And here’s another charged conversation with the political scientist on our A Team, Charles Lipson of the University of Chicago. As we dart about in our usual free-associative style some of the matters we hit upon are:

• What do the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement have in common?
• Did Obama represent the last gasp of Democratic Party “progressivism?”
• Is there a  notable decline and disorder in the moral competence of  the white, working class family.?
• Does the presidency really matter or is it increasingly owned by “Wall Street” and the Media?
• Are Jeb Bush, Scott Walker or any other Republican possibilities actually “unowned?”
• What accomplishments adorn Hilary’s “great resume?”
• How about chucking it all for a parliamentary system?

This conversation came before the President’s lecture to the nation and the world about the equivalence of ISIS and the Crusades. That would have made a great extra feature for this edition but you might now want to conjecture about how that fits in with what Charles has to say, early on, about the decay and demise of the “progressivism” project.