The story first came to public attention in early December, when David Corn and Andy Kroll at Mother Jones magazine reported that “former Rep. Dick Armey, the folksy conservative leader, has resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the Tea Party.

“Armey, the former House majority leader who helped develop and promote the GOP’s Contract with America in the 1990s, tendered his resignation in a memo sent to Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, on Nov. 30. Mother Jones obtained the email on Monday, and Armey has confirmed he sent it. The tone of the memo suggests that this was not an amicable separation … Armey demanded that he be paid until his contract ended on Dec. 31; that FreedomWorks remove his name, image or signature ‘from all its letters, print media, postings, web sites, videos, testimonials, endorsements, fund raising materials, and social media, including but not limited to Facebook and Twitter’; and that FreedomWorks deliver the copy of his official congressional portrait to his home in Texas.”

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Fowler used to be a lobbyist with the health insurer WellPoint. Then she went to Capitol Hill as Sen. Max Baucus’ healthcare reform architect followed by some time at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Obama White House. Now she’s headed back to the private sector, going to bat for the medical giant Johnson & Johnson where no doubt her deep insider knowledge of Washington will be worth every dollar.

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At The Atlantic website, I read a piece by Edward Small, a reporter who attended the school in Newtown when he was a kid and I remember my own elementary school in a small town in upstate New York. In those days, the only emergency drills we ever had were the duck-and-cover alerts that sent us into the hallways or under our desks during the depths of Cold War hysteria; the only violence was getting shoved from behind by a bully, books and binder flying.

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It’s an old story, the latest chapter of which came to light a few days ago with a small item in Politico : “Elizabeth Fowler is leaving the White House for a senior-level position leading ‘global health policy’ at Johnson & Johnson’s government affairs and policy group.”

A familiar name. We had talked about Liz Fowler on Bill Moyers Journal in 2009, during the early stages of Obama’s health care reform. She was at the center of the action, sitting behind Montana Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee at committee hearings. Bill noted, “She used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was Vice President of Public Policy. And now she's working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want: higher profits, and no competition from alternative non-profit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.”

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Oh sure, when Mitt Romney got the nod instead, Murdoch’s TV and newspaper empire backed him big time, but on election night, Fox pundits like Dick Morris and Karl Rove – the top GOP strategist and fundraiser -- had to eat crow as Barack Obama won a second term in the White House, despite their predictions of a Republican landslide. (When the network called Ohio and the election for Obama, a desperate Rove tried to keep Fox statisticians from doing their job until the facts couldn’t be ignored or denied. New York magazine reports that Fox News programming chief Bill Shine now “has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris.”)

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To commit to the presidential campaign lifestyle — endless hours and damn little charm — you really have to believe, no matter what, that your candidate will win. So last week I wasn’t surprised by the many stories about how the Romney team was convinced they would emerge victorious, polling evidence to the contrary, to the point where they reportedly had a fireworks display poised for ignition above Boston Harbor when the requisite electoral votes were achieved.

But what I don’t understand is building a castle in the air and, even in defeat, trying to keep paying rent on it, almost all evidence to the contrary. For years, the right wing has been living in its own version of Tolkien’s Middle-earth in "The Lord of the Rings": an alternative and fanciful, fierce universe rarely bearing resemblance to real life but for odd, embittered moments like the one at President Obama’s victory celebration in Chicago on election night, when Fox News’ Ed Henry dourly announced, “The crowd is near pandemonium now, despite the fact that unemployment is hovering near 8 percent.”

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I live in Greenwich Village and thought I was ready for the worst — hatches battened down with emergency food, water, batteries, flashlights, transistor radio, etc. I’ve stayed put through 9/11, blackouts, blizzards, even other hurricanes. Nonetheless, I wasn’t prepared for the electricity and heat leaving us for five nights. I thought for sure they would be back the next day. Or the next … or the next…

But we were stuck in that trendy new Manhattan neighborhood — SoPo, as in “South of Power” — and when a friend and colleague offered shelter, warmth and electricity on the upper West Side, the invitation was gratefully accepted. From that outpost (for the most part, life went on as usual once you got above 34th Street and Herald Square), we watched unfold the disaster and accompanying tragedies and acts of heroism and community.

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Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, who just died on October 15, age 89, was in the United States to speak at the United Nations. After years of house arrest, he had fled Cambodia ahead of invading Vietnamese troops and was on his way to the UN to protest the invasion on behalf of the infamous Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s ruling regime.

Interest was high — it was less than four years since America had left neighboring Vietnam and Cambodian dictator Pol Pot had begun the genocide that murdered 1.7 million of that country’s people (the brutality vividly depicted in the movie, “The Killing Fields”).

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The New York Times has dubbed it "the global billionaires’ club" -- and for good reason. At least of two of the apartments are under contract for more than 90 million dollars each. Others, more modest, range in price from 45 million dollars to more than 50 million dollars. The mega-rich have been buying these places “looking for a place to stash their cash,” a realtor from Sotheby’s explained to the Times. “A lot of what is happening,” she said, “… is about wealth preservation.”

Simultaneously, the powers-that-be have just awarded Donald Trump the right to run a golf course in the Bronx that axpayers are spending at least $97 million to build -- what “amounts to a public subsidy,” says the indignant city comptroller, "for a luxury golf course." Good grief – a handout to the plutocrat's plutocrat.

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After the now infamous Seattle Seahawks-Green Bay Packers game, when questionable calls by the replacement refs led to a disputed 14-12 win by the Seahawks, even union-busting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the pride of Janesville, Wisconsin, became – briefly – fans of organized labor, calling for a negotiated peace and bringing the real refs back on the field.

In Baltimore, when the professional referees returned for their first game of the season, fans gave them a standing ovation.  One held a sign: “Finally! We get to yell at real refs! Welcome back!” As the captains of the Ravens and Cleveland Browns met at the center of the field for the coin toss, veteran official Gene Steratore turned on his microphone greeted them with, “Good evening, men. It’s good to be back.”  The stadium erupted in a roar.

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Time and again, he and his men were sent through what he called “a minefield on a daily basis.” His comrades were being blown apart – at least one amputee a day, he said, “Because we are walking around aimlessly through grape rows and compounds that are littered with explosives.”

Morale was low; the men struggled to remain alert. Sitton said he asked his officers to give them a break but was told to stop complaining.

“I am all for getting on the ground and fighting for my country when there is a desired endstate and we have clear guidance of what needs to be done,” he wrote. “But [being] told basically to just walk around for a certain amount of time is not sitting well with me.”

At home in Florida, Matt Sitton had attended a Christian school run by the Baptist church attended by Congressman Bill Young. He wrote Congressman Young and told him what was happening. “I’m concerned about the well-being of my soldiers,” he said. “… I just want to return my guys home to their families healthy.” He ended: “If anything, please pray for us over here. God bless.”

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Scary stuff, and almost as frightening is the realization that even though Election Day’s still more than a month away, the post-analysis already has begun, much of it focused on whether those vast amounts of campaign money spent on TV have had an effect or merely annoyed the hell out of the viewing population of America, especially if you live in one of the swing states where the din has been unbearable.

Maybe, as some have argued, minds were made up long ago and all the spending has been a waste, reminiscent of the famous comment by British Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris writing about the dropping of millions of propaganda leaflets over the Maginot Line during the first weeks of World War II: “My personal view is that the only thing achieved was largely to supply the continent’s requirement of toilet paper for the five long years of war.”

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On the other hand, it’s also not news. If you had reported for as long as some of us have on winner-take-all politics and the unenlightened assumptions of the moneyed class, you wouldn’t find the remarks of Romney and his pals all that exceptional. The resentment, disdain and contempt with which they privately view those beneath them are an old story.

In fact, the video is reminiscent of our first Gilded Age, back in the late nineteenth century. The celebrated New York dandy Frederick Townsend Martin summed it up when he declared, “We are the rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it.”

And so they do, as that glitzy gathering in Florida reminds us. You could see and hear one of the guests ask Mitt Romney what they could do to help. The governor answers, “Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars, because the president’s going to have about $800 to $900 million. And that’s – that’s by far the most important thing you could do.”

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Yes, I’m auditioning for a job at The Onion.

Members hustled back to the capital all right, not to get much accomplished for the good of the nation but to party down at events designed to scrape every last nickel of campaign contributions from the jam pots of cash held by K Street lobbyists and special interests.

The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported that as of this past Monday, House Democrats had 184 events scheduled through the end of the month — that’s according to a directory from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“Their GOP counterparts, according to a list from the National Republican Congressional Committee, have more than 110 breakfasts, coffees, lunches, dinners and receptions on the calendar. That doesn’t include scores more Senate fundraisers and intimate industry-focused events not logged on the official lists.”

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No minimum wage for the Mariana Islands. “The Pacific territories should have flexibility to determine the minimum wage, which has seriously restricted progress in the private sector.”

This caught our attention (and thanks to colleague Theresa Riley for sending) because it once again reminds us of the sordid past of evangelical and political entrepreneur Ralph Reed who, as this week’s edition of Moyers & Company reports in detail, has emerged from the ashes of epic career fail to reestablish himself as a powerful figure in Republican politics.

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And we’re not speaking just of Paul Ryan and his draconian budget plan or Mitt Romney and their fellow Republicans. Tipping their hats to America’s impoverished while themselves seeking handouts from billionaires and corporations is a bad habit that includes President Obama, who of all people should know better.

Remember: For three years in the 1980s he was a community organizer in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it “the best education I ever had.” And when Obama left to go to Harvard Law School, author Paul Tough writes in the New York Times, he did so, “to gain the knowledge and resources that would allow him to eventually return and tackle the neighborhood’s problems anew.” There’s a moving line in "Dreams from My Father" where he writes: “I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail” and “bring it back like Promethean fire.”

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Vidal was staying at a friend’s house near the Hollywood Bowl. At 5 pm, the prearranged time, I knocked on the door and after a minute or so heard footsteps coming down stairs. The door opened and there he was, swathed in a long, elegant, silk paisley robe (of course!) and still half-asleep.

I told him who I was and reminded him why I was there. Ronald Reagan had been in the White House for less than a year and already was threatening major cuts to funding for the arts, so as part of the pilot, I was interviewing authors about books they thought might help the rest of us through his presidency. The answers would be spotted throughout the show, like currants in a bun. Vidal nodded and returned upstairs to change while the crew set up in the living room.

A few minutes later, now in jacket and tie, he joined us and sat down as lights, camera and sound were adjusted. I told him again what I wanted but now he stared at me blankly. Books for the Reagan years? He sighed, “I haven’t a clue.”

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