“America is no longer a free country, in the old sense; and liberty is, increasingly, a mere rhetorical figure. … No thinking citizen, I venture to say, can express in freedom more than a part of his honest convictions.  I do not of course refer to convictions that are frankly criminal.  I do mean that everywhere, on every hand, free speech is choked off in one direction or another.  The only way in which an American citizen who is really interested in all the social and political problems of his country can preserve any freedom of expression, is to choose the mob that is most sympathetic to him, and abide under that mob.”

— Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Harper’s Magazine 1922

Nay.

Signs of the Silly Season, and worth mentioning: in the vacuum of actual news about the political contest between Obama and McCain, and with the speculation on who should be the vice-presidential pick, one name has bounced into view as a speculative possible vice presidential pick for Obama.

Chet Edwards.

Representative Chet Edwards of a Congressional District in Texas, round about Waco.

Now, you may go ahead and google the name to see the people weighing the pluses and negatives about picking Chet Edwards — one negative being that he holds the distinction of being in the most Republican district of any Democratic Congress-critter and holds a record which reflects such a distinction, for instance, and one positive being that he is evidentally telegenic and intelligent and… whatever.  But… I suggest that there is not a whole lot of point to weighing these things.

A stray comment from Nancy Pelosi, and political pundits of some varieties go ahead and look into the absurd notion that Obama is going to tap Chet Edwards.

Come to think of it, Obama’s call for National Action toward proper tire inflation, mind you a direct answer to a direct question which was merely tangeantly about Government Energy Policy — “What Can, as a mere everyday citizen do?” — recalls not only Jimmy Carter’s “Wear a Sweater” statement but also George W Bush’s “Shop!”

That line let me know in the post 9/11, more specifically post – Bullhorn, 90 percent approval rating America that the President was still a Douchebag.

There is a whole genre of these “practical advice from major Political figures for practical situations under over-arching problems” statments.  And there’s a fine line between statements which are out of touch and suggestive of no further policy or callousness toward the plight of the Average American on one hand and measures which acknowledge no quick fix with fungible returns somewhat out of the purview of anyone’s hands.

One sign that the political potency against Obama’s tire appeal has deflated is shown with this random Rush Limabugh fan’s American Prospect Comment.  It’s a partisan blind insistence that if the ridicule about McCain’s turn-around dissipates when you take his whole comments in better context.  This is a Partisan tendency which everyone needs to check with a level of self-awareness.  What comes immediately to mind was some wrangling about a bit of Southern accent affectation which Hillary Clinton took on in a campaign swing, and seemingly everyone’s insistence that if you pull out further you’d see that this did not show a level of pandering and was Drudge-fueled nonsense.  It was somewhat silly, but what I saw when I took that contextual look was pretty much the same thing I saw when snipped right at the quote.  And, her image remained such that Obama gained in that Primary Contest, which last I checked he won.

Come to think of it, the most sinister example of this genre of “practical advice” for “what Average American can do” came with an explnation for what one ought to do with Orange Alert.  Visqueen and Duct Tape.  That may be a variant with subtle altered perimeters, though.

Paris Hilton PONED John McCain.

Maybe.

I should have posted this thought to this Internet thingamajing, and that I did not means that you have no reason to believe me when I write this, but I was thinking that Ms. Hilton ought to post up a video where she outlines, oh so ironically, an intelligent sounding Energy Policy.

In the end the product gives me a queasy feeling.  It’s Paris Hilton, who identifies herself as a “Celebrity”.  That is her occupation — “Celebrity”.  She touches down on her identifying characteristics of a ditzy Valley Girl, and we watch this Vacuous Act.  And I still don’t really know why I am aware o f her existence.

More telling the “hybrid” she proposes of the McCain policy of “off-shore drilling” and the Obama “emphasis on renewable technology” is both flawed, and largely the policy Obama has landed on.  Except that where Hilton states — meaninglessly for her purposes — that the off-shore drilling will carry us to the renewable technology (tax credits to Detroit for development, referenced just so she can throw in the word “tax credits” — aka another somewhat nuanced policy concept), she is wrong, even if Obama picked that up for some political expediency of where the public opinion has landed.  In Obama’s case, it is part of that “post-partisan” language some liberals appear to not have noticed during the primary season, and he knows the “limited drilling” is essentially cosmetic.

I suppose that “Gay Cost Prayer Team” which congregated in front of a gas station and prayed for gas prices to fall believe they are onto something, what with gas prices having fallen down a dime.  Apparently Americans have cut back on gas, demands has actually fallen.  That and tapping the Federal Oil Reserve — another switcheroo Obama has undertaken, and my basic thought on that is that I don’t have a problem with that so much as I have a problem with it becoming a habit — but if you must lower the price of Oil, that’s where you go.  And then there’s that 2008 version of the Carter “Wear a Sweater” seen in the mocked -over “Inflate your tires” gets us.

And so we head over to the next items in the Silly Season.  McCain stands before a crowd of Harley enthusiasts and offers up his wife to a raunchy  topless beauty contest versus Obama is heckled by a demand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  It could be worse.  John Edwards could be the nominee, and what’s in the National Enquirer would be in the front page of the newspapers.  As opposed to Paris Hilton.

Obama cannot possibly be The One.  Nixon was The One.  There can not be two Ones.  Unless, perhaps, Nixon was lying about being The One.

Obama will just have to suffice as, so says Hal Lindsey, a precursor to The One if Nixon was indeed lying, or a post-script if Nixon was telling the truth in his boastful claim of being “The One”.

McCain, meanwhile, is the American President that Americans have been waiting for.  Here in America.  America, F<>> Yeah!

I remember when I first learned about wikipedia, which for all its faults and for the way it maddens educators is an essential website.  I posted something online about Floyd Paxton and saw that a discussion had popped up with the wikipedia denziens on wheter his invention warranted an entry.  Floyd Paxton, of Selah, Washington, invented the “Kwik Lok” bread fastener, and founded the Kwik Lok Corporation.  I am referring to the bread-clip.  He ran for the Republican nomination for governor of Washington State and was a member in good standing in the John Birch Society.  Not being an authorative source, and being non specific on everything, the entry was rejected.

I think it may be time for someone or someones to dredge up some primary sources and authorities, and force something on Floyd Paxton, and “Kwik Lok Corporation”, and bread-clip or fastener.

A comment I made on this blog referenced the Enumclaw Incident.  This spurred me to a look up of “Enumclaw” at wikipedia to see how much the Horse incident figured in that article.  Lo and behold, the first thing on the page is a link that directs you to the man by way of the “Enumclaw Horse Incident”.  But that is all.  The discussion section, however, is dominated by disputes over the proper role of the occurence in discussing Enumclaw — indeed, other than two comments concerning the municipality’s boundaries, that is all there is over there.  The decision was made to leave the horse out of the wikipedia entry, which is probably the right decision.  But the opening link probably more than makes up for the Mercy Granted to Enumclaw.

And then there is that horse dealy thing.  What we seem to have with the discussion are some demands to link to a related horse video, apparently popular in some corners of the Internet.  When the video link is dismissed as not being necessary — and it is the very definition of “gratuitous” — with an apologetic reference to censorship in other countries, it’s met with the “Censorship” charge, a foreboding of its implications in the free world.  I suppose there is a point — it’s an excuse that masks the real reason (gratuitous)… meanwhile there reamins an entry on “Tiananmen Square”, surely not seen by anyone in China right now.

Also we get some very detailed matter-of-fact disucssion of the minutiae of the act itself.  Which, I suppose, means that anyone who thinks the actual entry skips over too much information has back-up information available at their disposal.

To cleanse the pallete, I suggest a look at the entry for the “Connecticut for Lieberman Party“, with the question — regarding this moment in the party’s history:

On August 9, 2006, the day following the primary, Lieberman supporter Stuart R. Korchin changed his party registration to Connecticut for Lieberman.^[9] The change was not entered in the state’s electronic voter database, however.^[10]

This part of the dispute is essential to who controls the party right now, so:  is this claim an act of retro-fitting to clear over the problem of not having that single member when Orman took control of the party?  Was this he just simply covering his tracks?

From the wikipedia article on Thomas Dewey:

Indeed, given Truman’s sinking popularity and the Democratic Party’s three-way split (between Truman, Henry A. Wallace, and Strom Thurmond), Dewey had seemed unstoppable. Republicans figured that all they had to do to win was to avoid making any major mistakes, and as such Dewey did not take any risks. He spoke in platitudes, trying to transcend politics. Speech after speech was filled with empty statements of the obvious, such as the famous quote: “You know that your future is still ahead of you.” An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal summed it up:

No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead.^[16]

Part of the reason Dewey ran such a cautious, vague campaign was because of his experiences as a presidential candidate in 1944. In that election Dewey felt that he had allowed Franklin Roosevelt to draw him into a partisan, verbal “mudslinging” match, and he believed that this had cost him votes. As such, Dewey was convinced in 1948 to appear as non-partisan as possible, and to emphasize the positive aspects of his campaign while ignoring his opponent. This strategy proved to be a major mistake, as it allowed Truman to repeatedly criticize and ridicule Dewey, while Dewey never answered any of Truman’s criticisms.^[17

The latest issue of  The Weekly Standard has an article of “There is Hope Yet for McCain” by discussing the Thomas Dewey — Harry Truman race.  The one thing The Weekly Standard article posits on is Dewey’s lack of policy specifics.  This past week Barack Obama’s Energy speech was stepped on and the air leaked out regarding any coverage as McCain threw out the “Celebrity Ad”, the Moses web ad, and played the “Race Card Card”.  I do think that Obama will end up winning the election by, “somewhere between a merely large margin and a landslide”, but McCain is playing the deck he has fairly well, and has successfully done a few things right.  I will note also that the celebrity ad featured words against the Obama Energy speech, but no one noticed.

The “Race Card Card” is instructive.  This election is on some level about race, there’s a black man who might be the first black president, there is not any way of avoiding that.  That fact plays both positively and negatively in electoral terms, and by trying to blunt any reference Obama might give in positive terms about getting America this “historical opportunity, and further bringing it the fore it would stop any criticism by way of the negative — if and when an ad of subtle innuendo, and it will have to be fairly subtle ala the Harold Ford Playboy Mansion ad obstensibly about something else — the marker is there to not criticize the ad.  So, the positive effects are blunted and the negative is heightened.

I might also point out that if you consider Dewey as having played the “Prevent Defense”, the comparison is that everyone remembers when that didn’t work in a game and forgets the many boring times the Prevent Defense did effectively kill the clock in a game.  So Dewey losing to Truman was the equivalent of that famed playoff game where the Buffalo Bills came back to beat the Houston Texans Oilers.(1)  Meanwhile, Clinton defeated Dole and Nixon defeated Humphrey and Dole and Humphrey in the waning days of the election claimed to be the next Truman.

(1) Correction made as per comment.  What’s weird is that as I typed that, I had the thought in mind that I could very easily make that error, and yet… I did.  As per the chronology, I am thinking a little nonlinear here, so I shrug that one off, even though all concerns would be wiped out with a change of the word “was” to “is” thus better suggesting a vantage point not from 1948 but from the here and now of 2008.