The man is basically trolling around to do some anti-war in general anti-Bush proseltyzing.

“You know what Bush’s campaign slogan should be?” he asks one soon-to-be bus rider.
“No, what?”
“Bush and War for 2004.”

The bus rider smiles in agreement or in apathetic social congeniality, and gets onto the bus he’d been waiting for. So, the anti-Bush proseltyzer walks over to me.

“You hear what Bush said the other day? We’re Now Martching to Peace! Can you believe that?”
I shrug. “You hear the whole story of why he said that, didn’t you?” I ask.
“No,” he shakes his head.
“Well, what he said was that the economy went down — in this case meaning primarily the stock market — because ‘We were marching to war but now… now we’re marching to peace so, the stock market is rebounding.”

The man senses I’m a kindred soul of sorts, so he launches into what is, evidentally, the next phase of his efforts.
“You ever hear the station on my cap?”
I look at his cap. KBOO — the left-wing Pacifica-type radio station in Portland. “Sure, Sure.”
“My favourite show is on Friday mornings… Marlene (I forget the last name)’s show… at 10:00 there’s this guy, I forget his name…”
“Uh huh”
“He sounds crazy, and talks about stuff like the Bush Family’s connections to the Nazis and… I went to the website and, although he sounds crazy, the footnotes are all there.”
I sort of roll my eyes. I’ve heard the show. My favourite bit of “information” from the show was the fascist-underground connection between the well-connected anti-tax Movement Conservative activist Grover Norquist with the left-wing (and indeed, Communist) anti-war organizer Ramsey Clarke by way of a speaker that Clarke invited to speak at an anti-war demonstration that was in good standing with Grover Norquist’s organization. Scratch my head in wonder at this left-right fascist alliance!
“There’s this extreme right-winger from Texas who did this video about how Bush knew about 9/11.”
I smile and nod.
At this point, a young man — probably mid to late 20s, turns around and says “What was up with Bush’s activities at the time of the plane crashes?”
“Well, he was reading to school kids. When he got the word from the secret service, he just kept reading.”
“Yeah. I wonder what he was reading. Must have been some sort of Skull and Bones book or something.”
I say, “I think it was The Hungry Little Caterpillar.”

The bus comes around, and I get on it, leaving the other two to discuss their political matters.

Transcendental Meditation acts as the central core of the Natural Law Party. The “Visualize Success” so that you can succeed at your action mantra, only on a mass societal scale.

In the current cycle, the 2000, 1996 (and probably beyond) presidental candidate for the Natural Law Party has endorsed Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich. It’s a match that makes some sense. And news reports are that Kucinich supporters have, at times, engaged in “Collective Visualization”, which sounds like a watered-down version of transcendental meditation.

Sounds hooky? Easy to mock and make fun of?

Not so fast! Apparently George Bush has stolen from the Natural Law Party platform.

The artificial windows revealed an inviting blue sky. Bush portrayed a similarly sunny outlook with remarks that used “optimistic” or “optimism” seven times in 49 minutes. He repeatedly stressed the power of positive thinking as an engine of job creation.

“A lot of economic growth depends upon the psychology of the people making decisions all throughout our economy,” he said. “So far, the entrepreneurs have been upbeat.”

(news article courtesy of TPM.)

The current book on George W. Bush (as suggested by… the current book on Bush is that he is a smart man with keen political insights and gut-level instincts, whose intellectual curiosity just happens to be relatively limited.

Some comments he made last September about not reading the newspaper, and considering his cabinet “objective”, caused a minor stir. A google search for the quotations turns up a fair amount of left-wing carping about how insular this tight group causes a “Bubble-effect”, and a fair amount of right-wing carping on how Bush is well-advised to avoid the “Elitist Liberal Media”.

Bush’s September interview on the RNC News Network.

BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you’ve got a beautiful face and everything.

I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.

BUSH: I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.

On the other hand, as George Carlin once said, the media acts like a bulletin board for the people in charge anyway, sooo…

The newspaper-reading habits of males under the age of, say, 18 looks to be the Comics and the Sports section. I was a little different. When I read the papers in the middle school library, I would read the Comics section and the USA Today Life Section. This was due to the fact that I had less than zero interest in sports at the time… I think it might be difficult to find a boy less interested or less knowledgable of the world of professional sports than I was at the age of 13. On the other hand, I did find the “Late Night Wars” between Jay Leno and (tight-lipped) David Letterman an oddly fascinating storyline.

Gradually, the world opens to the newspaper reader, and they realize that they should really follow the going ons of world players, since they have a tendency to affect people’s lives.

Getting back to Bush: he doesn’t read the newspaper…

Except for the Sports Section. He reads the Sports Section.

“I was just as surprised as the Yankees fans and Red Sox fans when I opened up my paper today,” President Bush told NBC television in an interview at the Daytona 500. “It, obviously, is a big deal. A-Rod’s a great player and the Yankees are going to wind up with a heck of a team with him in the infield.”

It’s good to see that the president is helping us out with Pro- Sports Analysis.

I hear that the star of John Adams is rising these days. I’m not sure why this would be the case. Is it the desire to see the wisdom of the Patriot Act as being in the grand tradition of the Alien and Sedition Act? (Sort of the way Woodrow Wilson’s star rose when the United Nations Charter was enacted… though in that case, Wilson was risen from the mud — unlike Adams who, if pressed, Americans would nod and say “Founding Father. Good!”) Or is there something in the current American zeitgist that I am missing?

Oddly enough, I read an editorial in the Oregonian yesterday that placed the current president in the same company as John Quincy Adams and FDR. John Quincy Adams, he of “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy” quotation fame.

(The editorial does deserve a little attention, btw. Maybe I’ll give it some later.)

Kerry says that Bush is owned by special interests. The RNC throws out an internet ad saying that Kerry is owned by special interests. The DNC responds with their own internet ad saying that Bush is owned by more special interests than Kerry is owned by.

All of which is true. And I’m happy that the two candidates are already drawing such stark lines of contrast.

Who owns whom? Which conglomeration of (frequently overlapping) owners is less scary than the other group of owners? These are the questions that one must ask themselves when deciding which candidate to support.

The Nation, January 29, 2004. The time is not right for a Nader run.

The context for an independent presidential bid is completely altered from 2000, when there was a real base for a protest candidate. The overwhelming mass of voters with progressive values–who are essential to all efforts to build a force that can change the direction of the country–have only one focus this year: to beat Bush. Any candidacy seen as distracting from that goal will be excoriated by the entire spectrum of potentially progressive voters. If you run, you will separate yourself, probably irrevocably, from any ongoing relationship with this energized mass of activists. Look around: Almost no one, including former strong supporters, is calling for you to run, compared with past years when many veteran organizers urged you on.

You have said your candidacy could actually help Democrats by raising issues against Bush that a Democratic candidate would avoid and by boosting turnout for good candidates for the House and Senate, where the slender bulwarks against Bushism must be reinforced. But these arguments do not compel a candidacy by you. As a public citizen fighting for open debates and rallying voters to support progressive Democrats for Congress, or good independents or Greens for that matter, you can have a far more productive impact than as a candidate dealing with recriminations about being a spoiler or, worse, an egotist. And the very progressives distressed by the prospect of your candidacy would contribute eagerly to have that voice amplified.

AND… The Nation, November 2000. The time is not right for a Nader run.:

When our insurgent values have accumulated more momentum and self-confidence, we might see things differently. This time around, we believe the practical priority of keeping the Bush squad from winning power takes precedence, while we also urge that, if possible, progressives help Nader score a blow to the status quo. For the larger progressive community, the tension can be resolved by following the logic of Texas columnist Molly Ivins. Her rule: Vote with your heart where you can, and vote with your head where you must. In states where either Gore or Bush has a commanding lead, vote Nader. In the states too close to call, vote Gore. In either case, the imperative is to end Republican control in Congress by electing Democrats, also vital to the prospects for progressive change.

Go back to 1932 and you’ll find that The Nation endorsed Socialist Norman Thomas. (Recall that FDR’s campaign promises included fiscal restraint and balanced budgets.) Then again, this wasn’t too big a wave: FDR was obviously coasting to victory. So, go back to 1968, and you’ll find that The Nation endorsed leaving the presidential ballot blank rather than succumbing to a lesser of two evils decision… that’s a close election which would manifest itself in the victory of Richard Nixon.

What’s the point? Figure it out yourownself. Be true to thyself. Do whatever.

Ronald Reagan will die this year. Nancy Reagan will soon follow, since elderly spouses meet their demise soon after their loved one.

The Democratic Party, needing to stem the feeling of goodwill from the Reagans’ deaths and the effect it has on Bush’s re-election numbers, will decide to convince Carter to off himself. Carter, displaying the same good-natured tendencies that served as the lynchpin for the undoing of his presidency, will agree, and run off to die in a tragic plane crash.

Carter’s death in no way offsets the deaths of the Reagans. So, the head-honchos of the Democratic Party have to meet again to decide what to do. The idea of Clinton offing himself will arise. But, everyone has veto-authority, and Clinton will lobby for Terry McAuliffe to veto the idea. (Clinton could use his veto, but he doesn’t want to appear selfish.)

So, what the Democratic Party will do is … bring back John F. Kennedy. The announcement will be made that, in fact, John F. Kennedy never died that fateful day in Dallas in 1963. This announcement, and the sudden appearance of JFK on the public stage, will shock the nation. John Kerry’s poll numbers will enjoy the trickle that comes from the goodwill toward JFK.

But, the Democratic Party will get greedy. During a re-enactment of JFK’s Dalls ride, to show that the man, aged into his 80s and with a 40 year hole in his public biography, is (a) not afraid of his past & (b) still exhibiting youthful vigor,

He will be shot. Again.

Conspiracy theories will erupt across the country, and many of them will take ahold of the public imagination as truth. This crazy idea that the Democrats propped out JFK and sacrificed him to enhance their candidates’ electoral chances will become fodder for the chattering classes of cable news and talk radio. Bush will be re-elected in a landslide.