Yesterday when I learned that Great Britain was releasing an Iranian prisoner, quietly and with little fanfare, and with an assurance that this is completely and totally unrelated to the current dispute with Iran, holding sixteen British hostages over a border dispute (which is followed up with the customary sable rattling, and the customary conspiracy theory that “Here it is!  Remember the Maine!”), my thought was:

“Better than even chance Iran will release the prisoners within 48 hours.”

And so it is done.  A more malignant speculation as to what just happened is, “It’ll be about twenty years before the information comes out as to what weapons were handed to the Iranian government.”  Nay.  Never.
Or something about Syria. 

Or we could point to this as a repeat of an incident three years ago which ended with the unspectacular conclusion of Great British officials mumbling that they probably did wander into Iranian waters in what is murkily defined territory.  But that was, like, a thousand years ago and a thousand planets away in news cycle terms.
Gawd, I hate this world sometimes.   It’s all so very gray.  I need the comforts of black and white, damnedit!

Shifting through the news outrage over Nancy Pelosi leading a delegation of Congress-critters to Syria, I ponder whether the Republican blatherers would know to be outraged without the designations of “D” and “R”.  But substituting John Boehner for Nancy Pelosi, it hits me: aside from boutique single issue critters of the Tom Tancredo variety, nobody knows any Republican House members anymore.  Who the Hell is John Boehner?

Mitt Romney came out with the typical statement, and I am having a devil of a time finding his words online.  It was the standard pitch that Nancy Pelosi had breeched an age-old tradition — Politics needs to be unified beyond the Water’s edge and you stand by the President in foreign policy.  There can be no “multiple foreign policies”, a statement that makes me ponder how American corporations are supposed to move around the world with objectives not parallel and in a different sphere than the official government’s.  He made an extra pitch, saying that “If you don’t like the President’s foreign policy, you just need to see to it that you have a different president.”

To wit, I feign astonishment.  MITT ROMNEY JUST CALLED FOR THE ASSASSINATION OF THE PRESIDENT!  Geez, I don’t much like the guy, but wow — that’s pretty extreme on Romney’s part.

One of the great regrets from 2006’s Republican Meltdowns is that it destroyed the political aspirations of Bill First, a man who was planning on retiring from the Senate (and his Senate Majority Leader seat — which he is believed to have done badly as) and take two years to run for the 2008 Presidential nomination and — theoretically– general election.  He had no chance, but I would have liked to see, somewhere somehow, perhaps a homemade youtube:

“Bill Frist Likes to Kill Kittens.”

Well, apparently Rudy Giuliani’s wife killed puppies…

The last straw for Giuliani seemed to be a New York Post story that cast Judith Giuliani as a “puppy killer” for the time she spent in the 1970s training doctors on how to use medical staplers made by her employer, U.S. Surgical Co., which sometimes used anesthetized dogs to demonstrate the stapling technique.

Giuliani’s plea came after he lauded his wife as a “remarkable woman” who has spent her life caring for people.

“She was doing the same thing then,” he added, an apparent reference to her time at U.S. Surgical. “She was trying to figure out how do you save life and get to the point where you have better surgical procedures.”

So I may get my wish yet… Somebody, get to work.  Show a cute barrel of puppies, show an evil vision of Rudy and his wife, fade to black and back to the puppies…

Item #1: “I view my campaign as the hare and tortoise, and you’re looking at the tortoise,” he said. “But look at the words they use; it tells a great deal.”

I swore that I would never mention that man again, and yet there he is. Mike Gravel is the tortoise of the tortoise and hare analogy. Which suggests that the seven candidates running more likely to get the nomination than he, and the group not running more likely to get the nomination than he — a list that I would have to say includes Jimmy Carter — are going to sit down at some point and wake up to see that Gravel has wandered past them somehow or other. I do not understand the metaphor.

Item #2: Speaking to some 50 people gathered in front of Main Hall at the University of Montana Tuesday, World War II and Korean War veteran Col. Sam A. Roberts called on the crowd to do two things: support the troops and have patience. […]
Speakers read letters from Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester and Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg detailing each lawmaker’s support for America’s troops in Iraq and the veterans in need of health care.

Baucus wrote, “One thing we can all agree on is that our troops deserve 100 percent of our support,” a sentiment echoed by all who spoke at the event.

Roberts ended his remarks with a plea to study history. “Historical facts will give you a basis for your judgments,” he said. “If we knew our history, we’d agree on most things.”[…]

Allie Harrison, president of the UM College Republicans, said the group wished to avoid a “political rally” atmosphere and instead focus on expressing support for America’s military.

However, a press release authored by Selph stated, “We have stood idly by while others offered criticism and no ideas,” and “We want Senators Tester and Baucus to understand that they are going against the wishes of these Montanans if they vote to tuck tail and run.”

This has always been a curious framing technique, and a strange glimpse into the mind of committed non-partisan. “Support the Troops” is an empty phrase — the bumper sticker of which means “I favor this War” — but to use the phrase with both meanings is to believe that Jon Tester and Max Baucus are in league with the folks in Portland the other week who burned an American flag and an effigy of an American soldier.

Item #3:
In that same breath, however, McConnell criticized the Democrats for spending too much time on issues of little consequence in their first two months in control, including House Democrats' early passage of six priority legislative items such as a minimum-wage increase, stem-cell research funding, lower interest rates for college loans and implementing some outstanding recommendations of the 9/11 commission.

Yes. Meaningless issues such as those.

Item #4, from a William Kristol of the Weekly Standard:

In any case, Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 might remember this: The American political system has primaries as well as general elections. In 1978 and 1980, as Reagan conservatives took over the party from detente-establishment types, Reaganite challengers ousted incumbent GOP senators in New Jersey and New York. Surely there are victory-oriented Republicans who might step forward today in Nebraska, Virginia, Oregon, and Maine-and, if necessary, in Tennessee, Minnesota, and New
Hampshire-to seek to vindicate the honor, and brighten the future, of
the party of Reagan.

Yes. Do it. Defeat all of those Republican Senate candidates with fervent Iraq War supporters. Yes. Please. Nothing would make me happier.

He does raise an interesting point about the Republican Party that has always fascinated me. Eisenhower — Nixon (a bit troubling, but go with it) — Ford were more dovish than Truman — Johnson — and yes, Carter (sort of ramped up the Cold War as it was dying down and pushed detente away, Bob Dole believed at the time that our furor over Afghanistan at the Soviet Union had a lot to do with distracting the public from the Iran Hostage Crisis.) Ahh… The wonders of Detente. Had we let it take hold and ran with it, the Soviet Union would have fallen a decade later, and Russia would have either been a little more democratic or roughly as authoritarian as it is now. Get me those Republicans and I might vote for them.  Over Hillary Clinton, who I have no intention of voting for.
Say… Is there a embryonic Nightline “Great Britain: Held Hostage” nightly program on in Great Britain right now?

I saw this tacked on the wall of the bathroom of a local establishment I tend to use the restroom of after consuming 16 ounces of Mocha… (I make it a point to use it, because I frequently write graffiti on the bathroom walls and engage in some vague anonymous interaction on minutiae.)  I am using a computer at that establishment at this very moment, actually.
It was a flyer printed out from our good friends of Alex Jones and his infowars/prisonplanet/911truthoutnow/loosechange contingency.  (Actually amongst the websites mentioned is one to davidicke.com, who — I will note — believes our political leaders are literally reptilian monsters.  He did get the color of the universe correct, though, so I will give you that.  Except maybe that was before they changed the color of the universe — I don’t quite remember.)
“For Those Who Do Not Yet Know!  World Trade Center Building 7.  was the THIRD building to be completely destroyed on 9-11.  No steel framed skyscraper has ever, in our recorded history, falled due to fire (EVER), yet 3 were claimed to have…”

etc etc

“President Bush Lied to US!  YOUR Tax dollars fund this Illegal War on “Terror”, based on Lies!  Schools are closing, homeless people in the streets right now, Who will Stop This?  YOU CAN”

Okay.  Flip the item over and you have some propaganda on the Real ID Act.  But what I am wondering is the call to action.  On both sides, we are invited to…

“Contact Walden and let him know that you oppose his support for the War on Terror!” and Representative Walden’s website … and… “Contact Walden and let him know you want to see Schools re-opened, Homeless shelters re-opened, Community Programs funded with YOUR Taxes, not Federal ID’s based on a false War on Terror.”

Walden?  Greg Walden?  Why am I being asked to contact Greg Walden?  Was this imported from Eastern Oregon?  Surely Earl Blumenauer, David Wu, Peter DeFazio, and Darlene Hooley need to be informed about the oh-so-prescient 9/11 conspiracy.  (And while one or two of those mentioned Democratic Representatives are clear of wrong doing on the “Real ID” score, shouldn’t we be asked to harrang Washington Governor Christine Gregoire about “Real ID” right now?)

Is this partisan, and if so why?  It does not befit the Movement to tell us that if we fold up our 20 dollar bills just right, we will the towers falling… the great Masonic Conspiracy of two currency designs ago.

I had a sense of dread sitting at the public library yesterday afternoon pursuing the new issue of the New Republic.  The new cover design, portrait of the cover feature subject, makes me cringe — particularly as I guage that the magazine is proud of this new departure.  Just in case you want a video prolouge of this issue, here it is on youtube.  A less rigid presentation I cannot possibly conjure.
Okay.  So the magazine came to the sort of emerging unconventional conventional wisdom of Hillary Clinton on Iraq — what be she but a “hawk”?  And if you watch the video prolouge, we get to a cringe-inducing comment “Also on the Hillary Clinton subject” on an essay about a book on the “19th Century Hillary Clinton”.  Interestingly, if you google that phrase you will get a mention of the woman who ran before the subject of this one — Victoria Woodhull — as opposed to Belva Lockwood — who somehow or other The New Republic spliced meaning to define the latter as “serious” and the former as not.  I remember Woodhull’s presidential run from some lesson plans in an English grammar textbook, which combined with some lesson plans that had students conjugate a couple sentences about Carl Barks’s Donald Duck comics was about when I divined that the sausage factory of English textbooks runs us through Graduate students trying to amuse themselves and educate the middle school and high school students on their interests.
So, this article about Woodhull ends with Woodhull murmuring that women will be elected soon enough, and indeed years later — so the article states — Jeanette Rankin was elected to the House of Representatives from Wyoming.  I slid out my pen, crossed out Wyoming, and wrote above it “Montana”.  I invite everyone to go to their local bookstore and do so to every copy of the New Republic that they can until the manager of the store tells you to stop and leave.

Hey!  Dick Gephardt is now a lobbyist for Turkey!

The Ned Lamont article spares me from something I was thinking I would do — which is figure out where the hell he is.  It comes to no completion, Ned Lamont not lending himself to much political relevance.  Interestingly enough, Lamont endorsed Chris Dodd for president.  Which gets Chris Dodd nowhere in particular.  Nor does it get Ned Lamont anywhere.
The musing on how neo-conservatives seem to leave radical Left-wing ideologies to  arrive at their new conservative haunts with no steps in between and no sense of gradations– (your David Horowitzes) which means at both steps of their ideological journeys they could engage in Liberal-bashing — has never ceased to bemuse me.  This article adds little to my thoughts, but maybe it will to someone.
Actually, that’s the problem with the last two issues of the New Republic.  It is remarkably toothless.  I do not need to read them.  Maybe I never needed to read the New Republic, much maligned in the liberal blogosphere, but I have less use for the magazine now.

Well, this is one side of the story…

AMID this particularly bizarre period of federal politics, the matter of a Liberal preselection for a marginal Victorian seat held by Labor might appear trivial. It is not. The Liberal Party’s endorsement of former federal MP Ken Aldred for the seat of Holt represents a potentially astonishing resurrection for a man of objectionable political and personal viewpoints.

The threat of Mr Aldred’s return to federal politics seems unlikely: the Prime Minister and Peter Costello have moved quickly and wisely to ensure the preselection choice will be rejected by the Victorian administrative committee, which has the right of veto. How Mr Aldred came to be selected, let alone why he is still a member of the Liberal Party, is perhaps a conspiracy theory unto itself — but the party also preselected Gary Anderton, whose internet blog contained prejudicial and racist comments, as candidate for Lyndhurst in the recent state election. He didn’t make it; Ken Aldred shouldn’t remake it. Politicians are there to serve the public, not use Parliament for their own curious purposes.

That’s a mildly interesting story.  Isn’t it?

“The administrative committee considers that Mr Aldred is not a suitable person to receive the endorsement of the Liberal Party.”

Okay.  Maybe not so interesting, but it blipped on my radar nonetheless.

This brief foray into Australian political matters has been brought to you by our favourite political cult leader and conspiracy theorist… that, of course, being Lyn Marcus.