Ariel Sharon, etc.

Regardless of whether he lives, Sharon's recent stroke has taken him out of Israeli politics. It's curious that the whole world sees him as a fallen peacemaker after so many years of him playing the hard-right villian. Palestinians have for decades seen him as one of their greatest antagonists and as a major war criminal, and many were quoted recently as saying this was far too peaceful an end for him. He was a very hard, tough man.

But he did uproot those abominable Gaza settlements and there is nobody else with his stature on the playing field. His competitor in Likud, Netenyahu, doesn't want peace. He's a power-hungry ogre of a man and the electorate is leery of him. But who else is there? Right now no politician on either side of the conflict has enough broad support to be to negotiate, sign and maintain a peace agreement. So is looks like all that is old is new again.

Just before his stroke Sharon split away from the Likud to form a more centrist party. Hopefully this new entity will hold together and keep the far right factions out of the government. Otherwise the better parts of Sharon's legacy will be short-lived. He was very fat and very old. I guess this was inevitable.

In other news, the race is on in the House to see who will replace Tom Delay. The question is whether the new leader will be a Delay-acolyte, or will the more honest faction of the GOP take the reins.

Right now it's between Roy Blunt, Delay's right-hand-man, and John Boehner, a more moderate voice. If Blunt succeeds the Abramoff debacle will have failed to help the country. We will only have a new cockswain as team GOP rows us toward the waterfall. Or a new head wolf as the GOP pack works around the carcass of the Federal government. Etc.

Blunt will probably win. The House has few moderates. It's bad to the bone and members will surely want their gravy train K-street mechanism to continue. This is a many-headed serpent and one scandal, no matter how large, is unlikely to change the direction of the party. The ship has a lot of momentum and it will take years and at least one election cycle to turn course.

I expect they're only irked that they got caught by someone with authority to indict and that the media has broken off its leash and has run with the story. Now of course they say they had no idea all the lobbyist moneys were bribes. The whole process is corrupt, but the GOP house will pretend that this is a single incident, put on a brave face and face the heat, and then go back to the trough as soon as the camera lights turn away.

Where are the democrats? Where Where Where?