It's fucking 2008 people!

Cowards.

Pop culture ephemera

While I was so studiously not blogging, I was also engaged in soaking up all manner of popular culture. A sample of the sights and sounds of the casa de wobs:

• ms. wobs and I recently finished watching Band of Brothers. I am, admittedly, a sucker for a well-made WWII flick and had been keen on watching this series for years now, and I'm happy to say I wasn't disappointed. It's a well-crafted epic, both narratively and visually. More importantly, there's a fine line between telling the truly incredible stories of those who were there and myth-making, and I think the series tacks towards the former the vast majority of the time. The filmmakers also manage to keep the film apolitical (save the obvious narratives about the justness of WWII and a general "war really is hell" sentiment) while not flinching from the political and moral ambiguities that were inherent in the conflict.
  
  A special shout-out to goes to Donnie Wahlberg as Sgt. Lipton. When you see a former New Kid on the Block in the cast, you tend to be a little dubious, but Wahlberg plays Lipton with an understated dignity that's perfect for the role, even if he's less than convincing as a West Virginian.
  
  The only serious misstep in the series was casting David Schwimmer in a small but important role. It's really hard to get into the episode when all you can think is, "You're such a fucking douchebag, Ross!" Aside from Schwimmer and the obligatory awkwardly paced exposition of the first episode and the less-than-satisfying (emotionally, at least) denoument of the last, Band of Brothers is breathtaking to watch, especially the emotional heart of the series centered around episodes based on the Battle of the Bulge. It really is some extraordinary visual storytelling.


• We also managed to watch Thank You for Smoking and Idiocracy. They're both funny - I wouldn't necessarily watch them over and over, but they're definitely worth a spot in your Netflix queue. They're both over-the-top in their moralizing (though Mike Judge uses the outlandishness to far better effect, especially in a meta sense) but have plenty of gags to make them more palatable. I'll especially recommend Idiocracy for the visual gags that are Judge's vision of a distant future ruled by morons. The "House of Representin'" alone is worth the rental price. Or check it out free from your public library.


• I thought I was done with REM. The only new album I've bought since Automatic for the People was Up, and only really for the first six songs. So when I heard some good things about Accelerate, I at least paid attention. Then I read that someone heard a track on a college radio station, and that pushed me over the edge. It's good! Peter Buck rediscovered his distortion pedal, Mike Mills rediscovered those sweet counter-melodies backing up Michael Stipe, and the whole band rediscovered the whole jangly* rock thing that made us love them back in the 80s. There's a few tracks on there that sound like they could've been outtakes from Life's Rich Pageant or Green. The music itself is enough to put a nostalgic smile on your face, but the sly self-referential lyrics definitely seal the deal. This new album makes an old fan happy.
  
  * A little known section of law stipulates that media discussing REM with more than 50 words must use some variation of "jangle" within their work. It's true. Look it up.


• The best dKos diary I've read in a long, long time.

Putting the war room to shame

You haven't read spin until you've read this.

Endgame

I don't begrudge HRC wanting to fight out the last few primaries. Hell, she's made it this far. In fact, I can even mentally envision certain circumstances in which it could be a positive, party-building campaign invigorated by big ideas rather than policy nit-picking. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen.

And perhaps more tragically, I don't think the seeming desperation of the HRC campaign will necessarily damage the Democratic Party so much as it will be the ignominious tailspin of someone who should return to the Senate and - freed from the constraints of presidential ambition - lead the legislative charge to enact at least some progressive policy reforms. She deserves a better legacy than what this campaign will bequeath her.

At any rate, to my friends back home, enjoy your turn as the last stand.

So that whole election thingy might not be necessary after all

So, uh... good luck with that...

Senator John McCain said Monday that he needed to convince the American people that the troop escalation in Iraq was working and that American casualties there would continue to decline. If he did not, he said, “I lose” the election.

“Is there any doubt?” Mr. McCain said to reporters on his campaign bus.

Absolutely none.

Daydream Nation*

I feel that I've come by my cynicism about politicians legitimately. Not politics, per se, but politicians. And so it's with some measure of shame that I must admit that I'm starting to buy into some of the "hope" and "change" that are being thrown around.

To be clear, that hope and change isn't necessarily emanating entirely from the top of the ticket. You don't get to the position of "Democratic Front-runner" by espousing the kinds of politics and policies that have my imprimatur. Rather, it's the level of organizing that's occurring downstream of this candidacy that rekindles my optimism. There's a palpable - yes, palpable - sense of this being a perfect storm: a charismatic leader teamed with a political movement that might just now be coming of age. Behind that lies a fervent organizing network - wholly independent of the campaign in many instances - that will only grow as the nomination becomes more certain (if that is what actually happens). The more I think about it, the more impressed I become.

There are obvious questions that arise. What happens to this sense of empowerment on Jan 20, 2009? How many stay engaged? But I'm even hopeful about that, in the long run.

On top of it all, I sometimes just stop and reflect on the fact that a black man is slowly solidifying his claim on front-runner status to be POTUS. And honestly, that is nothing short of amazing.

We are indeed cursed to be living in interesting times, and I must say - it's pretty fucking exciting.

* For those of you who were attracted by the title, here's your reward for bearing with me:

I believe the term you're looking for is 'blowback'

Pity poor David Horowitz as he attempts to stuff the escaped "Soros ♥ McCain" genies back into his Pandora's Box:

The Internet and cable TV have been rife with allegations that George Soros funds John McCain. One of the sources for this claim is a book I co-authored last year called The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. What we reported was that Soros made a contribution to McCain's political organization when McCain was devising the McCain-Feingold bill. If you oppose that bill as I did and do, that's the end of the story.

Ah yes, the end of a story that started in 2004 like this:

By pushing McCain-Feingold through Congress, Soros cut off the Democrats’ soft-money supply. By forming the Shadow Party, Soros offered the Democrats an alternate money spigot – one which he personally controlled. As a result the Democrats are heavily – perhaps even irretrievably – dependent on Soros. It seems reasonable to consider the possibility that McCain-Feingold, from its very inception, was a Soros power play to gain control of the Democratic Party.

People who take Soros money are co-opted liberal drones. Got it. In 2005, David Horowitz's Shadow Party co-author chimed in with some alarming news:

Founded on June 26, 2001, McCain's Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues has long served as a nerve center for the so-called "campaign finance reform" movement – a movement which has done nothing to clean up campaign finance, but has done a great deal to empower federal judges and government bureaucrats to regulate political speech, in defiance of the Bill of Rights.

Now here's the kicker. The list of donors published on the Reform Institute's Web site reads like a veritable Who's Who of radical, leftwing foundations, including the Tides Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Proteus Fund and George Soros' Open Society Institute (hat tip, Winfield Myers).

Not surprisingly, in view of the above associations, Arianna Huffington serves on the Reform Institute's Advisory Board. Huffington has long acted as a front for George Soros' "campaign finance reform" efforts. In 2000, she organized the so-called Shadow Conventions which provided John McCain with a bully pulpit to stump for his now-infamous McCain-Feingold Act. George Soros shouldered about one third of the cost of the Shadow Conventions.

What's this? Some liberal people with some communist puppet-master's money are somehow in cahoots with John McCain? You don't think John McCain could... nah!

As Sen. John McCain assumes the GOP front-runner mantle, his long-standing, but little-noticed association with donors such as George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry is receiving new attention among his Republican critics.

In 2001, McCain founded the Alexandria, Va.-based Reform Institute as a vehicle to receive funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and Teresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation and several other prominent non-profit organizations.

McCain used the institute to promote his political agenda and provide compensation to key campaign operatives between elections.

OMFG! McCain is totally pwned by Soros! Yikes, DHo! All that shit-stirring about Soros came to bite McCain in the ass when it came to convincing some of your nuttier comrades (OMFG, there's people nuttier than Horowitz!). How are you going to walk that one back into the barn?

Soros is an anti-American radical, who thinks George Bush is responsible for the war on terror and that Israel is the aggressor and genocidal armies like Hamas the victims.

In case that wasn't clear enough, Horowitz is saying that Soros is a Nazi.

On these critical issues of our time, John McCain has absolutely nothing in common with George Soros

John McCain is decidedly not a Nazi.

For Soros "American supremacy" is the greatest threat for world peace. For McCain, American military supremacy is the greatest guarantor of world peace. That's quite a difference.

McCain is, in fact, the anti-Nazi who will smite all the brown-skinned Nazis in the Middle East - or wherever they might reside. And McCain is such a savvy anti-Nazi, he's actually taking Soros' Nazi money and then using it to kick his ass. And that's pretty sweet.

I dunno. Given DHos red-diaper background, we have every reason to suspect his endorsement of McCain:

Presently, I am engaged in a nationwide campaign to get the Republican Party to champion the cause of poor people and minorities.

That spells RINO to me.

A patriot is reborn and other election day tales

I weathered a ten-block round-trip stroll down an icy sidewalk to my precinct polling station in order to perform my patriotic duty this evening. It was a mite bit less patriotic than the last time I voted at a polling station back in 1998, taking the last bus out of Eugene to Leaburg, voting at the community center, and trudging five star-spangled miles upriver through the thick fall rain to my house in Vida, but light-years more patriotic than the government-forced election regime I had to suffer through for the next four cycles - a thrall to the un-American, and quite frankly, vaguely Communist, Oregon Vote by Mail system. In an Ecstasy-and-red-wine fuzzed post-coital embrace, ms. wobs and I would cackle seditiously, invoke various Pagan deities, and conspire to mark our ballots in such a manner as to most righteously smash freedom. A veritable "Poke and Vote" it was. Medical marijuana? Why only medical? Tax cut? Why not? Physician-assisted suicide? Don't give up yet, we're legalizing weed!

I don't do that anymore. Nope, tonight I was an upstanding citizen treading the red, white, and blue path to liberty with my fellow citizens, and it felt good - far better than those libertine voodoo incantations to elect Ralph Nader.

Bonus election day tale: In 1996, a friend of mine and I spent the better part of the late afternoon getting drunk on a half-rack of Rainier pounders, financed mostly through the return of 144 beer bottles (the maximum that the Safeway would take - we had plenty more). In the early evening we went through the rain to our polling place, where we tramped in wearing dripping wet rain suits and smelling of cheap beer. We weren't obnoxious, but we were having fun, and we started chatting up the amused people in line behind us. Someone sternly commented that we might have been enjoying ourselves too much, given the task at hand. My friend good-naturedly shot back, "And my vote counts just as much as yours!"

Bonus bonus!: Hey look! Results!

The many moods of Pam

Pamela Geller manages to range the entire "rage spectrum," from being charmingly delusional:

Dr. Nancy (my sister) suggests we do a Humphrey:

LET'S PULL A HUMPHREY

In 1968 President Johnson had eventually decided not to run because of the Vietnam quagmire and the prominent figures in the primary were Eugene McCarthy who won some states and amassed delegates and the dynamic senator from New York Robert F. Kennedy who it was said had a good chance of winning the nomination if he could add California to his wins and have that momentum at his back. This he did, but moments later was shot to death. Vice President Humphrey wound up entering and winning the nomination despite not having participated in the primaries or amassing delegates because he had the support of the incumbent president Johnson and party insiders. Let's do it too. Tell Cheney to jump in, W should support him and we just need party insiders I guess. Or can we never pull what the Dems do a la Lautenberg?

to out-and-out genocidal:

Islamic practices must be utterly shunned, denounced and eradicated from our societies. No taquiya, no sharia, no Islam in the houses of government[.]

And she can hit all the points in between.

The five stages of half-hearted, hackneyed political prose

So, you're an operative looking for a chit to gain access to the next imperial court, but you're tepid, at best, on your prospective choice. Why not pen a half-hearted plea to "unite the base" in the WaPo? Here, in a nutshell, are the five stages of coming to grips with having to endorse John McCain in an editorial:

Denial: "Endorse John McCain in the WaPo? Sure, that shouldn't be a problem."
Anger: "How many words do they want? I can't get past fucking 'He's not Hillary!'"
Bargaining: "Can't I just get my Aunt Helen and Uncle Leonard in Evansville on board and ditch the whole writing thing?"
Despair: "One hour until deadline?!? My consulting firm is fucked!"
Acceptance: "Here's what I got - a shitty adaptation of five stages of how to deal with shit that really sucks. God I fucking hate John McCain!"

But will they listen? Oh noes!:

On the Republican side, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee delivered a humiliating defeat to Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in the Kansas Republican presidential caucuses, and this evening he was leading McCain in the Louisiana contest and running neck and neck with him in Washington state.

Surly

Have I mentioned how big a douchebag I think Mitt Romney is, and how glad I am that he got completely thrashed?

So many more questions

Well, Obama has garnered the crucial Grateful Dead endorsement (hat tip). That might be enough for some hemp-clad dreadie who just put down the bong, but not for me. Nosiree.

Bassist Phil Lesh, 67, said he met Obama, who told him he has some Grateful Dead songs on his iPod music player, last year.

Which songs, Senator? Some cuts from American Beauty or the Scarlet>Fire from Cornell '77?

Donna: Yay or Nay?

Pigpen, Keith, or Brent?

And most importantly, Bobby or Jerry?

Don't think that you can duck the hard questions, say that you've got some Dead tunes on your iPod, and think you can win my vote... which I'll get around to casting when I come down.

John McCain: A Portrait

Given John McCain's re-emergence as a front-runner, I decided to actually look at the campaign mail sent in his name and at his website to determine what kind of man he is. It's kind of like looking into his eye and thinking to one's self, "this is a _____ man."

And if there's one thing he is - it's a man. A manly man, one of vigor. Dare I say it, a frosty man.

And I can divine this with one line from one campaign e-mail:

John McCain's momentum is now unstoppable. [emphasis added to make it extra badass]

I can only hear that line being delivered by a professional wrestler:

He's also got some great push-polling. I love this little gimmick at the bottom-left corner of his web landing page:

Right here is the reason why some people can look you in the face and tell you that certain facts are merely "your opinion." It's pretty brilliant. Being that I was interested in how much the the Democrat's tax resolution would raise the American tax bill, I decided to put the question to someone I trust - John McCain:

John McCain will make the Bush income and investment tax cuts permanent, keeping income tax rates at their current level and fighting the Democrats' plans for a crippling tax increase in 2011. Left to their devices, Democrats will impose a massive $100 billion tax hike, almost $700 per taxpayer every year.

I go back to the poll.

Huh. $100 billion's not even an option for an opinion.

Jackass.

But of course, your average spender may not have the time nor the inclination to actually find out what John McCain might have to say about the issue. You too want to know how much the Democrat's tax bill is going to be, and you figure the answer must be in the poll options. Being the smart, politically savvy conservative that you are, you use your powers of deduction to eliminate the obvious non-answers and figure out the correct option from what remains, just like they taught you in those damn SAT tutorials.

So let's do this. $0? BWAHAHA! Even the Democrat Party doesn't believe you can get something for nothing! Very droll!

$500 million? Chump change to Democrats. They'll spend that on teenage abortions alone *mild chuckle*.

$200 billion? That sounds more like the Democrat Party I know *knowing chortle*.

$500 billion!?! Not even the Democrats could be that crazy! But with a San Francisco tax-and-spender as the Speaker and a parochial influence peddler leading the Senate majority waiting to be steamrolled by... dear god, a big-city minority president, those tax bills could get crazy out of control! The only question is, would they stop at $500 billion *outrage*!

By golly, we need a Republican to keep those rascally Democrats under control! $200-500 billion tax bills! If Ronald Reagan knew, he'd be spinning in his grave!

This presidential contender is my kind of scum.

Iko Iko

To be sure, I had a fun time in New Orleans. Friday evening led to jazz on Bourbon Street (although the beer price there made DC prices look reasonable), and on Saturday I got to catch one of the Mardi Gras parades that will be snaking through the Quarter over the next few weeks - I got to watch it from a balcony, which was neat.

But all the fun in the Quarter was jarringly incongruous with everything else I saw and learned about the city during that time. To be blunt, I think that the post-Katrina recovery of New Orleans is the most important (and least talked about) political issue facing the United States. Within the recovery effort are distilled - in their entirety - the problems facing the nation. The privatization of public infrastructure (including - and most germane to my own work - the privatization of public education). Our relationship with the environment (coastal restoration, climate change). Racism. Poverty. Our capacity to deal with disaster and the inevitable dislocations that follow. The erosion of democratic institutions and accountability. All of these conundrums are being stared down, simultaneously and in fast-forward, in the NOLA recovery efforts. I wish I could say that this reckoning was leading towards a positive resolution, but right now, it's an uphill battle.

I wonder what the culture of New Orleans will look like in 20 years - will the vibrancy of the jazz scene, nurtured in the poor neighborhoods, remain so vital? What happens when a city's cultural flower is cut off from its roots, when the people who are vital to cultural reproduction have been displaced, the vast majority of them with no means to return - or indeed, nothing to which to return? Bourbon Street has always seemed a caricature of the culture of the rest of the city, with its neon lights, hawkers trying to cajole you into the nearest strip club, throngs of college kids stumbling down the streets with their slushee cocktails. Bourbon Street will always be there, a kind of adult Disneyland. But what about the little clubs in the quieter sections of the Quarter, or in the rest of the city, for that matter? Will the city be able to sustain the talent necessary to keep these out of the way havens viable?

The post-Katrina recovery has been notably absent from our election year discourse. To my knowledge, John Edwards has been the only candidate to make an issue of New Orleans' revival, but the impact of that effort has been negligible. But it needs to be talked about. The issues faced by New Orleans are our issues, waiting for a storm, literal or otherwise, to force them to the surface. How the Crescent City deals with these issues will serve as a template, for good of for ill (and right now, for the ill), on how we grapple with these issues on a national scale. It deserves to be at the forefront of our own thoughts and of our political discussions.

Dip me in cowshit and roll me around in grass blades

Huh.

So, what's our takeaway from two completely non-representative state electoral contests? On the D side, both Obama and Clinton can run formidable campaigns, and most pundits (including yours truly, although I don't think I exactly qualify as a pundit, per se - just as a know-nothing loudmouth) are full of shit. I have no idea where this heads down the road, and the time lag between now and the next few contests (and the big February 5 electoral burrito supreme) makes a magic 8-ball more reliable than any prognosticator. I do think it's a two person race now - Edwards will stay in (and I hope he stays in through February 5, just to keep the social democracy rhetoric in play), but he's got no chance and will be under pressure to bow out.

On the R side, Mittens' star is fading fast. After getting walloped after dumping buckets of money into Iowa, and then getting creamed in a state where he practically lived (oh, and winning Wyoming... whatever the hell that means...), he's going to have the sickly gangrene stench of loserdom following him from here on out. I don't necessarily think it bodes well for McCain, I think outside of its theocon wing, the GOP is terrified of Huckabee, and Giuliani hasn't begun to seriously invoke 9/11 to win yet. Who the fuck knows?

Me? I'll be taking advantage of this apparent lapse in the orderly succession of leadership to smuggle massive amounts of hallucinogens to 7th grade midwesterners. Or drink more booze, as has been the case this evening.

Proof of GOP cyborgism

My favorite part of the GOP debate was the laughably horrible discussion of health care reform when Mittens premised a response with, "Let's say there's a person who makes $100K, and goes to the hospital and needs $1000 in, um, repairs."

We're all a bunch of rich androids, Mitt. Yes we are.

All bets are off

After watching the Democratic debate tonight, I hereby rescind any predictions I made about how things are going to shake out. Edwards isn't done by any stretch of the imagination, although I am somewhat skeptical about how his gambit trying to shift the frame from a Clinton v. not-Clinton to a "which version of change do you want" will work. Hillary will be hammered tomorrow for aggressively defending her record - unfairly, I think, because she's a woman. It'll be characterized as "bitchiness." We'd be fools to discount her public service record (which on many issues is very good, on others, not so). Hillary has a lot working against her right now, and I don't know that tonight did her any favors in the face of those obstacles. The debate didn't change my mind about my preferences (Edwards said what I wanted to hear), but it certainly muddied the waters as to how I think the average voter is going to respond.

On the other side, I think Romney sealed his fate in New Hampshire tonight. He looked like the flamingest asshole on a stage filled with flaming assholes, a congenial theocrat, and a crazy man. It's all downhill for Mittens from here on out.

What now?

First things first: my political prognostications aren't worth shit. Now what do we draw from this completely unrepresentative, first-in-the-nation presidential wine-tasting?

On the D side: Iowa was a must-win for Edwards. I don't think there's any way for him to rebound. From what I understand, his field operation in NH is a shadow of what he invested in Iowa, and he's already far enough behind Obama and Clinton in NH that I don't think he'll be able to staunch the bleeding. Obama probably rides the big mo to a win in NH. But beyond that? Clearly, Edwards message resonates, and it's going to be interesting how his supporters shake out and who tries to make a play for them. Like Dave and a lot of others, I find Obama's "unity" message to be a little disconcerting, especially when accompanied by his recent policy sniping from the right. Likewise, I'm not enamored with Hillary and the whole idea of Clinton II. I'd gladly take either over anyone the Rs would have to offer up, though. Obama's clearly the "change" candidate, but his vision of change seems out-of-sync with the times.

Color me flummoxed as to how my own vote shakes out, but for now I'll say that Obama is my second choice after Edwards. After NH, we've got ourselves a Battle Royale on our hands.

On the R side: One thing I'm sure of: you can stick a fork in Mitt. He got shellacked by an underfunded, Bible-bangin' hillbilly, and now the GOP money guys are going to abandon him in droves. I had figured that McCain would get a third place nod that would give him some momentum going into NH to nip Romney there. But Grandpa Fred in third?

So NH looks like a mess to me on on the R side. McCain is ahead in the polls, but will be competing with Obama for independent voters in an open primary, and Obama clearly has more going on for him. Huckabee has been hanging around 10% in the polls and might get a little bounce, but doesn't have the fundamentalist core he needs so desperately. Mitt is going to hemorrhage supporters, but the question becomes how many. I think enough of Mitt's support goes to McCain to put him over the top in NH. Mitt might go on for awhile after that, but will diminish in significance. And South Carolina will be a hideously nasty affair as the GOP big boys try to stamp out Huckabee like they did McCain in 2000 (oh sweet irony). We'll be hearing whispers about Huckabee fucking goats any day now.

And somewhere out there, we have Rudy 9/11 waiting to use his "big state" strategy. I think Rudy fails miserably in this - his support is already cratering given his, erm... out and out douchebagginess, and being out of the media narrative for the first few states while others build momentum will only seal the deal.

But really, what the fuck do I know? Onward to New Hampshire!

May as well

Since it's "game on" starting tomorrow, I may as well issue the coveted medulla noodle presidential endorsement, unsurprising as it may be for most of you. On February 12, should he still be in the running, I'll be pulling the lever (voting in an actual polling place! How quaint! God I miss vote-by-mail!) for John Edwards. I'll summarize my reasoning by simply stating, "What Amanda sez." She pretty much nails my thinking on the matter.

My heart-of-hearts wants to vote for the short vegan from Cleveland, but pragmatism dictates I go with the person closest to my values with the best chance of getting the nod.

Please note: Endorsement may be void after February 5, and as soon as January 8. Endorsement only valid in participating locations.

Score one for Hillary

The late-night talkies are once again heating up as an electoral battleground, especially amid the charged environment of the writers' strike. And while one douchebag professed support for the strikers and then immediately turned around to cross their picket line, Hillary pulled off an absolutely fucking brilliant tactical coup:

David Letterman officially made his return to late-night television just after 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon, when he opened the taping of Wednesday night’s show by passing through a chorus line of long-legged showgirls clad in white tie and bearing placards that read, “Writers Guild of America on Strike.”

After the taping was concluded, the show’s producers inserted a one-line joke to precede the host’s entrance — delivered not by Mr. Letterman but by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, via satellite from Iowa, on the eve of the state’s presidential caucuses.

“Dave has been off the air for eight long weeks due to the writers’ strike,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Tonight he’s back. Oh well. All good things come to an end.”

A modest one liner to lead off the return of Dave, head of the only production company decent enough to negotiate and settle with his writers, and maybe more importantly, the only late-night gabber returning to the airwaves with the benefit of his formidable writing staff (Leno already isn't funny, and I can't imagine how unfunny he'd be without his writers). The hour looks to be a pretty blistering scornfest for the AMPTP, as Letterman has always been very pro-writer (he's a WGA member himself). Hopefully, his late-night megaphone can help re-build momentum that seems to have been lagging of late for the WGA to win a settlement.

And back to Hillary - well played ma'am. A low-key quip at the top of the anticipated return of one of currently only two union talk shows (the other being the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, also produced by Letterman's production company) is an astonishingly clever move.