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or it could well be that the far right in the house is willing to play chicken with the administration, with the rest of congress, with the economic situation and so forth in order to (a) bring mc-cain to heel and (b) use the crisis inside the crisis to introduce their whacked-out "cut capital gains taxes and reduce regulation" line as if it were a real plan. and this may be happening because the mc-cain campaign decided to engage in the theater of "suspending" the campaign (by moving it to congress)---so maybe this is the price being exacted for mc-cain's little coup de thêatre.
and this is the point where the neo-liberal counter-crisis begins.
confronting an ideological waterloo, the gringrich-inspired wing of the right sends in the True Believers.
their only tactical advantages are surprise and the fact that they have their positions written down. tv works to their advantage because it can give them the illusion of sang-froid.
the weakness of the banking committee/negociation process is, seemingly, that the agreements which were reached were in principle and that the language of the actual bill isn't down yet.
so what set this up, intentionally or not (hard to say) is the 2.5 page, clearly unacceptable proposal from the administration.
mc-cain now finds himself in a terribly awkward situation--to move in the palin direction would require that he embrace the far right's move.
to act "presidential" he cannot embrace their move.
what i suspect the idea is that mc-cain will not "act presidential" but rather that he will carry shit for the far right---you want to be a leader, john? this is what you are doing to do, these are the positions you are going to advocate for, this is how you are going to do it, now go "lead" like a good boy.
what seems clear is that the only weapon these clowns have is going all bartelby in the middle of this accelerating situation of accelerating acceleration (everyone says so, one way or another---and that seems what all this is at bottom)....which means that they must see the writing on the wall and have decided that they've nothing to loose.
so the crisis of neoliberalism is now at a new level of explicitness.
and it is obvious that in this crisis, ideology trumps everything else.
conservatives have little room to manoever, no flexibility---this is the downside of collapsing economic ideology into identity.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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