Talking about “doubling down,”Wretchard:

I find it remarkable that British Labor is touting a “Class Mobility” agenda that, at base, can be reduced down to an increase in the subsidy British taxpayers pay into Britain’s credential hatcheries and into their adjunct hiring farms like the NHS and “education” departments.

Remarkable, I say, because Iran’s going nuclear, Britain’s grandest offspring, the USA, is deeply in debt, Shari’ah and its related terrorism is slowly embedding in English cities, and yet, all that Brown can offer up is more masturbatory statist strategy. And you don’t need a London School of Economics degree in “Environmental Sciences” to be a stevedore, or to build a ship, or to manufacture steel beams, or to plant cabbages, which is the type of labor that both Britain and the USA could use more of today.

All of which suggests two things to me. (1) British Labor is in trouble, and like a smart laying hen before a looming hail storm, is frantically running for the safety of the coop right now. And (2) Labor’s safest remaining “ground” is in its Gramsci-an, labyrinthine architectures, not among the citizens, farm animals, the foundries and streets of England.

Ditto Coakley in Massachusetts.

And Obama. Like America’s Democrat(ic)s, Brown’s modern party is a product of the Left’s urban campuses, and appearances are, he is betting Labour’s prospects on a tax-payer invigoration of these, his academic patrons.

Labor is retreating to its ramparts and preparing to raise the draw bridge. And I think we can take this doubling down as a sign of weakness. So, buck up BC’ers! Things may not be all that bad!
-Steve
PS: Charles, thanks for the link to the Chihuahan meteor-collision theory. It was an excellent thesis, underwritten with great photos, and, best of all, it explodes sclerotic, hidebound science. Gotta luv it!