Karlos is trippin on the doppler effect of the 24 hours news cycle

...and how hard it is to focus on what's happening out there.

If Henry Adams, whom you knew slightly, could make a theory of history by applying the second law of thermodynamics to human affairs, I ought to be entitled to base one on the angle of repose, and may yet. There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect. The sound of anything coming at you -- a train, say, or the future -- has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? W. Stegner, Angle of Repose.

The following are two articles that just may cut through the noise of the corporate media train coming at us full speed.

First, Gingrich spells disaster for republicans in November without what he calls "real change."

Newt says...
My Plea to Republicans: It's Time for Real Change to Avoid Real Disaster

The Republican loss in the special election for Louisiana's Sixth Congressional District last Saturday should be a sharp wake up call for Republicans: Either Congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.

The facts are clear and compelling.

Saturday's loss was in a district that President Bush carried by 19 percentage points in 2004 and that the Republicans have held since 1975.

This defeat follows on the loss of Speaker Hastert's seat in Illinois. That seat had been held by a Republican for 76 years with the single exception of the 1974 Watergate election when the Democrats held it for one term. That same seat had been carried by President Bush 55-44% in 2004.

...These two special elections validate a national polling pattern that is bad news for Republicans. According to a New York Times/CBS Poll, Americans disapprove of the President's job performance by 63 to 28 (and he has been below 40% job approval since December 2006, the longest such period for any president in the history of polling).

A separate New York Times/CBS Poll shows that a full 81 percent of Americans believe the economy is on the wrong track.

The current generic ballot for Congress according to the NY Times/CBS poll is 50 to 32 in favor of the Democrats. That is an 18-point margin, reminiscent of the depths of the Watergate disaster.

Then David Brooks opines in the NY Times about a "Conservative Revival" from the other side of the pond.

David Brooks says...
The Conservative Revival

Today, British conservatives are on the way up, while American conservatives are on the way down. British conservatives have moved beyond Thatcherism, while American conservatives pine for another Reagan. The British Conservative Party enjoyed a series of stunning victories in local elections last week, while polls show American voters thoroughly rejecting the Republican brand.

The flow of ideas has changed direction. It used to be that American conservatives shaped British political thinking. Now the influence is going the other way.

The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”

Newt's article is interesting for it's insight into the disarray of the Republican party. Especially as the corporate media has fixated on divisions within the Democratic party.

Brooks' article is plain fascinating. British conservatives go to the left, and he calls it insight into the central political debate of our time? And what happened to T.I.N.A.? This dude's world view is so narrow it's scary, hasn't he heard...Another World is Possible?

But put together, along with Obama (almost but not quite yet) winning the Dem nomination with center-left messaging, the articles are more proof that it's a center-left political arena out there - at least in terms of US politics.

At the same time, they could also be more proof that the days of superpowers are over, but I digress.