days - each. one-at-a-time. Congressional election results notwithstanding, Dare the US continue to leave the Bagman with this cabal for the next ~750 whole days ??

Stalin came >thisclose< to losing Round One of Operation Barbarossa so near-decisively as to likely lose All (saved only by - The Weather, in the end. A German patrol within 20 km of Moscow, just before Ice reversed the trend.) This for his having purged his military staff of the insufficiently adoring, who happened also to be the most experienced.

Similarly, had JFK gone with Kissinger Curtiss Le May and forthwith bombed/ started-to-bomb the launchers in 'Cuber': we did not know then, that the warheads were already in place and many of those launchers were operational. And would have launched. Followed stimulus/response by SAC. Had Khruschev been an ignoramus like Shrub; had JFK been as insouciant/suggestible as Shrub (as US propaganda always went re Khrushchev) but he wasn't: so no WW-TheLast. >thatclose< again.

Shrub has been 'purging brains' on all levels - wherever one is seen to erupt. Is that a connection?

Perhaps (back when there was a Republic here) we invested Too-much Life/Death ultimate autonomy in the Executive Powers, the FFs never having anticipated how easily can that department become hopped-up on Hubris/Power-drugs.

Now, of course - with an error-free pathologically stubborn Ox, next still free to stew solipsistically over *his* unLovedness: for almost 750 days, well - -

I have no Idea if there are any Burt Lancasters capable of launching 'betting pools on the Preakness' and acting? OR, as you suggest: equally capable of mowing down mobs-with-pitchforks.

Techno has given the means for near-instant Earthwide annihilation to a handful of sometimes-quite-Abnormal bipeds. We haven't worked out ultimate nuke-containment in the 61 years/3 mos since Alamogordo. We'd better hope for a Burt Lancaster \ufffd l\ufffd Seven Days in May ... if there is no next serendipitous accident? that does that omitted hard work for lazy-US, and everyone else alive.



No candle lit for this one.