis Ross, perennial gadfly ambassador under both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Mr. Ross, who spoke on behalf of Barack Obama to the American-Israeli Political Action Committee and who was a signatory to statements of the Project for the New American Century, is rumored to be in line to carry the Middle East portfolio as Under-Secretary of State in the Obama Administration. Yes, there's a good man to serve as an honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Oh, but wait a minute. That's the same Dennis Ross who is credited with the 1995 Interim Agreement!

So much for unmitigated villainy.

Grr.

Life was easier before it wasn't.

Excuse the rambling, there. I have every intention of publishing an article within the next several days in which I take what might seem at first blush a completely random walk through religion, death, and war. I've already written the piece; I'm just trying to figure what my point was before I publish the article and someone asks me, "What was your point, there, Chief?"

I hate being called 'Chief'; it's so... so.. fresh.

The mysteries remain, however, and before I move on, here, let's try a few simple questions:

Why do the Hamas rocketmen fire their lousy Qassams into Israel when they have a set of fabulous, contained Israeli targets right in the Gaza district? Check out a map of Gaza, and you'll see Israeli-developed areas and communities. You'll also see Israeli security zones with at least some prospect for targets of the reviled enemy. So, then, why do the Hamas rocketmen insist on lobbing their dangerously inaccurate, garage-built, big flying cans with explosives into Israel proper?

Next question. The legendary Mossad and other intelligence assets of Israel can't seem to get a pinpoint on the who and where of the building of those Qassams. Sure, the things can be built in make-shift facilities; but after all this time, the intelligence products of Israel's much-vaunted spy services have to be set aside so a full-blown land, sea, and air assault can do the job on the entire population of Gaza just to crush clusters of annoying post-adolescents with too much access to junkyards and explosives precursors?

One last question. If the Obama Administration is going to be as competent and sharp as I am predicting (and a whole lot of people here in the United States and around the world are hoping), can a final settlement actually be reached, or do we commit grave injustice to the worthy cause of cynicism with such thoughts?

Enough for now about the Middle East. I have something else to deal with here tonight.

Most long-time readers noticed that I started a new sidebar panel some time ago. It's called "The Art of Grousing," and it's my cabin for beefing about whatever is on my mind that merits my irritation, disdain, or annoyance. The current entry goes like this:

Well, I got it as a gift for Christmas, and I immediately tried to sell the thing without any luck. It was a gift certificate to a hair salon. So I thought to myself, "Hey, maybe I should go back to my old look back in the days when I was a real hot dog of a business consultant and brash college teacher with a mission, an ego, and a whole lot of good friends and worse enemies.
Here's what I have now learned: you can't fix ugly.

The only way ugly isn't ugly is when you're filthy rich, like Billy Joel, like Mick Jagger, like Bill Gates. Any ugly guy with less money than those ugly guys is ugly.

Anyway, when I saw how I looked after the visit to the fancy hair place, it really weirded me out. I'm almost considering posting a "Before and After" pair of photos here at The Dark Wraith Forums, but I'm not sure that's such a good idea: it's one thing to weird myself out, but it's quite a bit worse if I end up scaring away all my readers.

I'll have to think about this for a few days before I go and do a post that could drive a Presbyterian to drink.

I have now decided to show you the "Before and After"; but I must caution you that this is pretty weird, and I'm dead serious, here. As I wrote in a comment earlier, I had been going to Hell as far as appearance goes, especially in the last month: bad skin color, swollen glands, ragged hair — the whole nine yards. Think Walther Mathau and Mick Jagger, except worse.

I started going all Medieval on myself a couple weeks ago. I spent good money to get back on my vitamins and other supplements, and I spent stupid money on better soap and shampoo.

Then came the hair salon thing late last week.

It's your call: better, worse, or no change?

Again, I warn you, this is the kind of ugly that knocks a bulldog off a meat wagon:



And now for the transformed version (photo taken this morning):



And, finally, side-by-side:




Say what you need to say. The night is young, the dance floor lights are on, and the espresso bar is ready to grind the bean. Let the party begin.


The Dark Wraith will be the guy hanging out by the coffee pot waiting for the harsh critique.

TO: Israel
FROM: Dark Wraith
DATE: 3 January 2009
RE: Occupation

You will not win, you know. No amount of firepower will solve your problem with the Palestinians.

Destroy every Qassam rocket, wipe out every Grad missile, kill every member of Hamas, butcher hundreds of civilians who might or might not support it; and you will not win.

Buy our American politicians, cart to your shores billions of dollars in economic aid and war materiel from us, call us your ally as you persistently harm our interests to promote your own; and you will still not win.

Sink our ships that watch you, hire spies to steal our secrets, assassinate your enemies in far away lands; and you will still not win.

Justify your brutality with the horrors done throughout history to your own people, allow your policies to be driven by modern-day Zealots hated by most of your own citizens, hold your economy together on the reed of an unending state of war; and you will still not win.

Imagine your soldiers with their overwhelmingly superior firepower a warrior race, slaughter innocents to defeat evil, make your very religion a clarion cry to destiny instead of a magnificent story of heroism; and you will still not win.

Burn their land to the very ground.

Kill them; and then kill them some more.

Hunt them.

Starve them.

Humiliate them.

Beat them.

Terrorize them.

Then, kill them some more.

Still, you will not win.

Sooner or later, Empire meets its match, wrongful or righteous as that opponent may be. You have met yours, and you are not even Empire.

But, then again, this tragedy is no longer about victory, is it? You would have to destroy what bombs, bullets, knives, and fire cannot; and you already know that. If you harbor any remaining doubt, just ask Empire.

You, just like Empire, will one day weary of your toil. Perhaps you will move on before you are spent of this defining enterprise of madness in its ugly sack cloth of violence. Probably not, though.

Just ask Empire.

Or, more appropriately, read its epitaph.

With a new year comes renewed hope for better: a better economy, better leadership, better opportunities.

Better this and better that.

Certainly, I deserve better, now don't I? Surely, what has happened to date is not my responsibility. It was not I who mismanaged the macroeconomy so magnificently that we are now plunging into what might very well be a second Great Depression! In fact, just to show how not responsible I am for this fiasco, I can wave years of literature I have written warning about the inevitability of this very mess. I can show years of lecture notes and podcasts from the economics classes I've taught wherein I veritably roared that the economic policies of the Bush Administration were going to lead to disaster.

No, this whole economic mess is not my fault at all.

Neither is the catastrophe in Iraq. It's not like I invaded that country on a pack of wholesale lies. In fact, I was right there condemning the outrage of it all. Yes, I was. I even used my Photoshop skills to create and publish really harsh visual critiques of George W. Bush and his pack of neo-conservative enablers. Not to be outdone by any other critics, I even coined the term "neoconnies" to degrade those nasty cowards who would never, themselves, go to war but who would send tens of thousands of American troops right into the teeth of crazed jihadists and assorted other malcontents, "freedom fighters," and religiously excitable folks.

No, that whole Iraq thing is most definitely not my fault.

And while I'm at it, don't blame me for Afghanistan, either. I've had my say about how we dealt with the Taliban until the Taliban didn't want to play on our terms with oil pipelines, which made the Taliban our sworn enemy that needed a good old American-style regime change on the pretext of an outrage that was committed against us.

Ah, and that brings me to the whole "Attacks of September 11, 2001, upon the United States" thing. It's not like I didn't do my part to point out all the wildly improbable coincidences surrounding that awful series of events, like how Vice President Dick Cheney was in charge of NORAD that morning, the very morning NORAD could not muster fighter jets from its huge inventory to knock out a handful of lumbering sky boats that had been hijacked. My goodness, but I stuck my neck out to be called a "conspiracy theorist," and that really hurt my academically high-and-mighty sense of myself!

Oh, I almost forgot: I'm not responsible for the torturing of people by the United States government. I think I even posted a picture of one of those Iraqis being horribly mistreated at Abu Ghraib, and I'm pretty sure I was glad when the trailer trash that did those things was thrown in prison to rot. How else was the United States going to make people feel okay about themselves, and how else was the Pentagon going to get seriously professional and secretive about enhanced interrogation? Boy, did I have some harsh things to say about all that stuff.

And let me not forget to mention that I'm on record —in writing, no less!— as being firmly opposed to all the snooping and spying our government is doing. I've even gone out on a limb and written about how awful it is that the Transportation Security Administration brutes use technology to look at naked people by the hundreds of thousands, day after day, at airports. I've condemned how our very own law enforcement community is a huge deployer of Websites and online content to attract everything from wannabe terrorists to losers trying to find unlawful pornography. I've surely stood my ground on those matters, and I've even been labeled some kind of "civil libertarian" in the process.

Furthermore, I've made it abundantly clear that I know U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald whitewashed the investigation of the outing of CIA NOC operative Valerie Plame, and I've been more than adequate in connecting that outrageously inadequate investigation to the collapse of the rule of law in this country. Talk about putting my butt on the line! I've damned judges, law enforcement personnel, and even a U.S. Attorney, and these are the kinds of thugs who could turn me into a convicted felon on false charges and media hype without even so much as breaking a sweat before lunch.

No, none of what has become of this country is my fault. I'm just a citizen of Empire, a hapless, not-responsible victim who's done more than his share to stop the madness; and no one can hold me to account.

It's not like there was anything more I could have done. I mean, come on: yeah, sure, I could have taken up arms in open rebellion; but, God! — that's a bit over-the-top, now isn't it? Give my life for the cause of liberty? Die for what I believe in?! Do things that might get me thrown in prison where I'd get gang-raped to the gleeful cheers of all those people who think that's part of just punishment of criminals?! End up being reviled forever by just about everyone because all the newspapers and TV news shows would portray me as a real live terrorist?! Good God! I'm not a terrorist, and I surely don't want everyone calling me one for the rest of eternity, for goodness sake! Get real.

I've DONE my part.

That's why I deserve a really good year. First, I want one of those tax cuts our new President is promising. I deserve it: the rich got theirs during the Bush years, so now it's my turn, by God. I don't care if the Republicans' tax cuts drove our federal deficits into mind-numbing territory. I want mine, now, and so what if the federal budget deficits are going to explode into heretofore unimaginable ranges nearing a trillion dollars a year?

I get mine, and then we'll talk about that fiscal responsibility the Bush incompetents never exhibited.

And I want federal spending, too, and I want it to go to my priorities this time. The war-makers, war-mongers, and all their pork-barrel beneficiaries got theirs during the Bush years; now, it's time I got mine. After all, no one can argue that I don't deserve it.

As far as paying for all this stuff, we'll just print more money! Hell, the Federal Reserve was doing that for the rich by rocketing the growth rate of M3 out of control, so now the Fed can do the same for M1, the kind of money I use. Hyperinflation? Who cares? Besides, the "laws of economics" are all dead, anyway: that's how the Bush people saw it, and now liberals and Leftists are openly making the same claim!

Of course, what the Fed can't print we'll just borrow from the Chinese. They're the ones who pegged their currency for years at a ridiculously low value to the dollar, which made their crap ridiculously cheap here, thereby sucking trillions of American greenbacks and millions of American jobs into their pockets, so they have all that U.S. money to lend back to us so we can keep living way beyond our means. And all we have to do in return is let them be our lender, meaning they have claims on future cash flows from America's treasure for generations to come. And when those foreigners holding all those greenbacks have lent us all the money we need, they can go on a shopping spree, buying up our land, our companies, and our financial securities (which are really great bargains, right now, by the way, for those nice foreigners).

I'm on a roll, here, so let me announce the rest of the stuff I deserve. I want health care coverage, and I want the best money can buy. I want everyone to pay for moi. It's not like I'm to blame for my illnesses. Sure, I smoke, and I want everyone who doesn't to make me all better. Sure, I've let my body go to Hell, but it's not like everyone else should get off the hook for that. I want my meds: I want chemicals hawked by massive pharmaceutical companies that make me think my life should go on and on and on because — hey! — I deserve to live because I contribute so very, very much to this world.

Here's something else I expect: I want this government of ours to bail out all the huge companies that are going under; in fact, I want the government to take equity stakes in all those companies so it can both regulate and own American business. Big failed, so let's get as big as big can get by turning the federal government into a giant holding company. Now that's gotta be too big to fail, right?

Right.


Now for the moment of clarity.

I am a citizen of Empire, and this is an empire that always had its dark side, even as it truly did, at least sometimes, make the world better for its policies and actions, especially when they were expressions of the best in all of us as decent, humane people. Those policies and actions, however, turned thoroughly and pervasively ugly during the presidency of George W. Bush.

I knew early on that this was no ordinary turn of Empire. These men and women who had become our public expression of collective will were relentless in a way I had seen only in the awfullest of circumstances in my life. Reason, rhetoric, law, logic: none of these ephemeral and obtusely frail pieces of the high civilization would have any effect whatsoever. Like the policeman who will not be talked down from the firearm he is pointing at me, like the savage dog mauling me, this Administration was immune to words, to pictures, to outrage, to chants, to thought. I knew that, and I knew it early on.

Yet, what did I do?

I wrote. I reasoned. I petitioned, I expressed outrage. I protested.

I did the very things I knew very well would not work, but I did nothing else.

I am every bit, by blood and by soil, a citizen of Empire.

And somehow, despite that, I think I deserve better than to end my days in the long, bleak night of that Empire?

Right. Sure.


The Dark Wraith has spoken.

CNN.com has released the polling results of a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey taken during the period from Friday, December 19 through Sunday, December 22, 2008. Those taking the poll were asked questions that included one about their opinion of Vice President Dick Cheney's performance in office relative to others who had held the position. The results are graphically depicted below.



As the illustration shows, about 23 percent of those surveyed think Mr. Cheney is the "worst" Vice President, while another 41 percent rate him as "poor"; 34 percent judge him as "good," and one percent think he is the "best." The poll has a sampling error of approximately three percent.


The Dark Wraith will not bother to formally survey the readers here to see what they think of Mr. Cheney's performance in office (although a few comments on the man will surely issue forth, nonetheless).

How can you tell the difference between a drummer who is a conspiracy theorist and a drummer who is a cynic?

Answer: The cynic doesn’t show up.

Uh... why not?

Answer: The cynic already knows there won’t be an audience.

So, why does the conspiracy theorist show up?

Answer: He just pretends to play for the audience; he’s really there just to hear himself.

But the cynic could do that, too.

Answer: Yes, but if he’s really a cynic, he won’t even listen to himself.

At 6:00 p.m. on Friday, December 19, 2008, Michael Connell was killed when the single-engine Piper Saratoga he was piloting crashed on approach to the Akron-Canton Airport in northeastern Ohio. The plane was about 2.5 miles out when it went down, hitting the ground between two houses in the Stark County city of Uniontown, 10 miles southeast of Akron.

Michael Connell was the information technology expert some activists claim was the mastermind behind the rigging of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Mr. Connell was about to testify in Ohio, where his consulting business is based, about aspects of his vote rigging work in the Buckeye State. The non-profit group Velvet Revolution claims that a "tipster close to the McCain campaign" warned an investigator for the group last Summer that Connell's life was in danger and that he should not fly his plane because of the possibility of sabotage.

In late October of 2002, the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air A100 carrying liberal Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone crashed on approach two miles from Eveleth-Virginia Airport in Minnesota, killing Sen. Wellstone, his wife Sheila, their 33-year-old daughter Marcia, and five others people. The 58-year-old Wellstone was campaigning for re-election to his U.S. Senate seat. His death paved the way for his Republican opponent, St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, to win the election. The National Transportation Safety Board ultimately ruled that pilot error caused the plane crash that killed Wellstone.

On October 16, 2000, then-Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, his son, and an aide were killed when the plane in which they were flying, a Cessna 335, crashed just weeks ahead of the election in which Mr. Carnahan was vying for a U.S. Senate seat against the incumbent Senator, John Ashcroft. Although dead, Carnahan went on to win the election against Ashcroft, whom President George W. Bush would subsequently appoint as United States Attorney General. Jean Carnahan, Mel Carnahan's widow, was appointed to take her late husband's seat in the Senate until a special election in 2002. Carnahan's wife lost the special election to Republican Jim Talent. The National Transportation Safety Board ultimately ruled that the primary cause of the accident that killed Mel Carnahan was disorientation of the pilot, Carnahan's 44-year-old son Roger, who had not long before the crash taken special training to handle flight emergencies involving the Cessna 335.

How can the cynic still call himself a 'musician' if he hates what he does so much?

Answer: Because music is his life, man.

And now, for some audio levity:




The Dark Wraith encourages readers to always be prepared for the occasional interruption.

Far too much time has passed since the last quiz was offered here at The Dark Wraith Forums, and given that your host just completed Autumn Semester 2008 final exams, what better time to challenge astute, educated, engaged, aware readers with yet another test of great relevance to the current economics of this recession-oriented nation?

The problems below are variations straight from a final exam I would give in a principles of macroeconomics course. I hand-selected 10 of the 100 multiple-choice questions just for you. These are all problems I would expect any economics student to know by the end of the semester. Even if you've never had a core macroeconomics course, if you have been following my articles here (and you can find a summary list of some of them by clicking here), you will ace this quiz.

Take this quiz, report your results in comments if you so desire, and then brag to your friends about having faced down a killer economics test given by a particularly ill-tempered economics professor.

Or, if things don't go so well, quietly send me a private e-mail message telling me that I'm ugly. I like getting e-mail from friends who care.

Lock and load, good people.

1. If private savings is less than private investment by $180 billion, and the government is running a $750 billion budget deficit, then...

• the country will run a $930 billion trade surplus.


• the country will run a $930 billion trade deficit.


• the country will run a $570 billion trade deficit.


• the country will run a $570 billion trade surplus.

2. All other things staying the same, when domestic interest rates fall...

• net exports (exports minus imports) decline.


• consumption decreases.


• net exports and consumption both decrease.


• neither net exports nor consumption decreases.

3. Printing money at a rate in excess of the real (that is, inflation-adjusted) growth rate of the economy will likely _______ nominal interest rates in the short run and _______ nominal interest rates in the long run.

• lower, lower


• lower, raise


• raise, lower


• raise, raise

4. The Federal Reserve Board __________ the banking system, and the Reserve Banks _________ member banks.

• monitors, advise


• supervises, monitor


• monitors, regulate


• regulates, supervise

For Problems #5 and #6, use the diagrams below.

5. A Federal Reserve open market operation that reduces the money supply is shown by...

• Diagram A, which shows an open market purchase of government bonds.


• Diagram A, which shows an open market sale of government bonds.


• Diagram B, which shows an open market purchase of government bonds.


• Diagram B, which shows an open market sale of government bonds.

6. A Federal Reserve open market operation that increases the money supply is shown by...

• Diagram A, which shows an open market purchase of government bonds.


• Diagram A, which shows an open market sale of government bonds.


• Diagram B, which shows an open market purchase of government bonds.


• Diagram B, which shows an open market sale of government bonds.

7. Which statement is correct concerning Federal Reserve open market operations ("OMOs")?

• OMOs pursuant to expansionary monetary policy will decrease the supply of lendable funds in the banking system.


• OMOs pursuant to contractionary monetary policy will cause bond prices to fall.


• OMOs pursuant to expansionary monetary policy will tend to cause the Federal funds rate to rise.


• Large Treasury auctions will tend to reinforce bond price effects of expansionary monetary policy activities of the Federal Reserve.

8. An American buys a $500 TV made in China. Which of the following happens to U.S. trade accounts?

• The current account changes by +$500, and the capital account changes by +$500, too.


• The current account changes by -$500, and the capital account changes by +$500.


• The current account changes by +$500, and the capital account changes by -$500.


• The current account changes by -$500, and the capital account changes by -$500, too.

9. The United States government borrows money by...

• purchasing Treasury notes.


• buying government bonds.


• selling Treasury securities.


• All of the above.

10. Concerning the monetary aggregates M1 and M3, during the period from about mid-2004 until the Spring of this year...

• the growth rate of M3 was below the real growth rate of the U.S. economy, but the growth rate of M1 was significantly greater than the real growth rate of the U.S. economy.


• both M1 and M3 were growing at rates well in excess of the real growth rate of the U.S. economy


• the growth rate of M3 was accelerating and greatly exceeded the real growth rate of the U.S. economy, but the average growth rate of M1 was less than the real growth rate of the U.S. economy.


• both M1 and M3 were growing at rates below the real growth rate of the U.S. economy.

Score =
Correct answers:
<br />

What Your Score Means

100%:	You know economics too well to be a mainstream media pundit.
70%-90%:	You know economics too well to be an adviser to the President.
40-60%:	You know economics too well to work for the Democratic Party.
10-30%:	You know economics too well to work for the Republican Party.
0%:	Okay, it's time for you to get a job in Washington.

The Dark Wraith awaits the results of this delightful little diversion.

On December 14, 2004, The Dark Wraith Forums commenced publication.



To those who read the articles published here, I convey sincere and abiding gratitude.

As surely as the night of Empire still gathers before us, The Dark Wraith Forums will continue to chronicle the colors of our destiny as they fade to the shadows of our fate.

In the falling twilight of Empire, the Dark Wraith has spoken.

It seems President-elect Obama's transition team clashed with the head of NASA last week about how much the space agency can cut from its budget. According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel Obama's people want to cancel the Ares rocket and Orion capsule program, which would eventually return Americans to the moon and then, later, take our space travelers to Mars. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin wants nothing to do with axing the Ares/Orion work, and rumors are swirling that a meeting last week between Griffin and Obama's transition member for space-related matters, Lori Garver, got pretty ugly.

It is worth noting that Lori Garver used to be an Associate Administrator at NASA. Her stint at the space agency consisted for the most part of being nothing more than a "public affairs officer." She was not involved in engineering, planning, budgeting, or any other hands-on work there. Once she had done her time on Uncle Sam's tab, she started her own "consulting firm" called Capital Space LLC, which is rather hard to track down but seems to be involved in sucking up public funds for private entrepreneurial endeavors related to space transport. One of her consulting gigs involves DFI International, where her job is to "...assist DFI's senior management in strategic planning and business development activities related to the firm's corporate space practice."

Yes, Obama's Lori Garver is a corporate shill of the worst kind: she's a "consultant."

Read that: "lobbyist." Just like countless others, she parlayed a stint in public service to start a "consulting" business so she could rent her little Blackberry of access to government insiders; and given that she now makes her dime with paychecks from the private sector, she has every incentive to interfere with NASA's public space programs because she's a point person for private companies that want to take over what is going to be a hugely lucrative business for the rest of the 21st Century.

Space transport? There's going to be way too much money in that business to let the public sector do it.

Anyway, the folks at NASA really shouldn't be worried about its future manned space program getting canned. The way Barack Obama is promising to spend money like there's no tomorrow, federal budget deficits that are already staggering thanks to years of Bush Administration madness will now go so high that we can just strap astronauts on them and make it to Mars in no time. As Buzz Lightyear would say, "To infinity and BEYOND!"

Oh, yes, one more thing. Obama and his people want NASA Administrator Griffin out. This is the same Obama cabal that has no problem with the likes of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and FBI Director Robert Mueller staying in their positions. Robert Gates, whose unbelievably appalling history is a disgrace to this nation, and Robert Mueller, a man who has shredded any right to privacy Americans might once have enjoyed, get to stay; but the head of NASA has to go.

Yeah. Right. That makes sense.

No, really, it does. But only if you stop thinking Obama's presidency is something other than the Bush Administration with every bit of the arrogance, a whole lot of the corruption, a good dose of the viciousness, more than a hint of the short-sightedness, but not one shred of the incompetence.

The 21st Century, Epilogue, will now continue.

The sidebar feature "Quoth the Dark Wraith" here at The Dark Wraith Forums affords me the opportunity to feature brief commentary on current news events. One week ago, on December 3, 2008, the installment read as follows:

The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is discussing how he will choose former Illinois Senator Barack Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate. The Democratic governor might want to consider naming himself to fill the now-vacant seat, and that's because the mob-sponsored little incompetent has an approval rating of just 13 percent in Illinois. That's about half of President George W. Bush's rating, and Bush is about as popular as a chastity belt at a house of ill repute.

If Blagojevich appoints himself to complete Obama's term in the Senate, he could then leave Illinois and rightly declare that he did so of his own free will and not because of a mob chasing him out with pitchforks and torches. The only downside to this deal is that Washington would then be saddled with the likes of a useless, incompetent legislator. Then again, in Washington, who would notice?

On December 9, 2008, federal authorities arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on charges related to his alleged efforts to trade cash and favors for his appointment of the person to complete President-elect Barack Obama's current term in the U.S. Senate.

The federal prosecutor overseeing the investigation is none other than Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, perhaps best known as the special prosecutor appointed under Attorney General John Ashcroft (who recused himself in the matter) to investigate the circumstances surrounding the leak of the name of the CIA non-cover operative Valerie Plame because of her husband's outspoken criticism of some of the Bush Administration's lies to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That work by Fitzgerald led to one individual, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, being indicted and convicted on five counts. None of Fitzgerald's charges against Libby were related to the leak: the indictment was not the result of what Scooter did, but instead about him lying to Fitzgerald about what he did. Libby, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, did not serve his prison sentence; it was commuted by President George W. Bush.

U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald spent approximately one million dollars on the investigation. The concluding paragraphs of this article will revisit in a most unflattering way the matter of Patrick Fitzgerald; but the topic of the hour is Rod Blagojevich and the amazing crater he has just made of his career, and so it is to that grim but altogether fascinating spectacle that attention must first be turned.

Rumors abound about how Blagojevich's pay-to-play gambit was discovered by the feds. Although some of the Governor's more vociferous detractors simply declared in conversations (at least with me) that he was going to extract some benefit for the appointment of Obama's successor in the Senate, a relatively new theme centers around the role of President-elect Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, in ratting on the Governor. While this angle might be nothing more than spin from Obama operatives ensuring that no one hangs the corpse of Blagojevich around their guy's neck, it is certainly not outside the realm of possibility that Emanuel did, indeed, tip off the feds. Rahm is a hard-ball player in the old Chicago tradition. Blagojevich is swirly bait in the old high school tradition. The eventual conclusion of their relationship has an almost Kant-like categorical imperative of final suffering for the twerp end of the incipient Hegelian dialectic.

To go anywhere in Illinois politics, a certain greater or lesser degree of association with shady characters (the word "mobsters" is harsh and archaic) is absolutely necessary, and both Rahm Emanuel and his new boss must exercise the time-honored skill of keeping a perfectly straight face when talking about ethics and other such matters dear to gooey New Age airheads who pontificate about business and public life. That having been noted, political corruption is an art: get it wrong and go to jail; do it right and rise to your level of incompetence. Getting it wrong involves one or more of the following: sloppiness, stupidity, and/or playing a hand without permission of major components of the rest of the machine. Blagojevich made all three mistakes.

Men like Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama stick pretty well to the rules. The gang to which they belong is seasoned, refined, and long on the genius of combining group wisdom with gut reactions. Those traits were and remain important qualifications Obama and Emanuel share, and their king makers knew that about both of them from the young men's early days in public life. They are smart, savvy, and generally careful.

Their styles differ vastly, however. Emanuel actually cultivates his bad-boy image: lest anyone forget his more famous forays into the outrageous, like bellowing "DEAD!" while stabbing a steak knife into a table as he named fellow Democrats he didn't like, Rahm will not be shy in offering a reminder. Obama, on the other hand, does his dirty work through proxies, as when he kept personal distance from the "scandal" involving his opponent Jack Ryan, who was politically destroyed during the 2006 senatorial campaign by stories that his ex-wife had accused him in divorce papers of soliciting her to go into swingers' nightclubs where women were known to publicly give their male partners oral sex. (For those not up on celebrity vitae, Ryan's ex-wife is Jeri Ryan, most famous for her role as "7 of 9" in the science