Now that we Democrats have once again been consigned to the fringes and the Republicans are digging up a corpse to attempt to stanch the stench from the former leading confessed Republicans, barring an asteroid striking the earth the race is pretty much between The Empire and Amway.

I don’t know if anyone else here enjoys the titillation of getting political news from Marketwatch (hey, when you get too old for even Viagra).  Might tell you something about the primary places I haunt but even ghosts have perversions.

One of the fossils on Marketwatch found a survey of market mavens that had Ron Paul leading the contest.  Considering that even the fossil found Ron Paul about as viable a candidate as Lyndon LaRouche, fossil took another tack for setting up the racing odds much like Josh Marshall is using market futures.  (I apologize in advance for the name-calling but I couldn’t recall the name nor find the opinion piece.)

To make the story short because I have only a vague recall and can’t produce more gas on the subject, fossil ranked the candidates by corporate money flow.  Anyone who can’t name the overwhelming favorite of the bankers and pharmas and insurance companies and other “moneyed interests” that seem quite safe from pitchforks in our plutocracy might consider a course in reading comprehension.

Now that The Empire has struck back most effectively, what chance is there for the Amway candidate.

Lots.

How can that be possible you say?

How did lionfood take out the Roman Empire and all their fascinating gods and goddesses might be a better question.

Ron Paul and Lyndon LaRouche and Pat Robertson and even Pat Buchanan are a bit too exotic for the time being.  They might as well be the Heaven’s Gate cult.  But the Amway cult feeds on the same stuff as capitalism. Greed cannot be denied in any but the most rigidly despotic socialist regimes.

My bet is on Amway. Maybe it is only because it comforts me in the darkness of the current state of affairs.

Your mileage may vary.

Best,  Terry

This is an Open Thread: Hiding in Spider Holes Not Allowed

Friday’s Headlines:Young Feminists Split: Does Gender Matter?: Kerry backs Obama to ‘turn new page’ in US politics: The rotten heart of Italy: See Naples and die (of the stench): Bush Outlines Mideast Peace Plan: Japan PM forces navy bill through

Public senses economy going south

Table talk among average Americans mirrors the anxiety reflected on the campaign trail and in Washington: times are getting tougher.

SEDALIA, COLO. — The numbers stopped adding up some time ago, and every month, Shane Covelli gets angrier.

He sells heavy equipment on commission, and construction firms aren’t buying. Covelli has sold his Corvette, stopped taking his wife out to dinner, pulled his son from the ski team. He has withdrawn nearly $50,000 from his retirement accounts and started taking extra work, laying carpet and pouring concrete evenings and weekends. Still, he owes more than he earns, and he can’t seem to fix it.

“It’ll take the country four or five years to dig out of this,” said Covelli, 44. “By then, I’ll be bankrupt.”

President Bush this week set aside months of sunny talk to warn that the nation’s economy faces challenges. “Many Americans are anxious,” he said.

USA

Young Feminists Split: Does Gender Matter?

Friday, January 11, 2008; Page A01

WELLESLEY, Mass. — The two students walked on the same paths across campus here this week, past the dormitory where Hillary Rodham lived for four years, past two dozen framed portraits of groundbreaking women in Alumnae Hall, past the banners on the quad proclaiming “Wellesley: Women Who Will.” But Katie Chanpong and Aubre Carreon Aguilar — feminists and political activists — arrived at contradictory conclusions.

“If you’re a woman, you vote for Hillary because of what it means to women everywhere,” said Chanpong, a sophomore.

Carreon Aguilar, a senior, said: “If I’m supposed to vote for Hillary just because I’m a woman, that’s kind of sexist.”

Kerry backs Obama to ‘turn new page’ in US politics

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

Published: 11 January 2008

John Kerry, the defeated Democratic candidate in the 2004 presidential election, has thrown his weight behind Barack Obama, offering his endorsement in the key state of South Carolina which holds its primary in just over a fortnight.

Mr Obama, “can be, will be and should be the next president of the United States” and would lead, “a transformation rather than a transition” in the White House, said Mr Kerry, in a swipe at Hillary Clinton.

“Who better than Barack Obama to turn a new page in American politics?” Mr Kerry asked, dismissing critics who have questioned the one-term senator’s experience. “We are electing judgement and character, not years on this earth,” he said, adding pointedly that Mr Obama was, “right about the war in Iraq from the beginning”.

Europe

Le Pen’s HQ up for sale as party declines

For sale: prestigious offices overlooking the river Seine. Previously the headquarters of famous and (once) successful, xenophobic, political party. Offers over €16m (£12m).

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, finally conceded yesterday that his debt-burdened party would have to sell its offices in the wealthy suburb of Saint-Cloud, west of Paris.

The building, known as le paquebot (the steamship), because of its vaguely nautical look, was a symbol of the upward mobility of the party when purchased in 1994. The distress sale is a sign of a radically changed political landscape in France and foreshadows the end of the “Jean-Marie” era.

The rotten heart of Italy: See Naples and die (of the stench)

Southern Italy’s most celebrated city is drowning in refuse, paralysed by corruption and almost bereft of hope. Peter Popham reports on a life-threatening crisis

Published: 11 January 2008

The city of Naples, Italy’s third biggest, the capital of the south, is caught in a trap of its own devising. And if you drive to the suburb of Pianura where police have been fighting with residents this week, you can get a good idea of the cruelty and fatality of this trap; and why there is a whiff of fear in the city’s air just now, mixed with the stench of putrid rubbish.

The fear is that the Naples disease, which has put its rubbish-clogged streets on the world’s news bulletins and newspapers day after day, is beyond cure. That for all the bold talk by politicians and by the new “rubbish tsar”, who took up his emergency powers yesterday, there really is no way out.

Nowhere in this city has escaped the crisis that has been building since 21 December, the date of the last regular rubbish collection. The collections ceased because there was no longer anywhere to put the stuff: the plant where they compact solid waste into bales had again reached capacity and could take no more.

Asia-Pacific

Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Everest, dies at 88

· Famed explorer honoured for work among Sherpas

· ‘A life of determination, humility and generosity’

Thair Shaikh

Friday January 11, 2008

The Guardian

Sir Edmund Hillary, the beekeeper from Auckland who conquered Mount Everest and went on to become one of the greatest adventurers of the 20th century, has died at the age of 88. Hillary, who reached the peak of Everest in 1953, days before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, only admitted being the first man to reach the top of the world’s highest mountain after the death of his climbing companion, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, in 1986.

Middle East

Blair optimism on Mid-East peace

Middle East Quartet envoy and former UK PM Tony Blair says he believes it is possible for a peace deal to be reached between the Israelis and Palestinians.

However, he sounded a note of caution about how early it might be achieved by warning that much remained to be done.

Mr Blair spoke after meeting US President George Bush in Jerusalem.

On Thursday, Mr Bush called on Israel to end occupation of some Palestinian territory to allow a peace deal to be agreed before he leaves office in 2009.

Bush Outlines Mideast Peace Plan

JERUSALEM – President Bush outlined Thursday in the clearest terms so far the shape of a two-state peace treaty he is hoping to broker between Israel and the Palestinians by the end of his term.

He called for redrawing borders and compensating Palestinians and their descendants for homes they left in what is now Israel.

Speaking after two days of meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Bush said, “I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.”

Afirca

Thousands flee Zambezi flooding

Some 45,000 people in Mozambique have been displaced by flooding along the Zambezi valley, authorities say.

They say between 150,000 and 200,000 people could be affected over the coming weeks if forecast rains fall in upper reaches of the valley.

January is usually the middle of the wet season for southern Africa but it is rarely as wet as this.

The Zambezi has already burst its banks in some areas forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

And the river is continuing to rise.

Economy, tourism hurt by Kenya chaos

SAMBURU, Kenya – Lounging by the hotel pool in one of Kenya’s storied nature reserves, Debbie Shillito sees one small advantage to the travel warnings issued after a presidential election here sparked violence.

“You get all the attention,” Shillito, a Canadian tourist, told The Associated Press in the Samburu National Reserve, where only 15 percent of the rooms at her upscale hotel were occupied this week, leaving the staff at her beck and call. Last year at this time, the start of the high season, the hotel was 80 percent full.

Kenya, one of the most prosperous and tourist-friendly countries in Africa, has seen up to $1 billion in losses linked to the bloody turmoil following President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election, officials said.

Asia

Japan PM forces navy bill through

The Japanese government has invoked a rarely-used power to force through a controversial naval bill.

The ruling party used its lower house majority to override opposition lawmakers, who had voted down the bill in the upper house hours earlier.

It was the first such move in more than 50 years, and followed months of deadlock over the proposed legislation.

The bill will allow Japanese ships to resume a refuelling mission supporting US-led operations in Afghanistan.

The deployment, which Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda says is vital to Japan’s standing in the international community, could now be resumed as early as next month.

Lone Star chief rejects South Korean fraud charges

SEOUL (AFP) – The chairman of Lone Star on Friday rejected allegations that colleagues of the US equity fund had conspired to manipulate a share price to acquire a South Korean credit card company on the cheap.

John Grayken took the witness stand to testify for Paul Yoo, head of Lone Star’s Seoul subsidiary, who was indicted a year ago.

“I think it’s completely untrue,” Grayken told the court.

Yoo denies charges of spreading false rumors in 2003 about a possible capital writedown of the credit card firm so that Korea Exchange Bank (KEB), controlled by Lone Star, could absorb the unit at a low price.

Latin America

3 killed in central Mexican shooting

MEXICO CITY – Gunmen shot dead two federal agents and a civilian Thursday in the central state of Michoacan, prosecutors said, the latest in a series of deadly shootings involving police and soldiers in Mexico.

The agents were traveling on a road in the Michoacan town of La Paloma when they were intercepted and shot, said Magdalena Guzman, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office.

A civilian whose has yet to be identified was also killed in the attack, Guzman said. She said the motive was still unknown.

The killings came after a bloody week in which federal police officers and soldiers clashed repeatedly with suspected drug traffickers in the border state of Tamaulipas.

Hot Prospect for Oil’s Big League

RIO DE JANEIRO – While some of the world’s largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America’s largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel.

The new oil, along with refining projects under way by Petrobras, the national oil company, could eventually make Brazil a larger exporter of gasoline as well, adding to supplies in the United States and other countries where it is all but impossible to build new refineries.