…meanwhile over at vance's house...

What about, the “Axis of Allies”?

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There’s more then one Bean book?

To be honest, though, I read a few of the Ender books and really only liked Ender’s Game.  Later Ender’s Shadow came out and that was pretty good.

Hegemony
Speaker for the Dead
etc

Really seemed too long winded.  Dunno.

Anyway, anyone read David Feintuch’s Midshipman’s Hope?  Great book, okay series!

They don’t make donkey shows like they used to anymores in TJ.  Thats why now I only go to Panda shows.  Sometimes it gets difficult cause the Panda bear doesnt want to co-operate, but when it gets started……its hawt.  8-)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102036.html

EXCERPT
Clinton seems to have found his role as facilitator-in-chief, urging us to give up our deadly national passivity(LJ Note : A Clinton trademark…no economic initiatives, no energy policy, no move on Osami bint Lami, no response but words to the first WTC attack[1993], a chicken run from Mogadeshu with only high tech low results battles/wars, including Yugoslopia, for the remainder of his term.) and start thinking things through for ourselves. Commandeering the role of government through civic action suddenly feels like a very empowering notion – the alternative being to find oneself stranded in a flood waving a shirt from a rooftop(LJ NOTE : Thanks to decades of Louisiana state and local Democrat misappropriation and mismanagement of Levy repair funds.)
…

The White House doesn’t seem to realize it yet, but we are entering a post-spin era in public life(LJ NOTE : The Clinspin machine geared up his last year in office. Recall/google the Clinton attempt at a Middleeast solution…Yassar turned down an offer of 98% of everything he wanted. Since Clinton’s Reaper Visit he has revved it up to CLINSPIN). The shift has long been underway in the business world, propelled by the Enron catastrophe and the collapse of the (LJ NOTE : CLINTON) dot-com bubble. Process, not perception(LJ NOTE : Sounds like the liberal classroom…“Process , not result,”) is king in boardrooms today. After so much corporate malfeasance it all got too dire to put up with fake CEOs anymore. (LJ NOTE : Google the timeline. The malfeasance was during the Clinton years, while the the cleanup occured during the W years.)
…

The irony is that no one would have believed that Clinton – the king of spin, who went out under a cloud of indecency five years ago – could climb back to such credibility. …he’s backlit now by his disciplined handling of the economy(LJ NOTE : A Republican US Congress held his feet to the fire and he trumpeted his accomplishment.), the unsought(LJ NOTE : Read as INCORRECT.) comparisons of how well FEMA used to perform under his watch and the enlightened(LJ Note : Last Chance! Redemption) nature of his global activism.
…

On Clinton’s face these days is a look of wry, judicious knowingness(LJ NOTE : William Jefferson Clinton will win an Academy Award. A feat never accomplished by Ronald Reagan[ http://www.reelclassics.com/Actors/Reagan/reagan.htm ].) It’s the look of political wisdom, and it imparted to his conference’s departing crowd something like serenity.
(LJ NOTE : He’s ba-acck!!)
END EXCERPT

I think most of the backing came due to two facts:
(1) the USSR needed reforms, that was obvious.
Still, they probably wanted a long term leader that could be influenced => a younger one, after the two short reigns of Andropov and what-was-his-name… Probably, the influentials wanted some change, but surely not that much that it would threaten their power-base, one of the reasons for the coup that failed due to Jelzins help for Gorbachev.
(2) The general secretary and all the other positions he fills made him the most powerful man in the USSR. Probably, whoever put Gorbachev into place, underestimated him. Pretty much the same underestimation that Hitler faced when he was appointed Chancellor, but luckily Gorbachev used that to reform positively, and i consider the new freedom of information, the right to ask wether the party is right and that the crucial reform.

So, I don’t think that there was “real” backing, i believe Gorbachev was kind of a compromise candidate, kind of a makeshift. Of course, once he was into power, you ccouldn’t remove instantly, that would have meant that the party made a mistake (which was not “allowed” before Gorbachev). And he was clever enough to stay into power, and use his popularity at the beginning (which soon, after the economy started to collapse openly, was reduced to more or less nothing) to enforece the reforms.

Yeah, the all tanks go on land and all ships go on water come especially handy when you’re too drunk to play. :smile: