….but in Europe, the civil servants were the highest class, alongside professionals and academicians (other than royalty). Some places had a well developed bourgeoisie class, (France) but even with great wealth their social ranking and power were low…in part because so many Jews were part of them.

It’s nothing I haven’t said elsewhere, but before I leave here one of the things I’d like to leave RedState with is an organizational schematic as to how to effect events more than you already do, on the ground.

The enemy is very organized and funded well beyond the four corners of the Democrat Party, and the GOP, who could at least provide much of the political ammunition to defeat them, denies they even exist, or their mission.

It would be far more effective to be a full-fledged movement than a shadow-government, and a shadow-government rather than a shadow-party…it’s all about assets and mission, and RedState has the talent and knows the mission like the back of its hand. The rest is money.

Maybe someone out there will put the bug in RedState’s ear.

But for now, we have an election to win. Bernie’s very perceptive, and I agree, this election can turn everything around. Ten years from now they’ll look back to this moment as having changed it all…

Like you, it’s just very dispiriting and lonesome to know so much more could be done, could have been done, but to be simply sitting around the TV, in prayerful repose, watching things unfold.

I hate not having my hammer locked.

that Vassar is talking about in Europe; there is a rigid caste system. At the very top are the “rainmakers” from outside the government who have the money and power to put somebody in office. They’re a shadowy group, often not well known outside their very closed social and political circles and governments generally work for them; even the party they opposed usually won’t mess with them, won’t do anything for them usually but won’t do anything to them either. Then there are the elected officials. A governor or President may think he out ranks the Speaker of the House or President of the Senate but I assure you that they don’t think s/he does. Then there are all the majority members of the legislative branch followed by the minority members. Any elected officer outranks all appointees, but appointees are the next class in rank. There are two kinds of appointees: those with positions and those with jobs. The ones with positions are the Secretaries or Commissioners and such that got their job by having money and/or power and they’re usually subject to confirmation which makes them outrank the ones who actually have jobs. The foremost job of appointees who have jobs is to make appointees who have positions look good and to take the blame whenever a higher ranking appointee or an elected official looks bad. Appointees with jobs are more or less ranked by the power of the person they work for and who they have access to. The org chart may show you to be subordinate to some deputy assistant to the assistant deputy, but if you have the COS’ cell phone on your speed dial, you’re not really subordinate to that deputy assistant or anybody else in the chain below the COS. Anybody INSIDE government below the appointee rank exists only to fetch coffee and such and really isn’t worthy of consideration – which is what Bill Clinton was really saying about Obama in the now infamous conversation with Ted Kennedy.

People outside government who interact with government are subject to an equivalent ranking system based largely on how much money and power you can bring to bear on the government. Again, elected officials of interest groups rank highest and elected officials in government will almost treat them as equals. Paid staff and lobbyists for interest groups are next, though some lobbyists are in the rainmaker class, so you have to be careful to give them the deference they think they deserve. Constituent members of important interest groups out rank mere constituents and elected and appointed officals will at least make the attempt to be nice to them. Mere constituents are mostly just a bother so some kid on the member’s staff gets to deal with them.

And there you have the sociology of government in a nutshell.

…I’m sure Bernie will be pleased. He’ll be out amongst them today/tomorrow. I just hope he didn’t take his boots with the blade in the toe.

Vassar first started posting, the introductory post was written by Mr. Chumm. I mixed them up too, because Vassar did the introduction. The two have a “small think tank” and I believe Mr. Chumm is the west coast part. He is now on the ground in Boston, following this hopefully historic election.

the typical Boomer political bio you describe. First, he’s a second bubble Boomer, born in 1959, thus he’s a decade or more younger than the archetypal boomer born in the late-40s. His family is well off and radically Jewish; his father was in the Irgun and the family remains active in Jewish and Israeli affairs. If you read between the lines, he’s probably almost a “Red Diaper” baby. There was a heavy communist/socialist presence in the early radical groups that more or less bombed Israel into existence and Rahm’s biography reads pretty much like the archetypal American socialist. It is clear he got both his socialism and his thuggery the old-fashioned way: it was in the air he breathed and the water he drank at home.

Having been one of those high SAT Boomers of the Clintons’ age, you describe only some of us. Yours is a pretty good description of those who went from college straight to government, the “cause” non-profits, unions, academia, entertainment, journalism, etc. In those fields you could make a good living and still keep the same ideas you had while smoking dope in a college dorm room in the ’60s. The rest of us very quickly got mugged by the reality trying to make a living and a home and family in the wild economics of the ’70s and early-’80s, which very quickly dispossesed us of any faith in what our professors had taught us about economics and politics.

Rothenberg just joined Cook in moving race to lean takeover

While special elections often come down to turnout – and they therefore are more difficult to predict than normal elections – the combination of public and private survey research and anecdotal information now strongly suggests that Republican Scott Brown will defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in tomorrow’s race to fill the remainder of the late-Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat.

Brown is running extremely well with Independents in the Bay State, and unless Democratic turnout exceeds everyone’s expectations, Brown is headed for a comfortable win. Move from Toss-Up to Lean Takeover.

Go Brown GO!

Stuff like this makes me work too hard to figure out who I’m talking to.