Trickle Down

Hugo Chavez, in response to The Reverend and Holy Pat Robertsons' death threat, offers to sell poor American communities gasoline at half price. (by eliminating the "tax" of capitalist speculators profits) Also willing to throw in cheap training of doctors. I love this guy and will be moving there as soon as I can talk my wife into it.

In classic Republican fashion Robertson attempts to spin it, at first denying he said assasinate (unfortunately he said it on tape) then apoligizing, saying he had done more than the usual amount of crack that day.

Michael Kazin says it well:" ...the arrogance and brutality of empire are not repealed when they temporarily get deployed in a just cause." Good piece on Hitchens the Romantic "whose passion outruns his reason" in Dissent. Another good piece in the same issue on the Howe/ Ellison exchange, all those years ago on the responsibility (if any )of the artist. Coincidently, PBS did a biography of Ellison last night that was a fascinating trip back in time for this old hippie. They are doing a series on the sixties soon, Where are Owsley and the Pranksters when we need them?