I am reading a letter from Hunter Gray. Forty-five years ago, he was known as Professor John R. Salter, Jr.

"About 7 years ago," Hunter wrote, "the right side of my face began to hurt significantly and intermittently, swell slightly, then recede. Then in May of 2003, during the marathon speaking trip my wife and I took, I suddenly felt something very strange 'way up in the upper right inside of my mouth.

"We stopped hurriedly at an Interstate rest stop, and I looked at my open mouth in the bathroom mirror. Something was protruding from the roof of my mouth. I fished it out. It was a large, thin, molded piece of bone-gray plastic, incised with blood-vessel and bone indentations. It was very old, crumbled when I broke it.

"I knew just what it was. Since then, more pieces have come. The pain and the swelling are gone. Something is now healed; something else is no longer needed. Memories remain, cut into the inside of my skull.

On Labor Day weekend in the Sierras at the Strawberry Music Festival, a lovely young Canadian named Samantha Robichaud took the stage.  She played one delightfully modernized traditional fiddle tune after another, swiftly, deftly, introducing each piece with a little story.  She showed a killer left hand pizzicato; she played brilliantly with her excellent band, she danced in her high heeled boots and radiated vivacity and charm.  And then she said "How many of you know who Daniel Pearl is? Well, for those of you who don't know, he was a journalist who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan, in 2002. He was an amazing journalist and a great musician. Where ever he traveled, he wanted to make friends, using music to bridge cultural differences.  I was honored with the Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin for a year, so that I could be inspired to tell you Daniel's story. I wrote a song in his memory, and I hope you enjoy it.... it's called `Always Remembered.’

The collision of gory memory and lilting music shocked me.

News flash.

A progressive is not going to win the 2008 election.

A Democrat might.

We – kossacks, progressives, netroots - are not going to determine who wins the election.

We are not going to gain access to power from this election.

But we need to build toward the day when we will by winning in 2008.

What kind of a campaign will it take to win?

On June 29, 2006 by a vote of 232-187The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4761, the
Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act (DOER Act).

On August 1, 2006 by a vote of 71-25 the U.S. Senate passed the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (S. 3711).

Congress recessed without a conference on these two very different bills.

Now, according to Congressional Quarterly, Senator Harry Reid has said that S. 3711 is one of a list of bills that he hopes to help Sen. Frist pass during the lame duck session coming up - starting Monday, Nov. 13.

I wrote this poem a few years ago for a friend of mine who lived it.

Three Cheers for The Nation's William Greider, whose October 30, 2006 article Pelosi's Moment, ruminates cogently on some compelling and intriguing futures.  Herein one of my favorite Congressmembers, George Miller, D-CA 07, says of the House "This most democratic institution now looks more like a bad Third World country where if you win an election, you get to shoot your opponents."

But the one thought that snagged me like barbed wire was Nancy Pelosi's answer to the question "what is most important about regaining majority status."

"Subpoena power," Pelosi said.

If the Democratic party takes back Congress in November, it will face a president who will forum-shift to get his will, from Congress to the Supreme Court; who will get his will also via executive orders, as he has done before; and who may very well use the all war all the time power Congress gave him to bomb and nuke around the world.  He'll also veto all legislation presented by a Democratic Congress.

Expect the GOP October surprises to include indictments of Democratic candidates for the House, between Halloween and election day.  

Colorofchange.org has sent me notice of a forthcoming film, "American Blackout," which documents GOP intimidation and suppression of the black vote in 2000 and 2004.  Have no doubt that the same tricks are slated for this year's elections.  The only way to fight it is  by informing the general public - that means alerting us and our friends so the straight media can pick it up. .  .see the trailer here. PR info below the fold. .

At Newshounds Judy reports that Chris Wallace is hotblooded about this.

Robert Reich's August 22 column "Dems:  Yield Not to Temptation" proposes that after recovering the House and handing the Speaker's gavel to Nancy Pelosi, Democrats should abjure the temptation to hold 2 years' worth of hearings on the abuses of the GOP House and the Administration.  Instead, Democrats should begin yesterday to promulgate programs that will achieve our vision, in labor, energy, environment, civil rights, human rights, restoration of the constitution, ending the war, restoring our dreams, etc.  And, of course, ending the war.

In today's Washington Post David Broder writes that popular support of the GOP from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin has "nosedived."  

During the summer of 2004 I did extensive research on voter suppression and voter intimidation.  One of the things I learned was that The January 2004 Washington Monthly carried a piece about the Karl Rove plan for 2004.  This included voter suppression, voter intimidation, and the GOP fielding of 30,000 lawyers to various polling places to back up their charges of fraudulent voting.  

John Bolton got one thing right.  He's quoted in today's San Francisco Chronicle as saying "I think the real root cause [for the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict] is the absence of a fundamental basis for peace in the region."

We here in my house would like to get corporate money out of politics.  We figure that in terms of votes, corporations are not persons, Buckley v. Valeo notwithstanding.  We figure that if corporations were persons, each corporation would get one vote, just like each individual voter.  

Previous installments of this soporific are The Marketocracy, Part One, The Marketocracy, Part Two - GATS Is Coming To Get You,, and
Marketocracy, Part Three - NAFTA Is Coming To Get You.

This is the third diary in a series on The Marketocracy.  You can read The Marketocracy, Part One and The Marketocracy, Part Two - GATS is Coming to Get You if you choose.

While sovereignty as Westphalian states have known it is doomed, happily for nations, there appears to be agreement between nations and corporate managers about some uses of national sovereignty.  Both camps seem to concur that nation-building is a role of the state.