rosenkrantz & guildenstern are smoked

...and their tailor shop is boarded up. Times these days ain't nothing like they used to be, as the song says, and as has been noted by Jim Kunstler, who is not only the most accomplished wordsmith on line, but the sharpest analyst as well. His weekly column today, a brilliant autopsy of the Romney presidential campaign begins with "Flying at higher platitudes in the thin upper air of his own mind," Mittens made a stupid

joke about airplane windows which, while not funny, revealed what a pathetic butthole the dying Republican Party has chosen to be their last standard bearer.

JHK continues: Hence, the thought that must be flashing through many people's minds these days when Romney's off-kilter, square-jawed, grinning visage floats over the nearest flat-screen: Who would vote for that asshole...? Being given to more baroque taxonomy, myself, I would be satisfied in calling Mr. Romney an empty vessel in a vacant room in an abandoned property in a forsaken land, and leave it at that.

Further down, Kunstler guesses as I have for several weeks now that "The Romney election fiasco will destroy the Republican Party," and that after it's over "Karl Rove will be left at the Nascar track with Honey Boo Boo on his lap and a dwindling 'base' of shrieking microcephalics awaiting the second coming of Adolf Hitler in a green satin Mountain Dew race-day jumpsuit."

Kunstler and I are also on the same page regarding Obama, the phoniest phony to ever stink up the Oval Office, but unlike me he sees the Democratic Party as the possible vehicle for "the imperial return of Bill and Hillary Clinton," despite the 22nd Amendment, adding "The only thing I wonder about is whether Bill or Hillary will succeed in getting the other bumped off," and warns that "Otherwise the regime could develop into something like the brief joint Roman emperorship of Pupienus and Balbinus (238 AD).

At this point I'm afraid Kunstler has fallen prey to the natural temptation to relate our present circumstances to the collapse of the Roman Empire, which is especially strong when a writer gives himself the opportunity to use a name which was pronounced "poopy anus." Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus, shown at upper left, came up through the military ranks, and for a while was governor of Germania Inferior where he earned a well-deserved reputation as a first-class asshole, and that was sufficient to enable him to step up the Prefecture of Rome in 234.

Not much is known about his colleague Balbinus, who had achieved some kind of honcho-hood in the Senate. The two were elevated together to the supreme office in order to deal with another aspirant to the throne with an army behind him. However, their mutual distrust and fear that the other would murder his rival at the first opportunity caused them to fight all the time, and it was during a particularly heated row in the palace that Praetorian troops decided to break into the room where the co-emperors were closeted and put a permanent end to their wrangling. Unable to rule together, they died together after three months on the job.

That's fun speculation, but I've got my own ideas about what will happen after the second half of the Obama regime peters out with a whimper. I don't want to get into that today, however, since it's still over four years away, and I've gone on too long already.

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