“I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide…too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues…[Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question administration, you’re helping the terrorists” — Russ Feingold

In 1954, Adlai Stevenson threw himself in the Joseph McCarthy controversy and attacked President Dwight D Eisenhower for not dealing with McCarthy, saying that Eisenhower’s midterm election strategy was a healthy dose of McCarthy-smearing — having it both ways and appearing “above the fray” by not engaging in anything personally. (Well, it worked alright in the 1952 Presidential Campaign against himself, so why not? It probably picked Eisenhower up two or three states, furthering the landslide.) But Eisenhower was the “Golfer-in-Chief”, so I guess it fit his image anyways. The whole fracus resolved itself with Richard Nixon giving a weak speech chiding “Men who have in the past done effective work exposing Communists in this country have, by reckless talk and questionable methods, made themselves the issue rather than the cause they believe in so deeply.” And everyone clapped. Yay! Eisenhower reigned in McCarthy!! Kind of. Sort of. HUH?

Now, if you go back to 1954 and read what the Democrats in the Senate and House were saying about all this — they kept Adlai Stevenson’s speech at arm’s length. Southern Democrats held the Democratic Chairs, and (1) these were the “Democrats for Eisenhower” bunch, and (2) They needed to shore up their “anti-Communist” credentials. Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Leadership wanted to focus on Economic matters (as they did in, say, 2002 — wanting no part on the issues of Security, which not bothering with helps with the other party’s smearing of you as “weak” on “defense”, such that it is)– and, because it was such a diverse group that couldn’t agree, really only tackling Economic matters in a fairly vague manner. To be fair, Eisenhower was a popular politician (unlike President Bush), and the Democratic strategy of tangoing with him as someone other than Republican seemed to do the organization of “DNC” some good as it passed through the 1950s. It’s curious to note Joseph McCarthy defending himself in the most bellicose manner that “if you want to get rid of me, you have a midterm election coming up” — which I guess is largely what happened when the narrow Republican Senate Majority flipped over to a narrow Democratic Majority in the midterm election. A referendum on an individual Senator as opposed to a Referendum on a President… that’s kind of neat.

I may go back and post up the relevant news articles that show what I say to be the case.

So, sorry Greg Saunders and Oliver Willis… the correct tagline is since at least 1954, not since 1994.

(BTW: I really can’t figure out what Adlai Stevenson offered up to American politics in the 1950s. He’s sort of a mystery figure to me.)

We may not know which of the deadly strains of the bird flu will eventually hit the U.S. But Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt is offering a rather specific warning about how to prepare for the disease. He urges Americans to buy extra cans of tuna and powdered milk and stash them under the bed to get ready.

Thank you to the Rick Emerson Show, 12-3 on “Johnson 970” here in Portland, Oregon, for some insight into Mike Leavitt’s proposal on how to prepare for the Avian Flu. It’s good to have the Rick Emerson Show back on the air, or I would not have had this insight into the levers of control in our government.

Mike Leavitt is a former Governor of Utah (The first incarnation of The Rick Emerson Show — or perhaps it’s best to say the embryonic form of The Rick Emerson Show– had Rick broadcasting from Salt Lake, so that would be how he knows Leavitt), and therein lies your hint.

Back in 1998 and 1999, the Art Bell Show had an advertiser selling a years’ worth of supplies to prepare yourself for the ensuing Y2K Crisis. The Y2K Frightenees being a Secular version of a Millenial Cult — as though the “experts” wouldn’t get to work and return everything back to normal if everything went awry. In one version of the ad, Art Bell made the comment “The Company is located in Utah, and that should tell you something.”

Subtle enough, but it must have left any number of Insomniacs and Paranoids confused. So, in a later version of the ad, Art Bell made the comment, “Located in Utah, and the Mormons know how to prepare!”

So, basically our nation’s Health and Human Services Secretary is giving advice working off habits formed by an understanding that there will be a one-year fight between Satan where you will need one year’s supply of tuna under your bed. Perhaps Satan will come in through the guise of those Birds that are expected to attack and infect us sometime in the near future.

(Do I need to provide a disclaimer that, while I find the religion — as I do all or most religions — a bit nutty, I’ve never personally known a Mormon I didn’t respect? Okay, there it is — whether I need to provide it or not.)

There was a bit of a debate on the Reason Magazine “Hit and Run” blog as to whether Scott Adams, cartoonist behind Dilbert, is a Libertarian or not. This was based on Scott Adams’s posting of a Political Positioning survey, and possibly some cartoons as well.

My answer is, sure, why not? Case in point, from about a month ago:

My question is: (1) Does Scott Adams believe what he drew here? Or, to what degree does Scott Adams believe what he drew?

I used to think I was a cynic. I have since realized that I have a few ideals, and am therefore not a cynic. The answer to the question “To what degree do I believe what Scott Adams drew here?” is not much?

To Scott Adams’s credit, everybody knows what it means when someone says that they are working in “Dilbertville”, and Dilbert makes excellent office satire. And to its credit, the next day Dilbert returned to its credible office satire, and all was well in Dilbertville once again.

Let’s pretend that we have a President who robs a bank, and then unloads a machine gun full of bullets on the pedesterians outside the bank as he makes his get-away back to the Oval Office, killing a half dozen people and wounding a half dozen more.

Let’s say that a Senator from the other party, maybe someone from Wisconsin, says something on a Sunday Morning Chattering Political-oriented television show something to the effect of “The President done bad here.”

Now, in this hypothetical situation, let’s say another Senator, let’s call him Bill Frist, gives the response of “I hope Iran isn’t watching this. This lack of support for our commander in chief is sending a terrible signal toward our enemies.”

What am I supposed to do, in this hypothetical situation, with Bill Frist’s comments?

2-23-1950: Asked if he saw no danger to the two party system in a sweeping Democratic victory, Mr. Truman replied he did not like a one-party system but that anyway, we did not have two parties, but about four. […]

It is the President’s overriding aim to wrest domination of the Democratic Party’s program from Southern Democrats by increasing Northern and Western Democratic strength. […] Later, Mr. Truman enumerated the four parties as follows: the Dixiecrats, who he said were one-half Republican; the Republicans; what was left of Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party; and the real national party — the Democrats.

About as perceptive as can be, that Mr. Truman, but then again he just came out triumphant from a victory over all three of those parties, and had to map out throughout all of 1948 how the heck to pull off that hat-trick. For the Wallacites, it is believed that by so utterly defeating Wallace, the cause of McCarthyism was helped immensely and the Liberals were able to be attacked as Commies because the Liberals no longer had the Wallacites to pass the attacks onto. For the Southern Dixiecrats, it remains so (look at the record of the Southern Contingency of Southern Democrats in the past decade), and is instructive to ponder how we go from 1938 when the plan was to replace them in the South with “New Dealers”, to 1950 when the plan was to swamp them with new people from the North and West, and on to the situation today when we dare only elect Democratic Presidents from South of the Mason-Dixon Land (and for the most part Republicans as well), and fret over how to win over the quote-in-quote “Half-Republicans” to maintain some strength for an organization called the “Democratic National Committee” within that which we call the National Government.

11-2-1951: The Virginian [Senator Harry Byrd] said the South might be called upon to adopt a political remedy requiring “very firm and forthright measures” […] He characterized the National Administration as “a heterogenous crowd of Trumanites, which, if it could be called a party is one of questionable ancestory, irresponsible directory, and predatory purposes.” The Senator then departed from his prepared text to describe how he and other Southern political leaders at the Democratic National Convention in 1944 had agreed to vote for the nomination of Mr. Truman as running mate with Roosevelt . “We wanted only to prevent the renomination of Henry A Wallace. Sometimes you have to make a choice between two evils, and I don’t want to be held to the responsibility of Truman because we only did it to block Henry Wallace.”

He charged that President Truman had formed “an unholy alliance” with “tin-horn political incompetents and socialistic do-gooders”. The Civil Rights legislation on July 25 by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Byrd declared, represents a “mass invasion of States’ Rights without historical precedent, What about Lincoln, and the “Emancipation Proclamation”? Is that a good historical precedent for a “mass invasion” of “States’ Rights”? and they represent the President’s feelings on the matter also.” The South has been “slugged with a civil rights club,” Senator Byrd said, and it was only through effecting a coalition between Southern Democrats and some Republicans in Congress that these proposals and other “socialistic legislation” were defeated temporarily.

If Mr. Truman and his ideological adherents are re-elected, Senator Byrd warned, it will be regarded by them as a mandate to push through their “wholly unconstitutional socialistic program.” Consequently, he said, the South must consider that “there are ways to register opposition when we vote in November 1952.” The South must take “courageous action, even if this means reformation and reorganization of the national Democratic Party.” […] Demand at the next Democratic National Convention that civil rights be withdrawn from the platform and the two-thirds nominating rule be restored.

In the whole “Senator Trent Lott hearts Strom Thurmond” controversy, we had Pat Buchanan defend Lott by saying that “the Democrats nominated a segregationist in Adlai Stevenson”, which makes you ponder what the point of that would be. But even there, Senator Harry Byrd threw his chips behind Eisenhower, who gingerly advanced the cause of civil rights… sort of… at behest of the Supreme Court and a Bus Boycott. So it was the 1950s– both parties walked through the cavern of trying to appease both Racists and Blacks with somewhat enlightened Whites — and What is that that Happens to a Dream Deferred, again?

As for Henry Wallace… First recall that the Soviet press wrote him up again and again during 1948. Now, I proceed to inform you that he split with the Progressive Party and came out, more or less and with some caveats, for US involvement with the Korean War and against the Soviet Union’s “act of aggression”. And so, we get from the Pravdas…

10-3-1950: The press Soviet peace campagin was coupled by writers of the newspaper Literary Gazette with a strongly worded attack among American and other “war-mongers”, among whom were listed “the political business-man Henry Wallace”. Mr. Wallace’s name was mentioned in an editorial titled “Enemies of Mankind.” The editorial proposed the establishment of “The Book of Death” in which would be listed “names of all those monsters and cannibals who openly preach destruction of millions of human lives and of the greatest value of world culture.” […]

“The special favor of the warmongers is won by those politicians, literateurs, and scientists who in their day committed the sins of radicalism and who occasionally allowed themselves to criticize individual points of imperialist policy and then at the moment most convenient and profitable have dropped the mask, as has done the political businessman Henry Wallace.”

Perhaps you heard the exciting news that Bill Frist placed first in an informal poll of 2008 presidential hopefuls at a Republican conference Saturday night in Tennessee. Wow. This does wonders to his campaign. The way I see it, Bill Frist is now in fourth place in the Republican Nomination process for their Republican Nominee two years hence… behind George Allen… behind John McCain… behind Mitt Romney.

The latest New York Times Magazine has a cover story on who would be right now the Second Place in the Democratic Party’s Nominating Process, two years out… and Boy Oh Boy I can see that the nation is gripped by this nominating process!!

Okay, so I read through about a third of the piece on Virginia Governor Mark Warner, before stopping myself because of its lack of any information I care to know. He seems to have some assets (and keep in mind, I’m not ever going to vote for or otherwise more nebulously “Support” someone based on how I perceive everyone else might vote), and some detractions. But I stopped myself when the article ran down the list of why every other Democratic nominee can’t win… (after I pondered the description of Al Sharpton as a prototype “African American protest candidate”, making me wonder if it’s possible to have an African American candidate that is not the “African American protest candidate” — are we waiting for Barack Obama to fill that void?)

and that the populist Russ Feingold has currency mostly as a protest candidate.

Sigh. Am I doomed to root for the candidate the Establishment deems the “protest candidate” of the lot… in perpetuity? What makes Feingold merely and impossibly nothing but a “Protest Candidate”?

He’s in the news today for calling for the Censure of President Bush for his illegal and unconstitutional wire-tapping. Political, ain’t it? This week, we watched a con take place where the Congress decided to back-track and sanction what was a usurption of powers by the President. That was a con-act. And to say it was apparently is to “protest”, and thus marginilize yourself to that… as you wait for the real actors to jump onto the stage..

I note the comment on this web-based video promo for the return of the Rick Emerson Show from an ignorant one, name of sphereboy What is this crap?

AND… on this blog’s list of “50 things every Portlander MUST do”:

3. Wonder aloud about who Rick Emerson is, what he does exactly and why everyone you know loves him.

I’m more of a Tim Riley fan myself. But I guess saying that is like voting for a vice president. In the second hour, he’s competing against Keith Olbermann’s daily appearance on the Dan Patrick Show, so I guess if he goes in a direction in the second hour I care not for I can just switch back and forth for a while.

I notice that everyone connected with the show tells us it’ll be broadcast on a CBS affiliate as opposed to that Conglomerate whose name escapes me right now owned by Viacom which is connected with CBS which also runs the “Jack” station, which took over an affiliate in Seattle at the same time the Corporate Conglomerate I will call Enterscum brought in a “Charlie” station, which knocked the station that broadcast Rick Emerson.

Ah well. That’s show business for you. All Hail the … Verion #5.