As of this posting, you still have something over an hour in the state of Washington to hand in your ballot.

And, before the night passes away, it is worth taking .  Obama broke the Sound Barrier — or something like that — to get over to Seattle to ensure that Patty Murray doesn’t somehow slip through the cracks in Washington’s lame “Top Two” Primary — that apathy doesn’t somehow produce a “Democratic” candidate along the lines of Oklahoma’s Jim Rogers — as has been wont to happen this cycle.
We await to see if what has been wont to happen on the Republican side happens — that come if Clint Didier beating out Dino Rossi.

But, for the local color and celebration of American Democracy where Everyone gets onto the ballot — and Jim Rogers continues on to the November ballot if a state party is apathetic enough — here are several candidates that you’ll never hear from again.
Until the invariably run again in two years.

Will Baker who prefers the “Reform Party”, a political party I’d thought had passed into the nethers of Ross Perot’s closet.  He’s taking forward with Perot’s old platform ideas, and is running against the Conspiracy.

Fact: Secretary of State Sam Reed and several County Auditors are manipulating the 2010 U.S. Senate election. How?Fact: Reed has cancelled the entire 2010 printed Washington State Primary Voters’ Pamphlet and is hiding information about how to appear in some counties local Voters’ Pamphlet from some candidates.
He’s also running against Barack Obama’s strong arm election tactics in his 1996 Illinois legislator race.  Interestingly enough, Obama’s campaign ran with that, supporters telling people that it shows that he is indeed “tough”.

Goodspaceguy is running.  I say let his voters pamphlet information speak for itself.

Elected Experience:
Ten times, voters rejected Goodspaceguy’s economic program!

Prediction: he will never pull a Jim Rogers.  Name is not right.

Dear fellow sheeple, you are the flim-flammed, manipulated power base. Please think of your Earth as a beautiful spaceship, traveling around your Sun in your solar system. Please think of yourselves as crewmembers, helping to operate and improve Spaceship Earth (for even the homeless.)

It is your destiny to start the orbital space colonization of your solar system. You have already spent the money! Consequently you should already have more than 200 habitats orbiting your Earth, Moon, Sun, and Mars.  But you don’t! Why? Because your wasteful leaders have not studied orbital space colonization. Instead, yearly, they routinely waste billions and billions of your dollars.

Mike Latimer is running as a Theocrat.

My name is Mike Latimer, and I am running for US Senate. It’s not an accident that our nation is having so many problems at this time. God is trying to get our attention and if He doesn’t get it soonour nation’s woes can get a lot worse. God has the answer for all our problems, but first He wants to correct our attitude as a nation. I believe the best way to do that is for us to understand His heart. His desire is to bless our nation to the point of making the rest of the world envies of the blessings He is bestowing on us. The catch is, we are tying his hands by our actions. We have kicked God out of our schools, out of our government and out of many of our churches along with His laws. So how do we fix it? Invite him back in to give Him the honor He is so richly due and set our laws to match His. Stop the abortions, stop the homosexual agenda being pushed forward as an acceptable lifestyle, put restrictions on the pornography that is invading our lives, and give the Bible, prayer, and Jesus their rightful place in our schools. We need leaders that hear God’s voice and will follow His direction to set our nation on His course and find His blessings for us.

William Edward Chovil is a perennial.

What kind of America do Americans want? The one our founders planned for us? The one America’s anti-founders are giving us now?

Skipping to the Fourth Congressional District.  This is going to be a bit loopy, I suspect.

What you need to know here is that there is a candidate who prefers the “Tea Party“– who says:

Return this country to the rule of Common Law, as the Constitution requires (Common Law only has two precepts: “Do all you have agreed to do,” the basis of all contracts, and “Do not diminish the life, liberty, or property of another.” Following those two simple rules would eliminate the need for more than 90% of the often unconstitutional statutes currently encumbering our law books to the point of insanity).

Thank you, Thomas Jefferson.
And there’s a Constitution Party candidate.

Also, Gordon Allen Pross… somehow didn’t make the ballot.  Though he once upon a time intended on it.  This marks the first time since he started running in 1998.

, and

Here’s an interesting example of a group exercising their “Right to Petition”, and you may have heard about this.

Governors across the country, including Pennsylvania’s, have received letters ordering them to step down from office in three days — the first step in a quasi-religious, “freedom movement” group’s elaborate plan to disband parts of the U.S. government, according to the group’s website.

Interesting.  This was the copy found in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  Note the inclusion of “including Pennsylvania”.  So…

Governors across the country — including Ohio’s Ted Strickland — have received letters ordering them to step down from office in three days, the first step in a quasi-religious, “freedom movement” group’s elaborate plan to disband parts of the U.S. government, according to the group’s Web site.

It is always good to insert the local angle into the AP copy.  Usually I see it in the headline, though.

The group, calling itself the Guardians of the free Republics, describes the plan as a nonviolent and legal attempt to “restore the true Republic.” Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials said there did not appear to be an immediate threat of violence.
Just a demand to quit within three days, in order to implement –?

“Everything is going to be orderly and no one is going to be harmed in this movement,” said Billy Ray Hall, a man who identified himself as a follower of the Guardians of the free Republics. “It’s going to be really good. There’s going to be funds enough for everybody.” [...]

Funds enough for everyone?  What is this — the Diggers?

Guardians of the free Republics emphasize the peaceful nature of their proposed revolution, although their wording is at times opaque and foreboding.  The group believes that an act of Congress passed in the late 1800s effectively transformed the United States into a corporation, Hall said. Since then, the American people have been serving corporate masters.

The plan to restore America begins with the assembly of “de jure grand juries” in all 50 states, according to the group’s Web site. Followers were asked to sign a “covenant of office” and are described as “elders.” The group must act quickly to avert some impending enforcement of martial law, said group leader Sam Kennedy on his Internet radio program.

So you now have a choice between … oh, Christine Gregorie or Ted Strickland or Rick Perry or whoever – or these guys?

Kennedy, who said the group was attracting followers in droves from the so-called freedom movement, described this plan as a “revelation” and compared the coming events to “a time to parallel the storming of Jericho and all the great Biblical events of history.”

“Calamity is coming for this world,” he said on the radio program, adding that it would be peaceful. “We forgive all who repent for their crimes against mankind. You could also expect that many of those people will not repent, and if they are recidivists we will deal with them accordingly.”

Meanwhile, in Yakima, Washington:

Actually this has little or nothing to do with the Guardians of the free Republics — perhaps there’s something to be made in individuals guarding the free republic —  it’s just that I’ve always had a desire to tap in an incongruent “Meanwhile, in Yakima, Washington.”  I don’t know why.
The Stranger, the alternative paper in Seattle, has a beat reporter milling about the Yakima Valley — apparently in search for the whole energy of this Selah fellow…

A 63-year-old Yakima County man has been charged with threatening to kill U.S. Sen. Patty Murray over her support of the health-care overhaul.The FBI and local police arrested Charles Alan Wilson at his Selah home early Tuesday. Wilson was scheduled to make an appearance in U.S. District Court in Yakima, and he will then be transported to Seattle, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

According to the charges, staffers in Murray’s office in the Jackson Building in downtown Seattle had become concerned over a series of phone calls by an unknown man over the past several months. The calls came from a blocked number, and often were made in the evenings or on weekends.

Usually, according to a staffer identified by the initials “M.G.,” the calls were merely vulgar and harassing.

But on March 22, “the caller began to make overt threats to kill and/or injure Senator Murray,” according to the complaint signed by FBI Agent Carolyn Woodbury.

In that message, a man the FBI says it has identified as Wilson stated, “I hope you realize there’s a target on your back now … Kill the [expletive] senator! I’ll donate the lead.”

In several other vulgar and profanity-laced messages left over the next week, the caller repeatedly threatened the Democratic senator’s life and said he “hopes somebody kills” President Obama as well, according to portions of transcripts in the complaint.

We will see, I suppose an odd little connection between the conspiracy spewing Truther Tea Partier amped around the similar circumstances surrounding the Presidency of James Garfield and friends with Obama to the threatener of Patty Murray.  Maybe I should go ahead and defend the conspiracy Truther Tea Partier right here and now.  Or maybe I should wonder why I tossed the religous end times “Dissolve the Government” freaks into this picture.

Well, I suppose the Stranger article is all about Local Color.  A bit of background for explanation.

The tanks are still there, 177 in all, packed with 53 million gallons of radioactive waste. One million gallons have leached into the desert soil.
A decade from now, this byproduct of the atomic age at Hanford nuclear reservation was to be turned into 14-foot-long glass rods, loaded in steel canisters and shipped to Nevada, where it could sit forever beneath a mountain. An additional 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel would go with it.
But now the worst waste from the country’s most polluted place has nowhere to go.
The Obama administration’s recent decision to withdraw licensing to build a high-level nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain leaves future storage of the Manhattan Project’s nastiest goop undecided. Some worry the move means waste could remain at Hanford indefinitely and that nuclear garbage from elsewhere might even join it. [...]
“A lot of us were quite confident way back in 1995 that we would probably end up right at this spot,” said Todd Martin, former chairman of the Hanford Advisory Board, an independent, nonpartisan group that attempts to advise the Energy Department on Hanford cleanup. “I’m much more concerned about when we’re going to make our first teaspoon of glass.”

It’s the by-product of living in a Vast Nuclear Wasteland.

It appears that on March 9, 2010 Gordon Allen Pross made it as official as these things can be made.  Which is to say, he put up his customary website.

Gordon Allen Pross.  Will be running for the Republican nomination.  For United States Senate.

He’s run for the House or the Senate every election season since 1998.  He was the Democratic nominee for the fourth Congressional District in 1998, which naturally just served to remind the Democrats to get a goddamned candidate from then on out.

And apparently, in 2007, he made a bid for the Presidency, to honor the memory of Tim Russert?

Honestly, I didn’t notice he was running.  Which is unfortunate.  Because if I had noticed, I’d surely have left a blog post noting it, and thus the percentage of the “100% Censorship” would have been lowered to… I guess the 99.999% level?  I guess I didn’t notice it because of all that censorship?

Really, I’m pretty sure he could have gotten his name on the New Hampshire ballot with a little effort.  I’m pretty sure if he sent a letter to some small town newspapers in his area, the papers would have published his letter — gotta fill the space next to the Bridge Column somehow.  Otherwise, we’re back to the parable: if a bear pisses in the woods, and nobody’s there to see it — ???

Just to be sure, he has his sites on Patty Murray, as you can see with his utilization of 2 “Don’t Tread on Me” snake images and a picture of Abraham Lincoln, as he runs with a mix of William Jennings Bryan flair with a “GOLD~SILVER~STANDARD“ and something about Axe Tax, almost but not quite set up in a “Cross”.

I may have finally soured on this type of political run.  I once thought of them as a decent enough diversion for our democratic system — everyone gets to the starting line — this will sort away.  But it occurs to me that Serious Times call for a grim item of utmost Seriousness.   If I was once inclined to vaguely encourage this type of thing, I am now inclined to vaguely discourage them.  Sure, this thing doesn’t occupy all that much space, but — ???

And with Gordon Allen Pross, I once again keep coming back to the question:  What does this man think he’s doing?

The parting shot lobbed toward Dennis Kucinich.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who flew with Obama, then walked into an Ohio senior citizen center with the chief executive in time to hear a voice from the audience yell out, “Vote yes.”

A smiling Obama turned to the liberal lawmaker and said, “Did you hear that, Dennis?” Then, turning back to the audience, he added, “Go ahead, say that again.”

“Vote yes!” came back the reply.

I think that was too subtle.  Obama should have marched out with the “Dennis Kucinich Arm Twisting Marching Band” — consisting of half a dozen drummers — and devoted copious amounts of speech time to “Vegan Congressmen”, “two time presidential candidates who seem inclined toward a third and fourth run” and “shorties”.  Also he might have phrased these with the word “some” as in “There are some Vegan Congressmen who would make the perfect the enemy of the good.”

To turn my attention to other opponents of the Health care push by Obama… there are certainly some weird people out there.

why, hell, sooner or later you dumb bastards will be expecting to actually have the right to vote for them to put them in congress, instead of just leaving it up to the greater wisdom of bill gates, george soros, bill ayers or bill maher.  or, that they explain themselves to you.  hell, who can be bothered with all that?

they do not publish e-mail.  they have web-sites that accept email from their districts only.  far be it for the lazy fucks to actually have to read what their “constituents” say.

i doubt these will be read by my illustrious representatives, but i have sent the following missives anyway, which i thought i would publish here, in case any of them are washington rebel readers.

friends, buy guns and buy ammo, and lay in a proper store of potables, canned veggies, canned meats, and other fat laden edibles.  and, i would also suggest all the rice, flour, pastas and canned butter substitutes you can lay your hands on: butter flavored crisco will do.  buy gallons and gallons of olive & soy oil, and more peanut butter than you could ever conceive of eating, in two lifetimes.  and, do not forget dehydrated potatoes, … , mashed, au gratin or scalloped.  ummers.

it is going to come to that. [...]

dear speaker pelosi:
if the house of representative “passes” health care “reform” on the “slaughter solution,” please be advised that such will be in derogation of your obligations as a member of congress to entered a recorded vote on the merits of such a “bill.”
i believe the process patently unconstitutional.
i also believe it to be a usurpation of dictatorial power by the democratic party.
it will not stand.  and, you incite civil war.

dear representative inslee:
jay, i practiced law w/ you in yakima county, before you sought more hospitable climes for your politics on the wet side.
you court civil war with this “slaughter solution” maneuver.  it is unwise in the extreme.

Well, I guess he’s the one who will be voting that-away.  And… stock-piling his ammo and seeds for the coming Civil War incited by Jay Inslee and Nancy Pelosi, but not stopped by Doc Hastings.

This is interesting enough.

Hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning conservative grass-roots movement, Mary Ruth Edwards announced Monday that she would run for Doc Hastings’ seat in the U.S. House.

Edwards, a 49-year-old Prosser elementary school teacher, will run as a Constitution Party candidate. She announced her candidacy with a news release, joining a race that includes Democrat Jay Clough, who announced in November that he was running.

Hastings has not announced plans for a campaign but is the Republican Party’s presumptive candidate in the 4th Congressional District, which he has represented since winning election in 1994.

Edwards is a former Marine and a single mother of two, who advises the drama department at Prosser High School along with her job teaching at Whitstran Elementary School. In 2009 she founded a local group within the 912 Project — the grass-roots movement led by conservative commentator Glenn Beck. She is running on a platform of state sovereignty and strict constitutionalism.

What’s a Glen Beck-ist doing brainwashing our school children?
Okay, never mind that, though.  The more interesting thing for me is that the commenters don’t know about Washington State’s election process.

This is a really stupid move because third parties never win. She should challenge Doc in the primary instead of splitting the conservative vote in the general election and increasing the chances that a socialist liberal will win. Fortunately, Doc will still win despite losing a few votes to this nobody.

You are absolutely right! Someone should try to talk sense into this person. If she doesn’t like the job that Hastings is doing then challenge him in the primary, don’t dillute the conservative vote and give the left wing progressives a chance at taking the seat.

If Ms. Edwards was serious she would run as Republican. It would nice to have some alternative Republicans to choose from for Congress but no way will I support a third party candidate. This is one thing Michele Strobel understands in her campaign against Norm Johnson – running as a Republican is the best way to defeat an incumbent in Central Washington. That’s exactly what Curtis King did when he beat Jim Clements.

Hey.  They passed this law in 2004.  You should know it.

Apparently there’s a bit of a hubbub amongst a handful of conservative bloggers about a quote in the San Francisco Chronicle.  I am kind of familiar with this hack news story format.  There is a well selling book that is in a Media firestorm.  You find the book seller that is not selling the book.  As you can imagine, there are any number of books in the San Francisco area where Sarah Palin’s book does not sell, and does not fit the clientelle.  So we get a quote, and the great giant media outlet “Pajamas Media” and “Allah Pundit” seize upon it, and look up some other books they sell.  The Washington Times goes on to publish in their section pulling out from mainly conservative blogs.

Incidentally, I don’t think her book is in the Top 20 Best sellers list at Powells, though they certainly sell it.

Palin is not visiting San Francisco.  She probably should; I think she would have an audience.  But Sarah Palin’s book tour is taking her where her fans are, into every Palookaville and Dix in the nation.  In the Internet era, enough people are obsessed with following her that if you really wanted to, you could indeed follow her travels.   I would think that the Thanksgiving Day weekend would be a sort of prime time slot, the people of that township honored by her presence on an American Holiday weekend.  This is peculiar.  There’s another Sarah Palin minor tempest in a teapot scandal — about the same size as looking into books from bookstores not selling her book — which is making the rounds.  The details slide in paragraphs deep in a local news piece.  Care if you must, but what is interesting is that Sarah Palin spent Thanksgiving in…

… Kennewick, Washington.  Huh.  Really?  (I should note that I first learned that from Rick Emerson’s website.)

Reading the copy in the Tri-City Herald, I am somehow reminded of something from Sarah Palin watcher Andrew Sullivan.   The first mention, or one of the first mentions, of Sarah Palin came in the Anchorage Daily.

Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana. And there, at J.C. Penney’s cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist.

”We want to see Ivana,” said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, ”because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.”

And now Kennewick has its own glamour and culture?

An old story from the Summer, and there’s nothing particularly new here.  But something about this has brought increased news-worthy relevance.

Diners at a restaurant in Prosser were startled Monday when a furry marmot wandered through the front door and settled into a corner.
That was no surprise to city Administrator Charlie Bush, who says the big rodents have long been a problem in the central Washington wine town.

And so the residents of Prosser, Washington continue their marmot problems.  It’s a long time problem, and here I go back to that news story which, for some reason or other, “went viral” a few years ago about the Marmots attacking an area manufactured home community — er trailer park – which was the biggest news story to hit South Central Washington since the area started giving the nation’s canivores spongiform encephalopathy.

In 2006 and 2007, (following the Mobile Park Attacks) the city paid $5,700 over two years to hire trappers to thin the population. But last year, the City Council ran short of money and decided to get out of the marmot-control business.

Budgetary resources are stretched thin enough that the Marmots will continue to have the lay of the land.  Theoretically, money might be tapped from the Stimulus Funds for the purpose of marmot removal, but apparently there are greater priorities for critter troubles a ways upstream.

In late September, a helicopter hovered 50 feet above the Hanford nuclear reservation, methodically hunting almost 16 square miles for radioactive poop that critters with a taste for salt spread.

Going about 80 mph, the helicopter used detection equipment attached to its sides to map out each piece with GPS coordinates.

Between the helicopter survey and the GPS coordinates, the radioactive scat can be found and removed in days rather than the months that would have been needed for people search for the poop on the ground, said Dee Millikin, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. That company is responsible for much of the environmental cleanup of central Hanford. [...]

Nevada-based National Security Technologies did the helicopter survey for $300,000 in federal stimulus money sent to Hanford.

A bit more is found here.   One important distinction: the process described here was the surveying in the process for the actual clean-up.   All in all, a news story which would appear at the end of the local news broadcasts and not the beginning, where the Giant Marmot attacks would tend to go.  Though, for attitudes, I have to wonder about this:

Posted by Bob_Allen at 10/8/09 8:12 a.m.
The “environmental” whacks never tire of spending another ton of our tax money on useless crapola.

Why must we waste our money on such frivulous things as clearing out nuclear rabbit poop?  What will those environmental whackos think of next?

Well, here he is writing a piece for the Heritage Foundation.  Drill.  Baby.  Drill.

And the comments.  What is Obama’s motives, anyway?

Lloyd Scallan – New Orleans writes:
Doc Hastings views are spot on! However, Obama will never allow drilling off or on our coast.
Within weeks after Obama took office, he (or his minions) cancelled lease sales [...]
We all better understand that Obama wants this country on its knees. With no gasoline or natural gas, most every industry will be forced to shut down (not to mention transportation). Then Obama will get just what he wants, to declare a national emergency so he can completely take over every aspect of our lives.

Why didn’t Doc Hastings write that?

Gail, Amarillo, Texas writes:
President Obama has no intention of developing energy independence or jobs for the American people. His Secretary of the Interior Mr. Salazar will follow his boss’s wishes. The President wants our country on its knees without energy and without jobs. I don’t believe that anyone can stop him from putting the country in that predicament because he believes in a one world economic plan and ignores the pain of his own people.

One World Here We Come!!

Bob Atwood Goldendale Wa. writes:
I just want to thank Doc for his work, He is a real sourse of pride for us in the NW. Something is very wrong in America today, Without people like Mr. Hastings I can’t imagine how intolerable our government would be.

Just wait til John Boehner becomes Speaker after 2010.  Then we will see Mr. Hastings UNLEASED!

Dennis, Ohio writes:
Thank you Doc for your efforts. Unfortunately, Obama and his czars are intent on the destruction of this country, our resources, and our wellbeing. There is little to be done unless we vote these people out of office as fast as we can. It may be too late already.

Face it.  It is too late.  Go ahead and leave these people in office, because it’s too late anyway.

So, Nuclear Power coming soon?

  For good or ill, good ol’ Doc Hastings will be forgoing the honor of hosting a Town Hall Meetings — full of raucousness those things are — opting instead to discuss in speeches before Chamber of Commerce units — where he will be speaking out against that “single payer” plan that is, I would say, probably backed by the majority of Obama voters — and is not in the offing. 

This is too bad.  The volitile Town Hall environment could use a sedative, and those that are on edge viewing this debate in Existential Terms need a setting to doze off.

Actually I had been wondering something about Doc Hastings.  Has he wandered anywhere from the pedestrian “Bureaucratic Maze” suggestion  (’tis why Socialism and Libertarianism are always easier, I suppose) to the more lively “Death Panel” parcel, now en vouge?  The answer seems to be no.  On the other hand, this is something that inflicted better souls.

  Johnny Isakson — Republican Senator of Georgia, for instance.  A real yahoo I had not thought of as a yahoo before this last week.   To be fair, the only real reason I’ve pegged him as “reasonable conservative” is that his 2004 Republican primary race (to replace Zell Miller, and with a Democrat who was then occupying the district most famous for Cynthia McKinney, tountamount to a general election), pitted him against a couple of loons.  So, Isakson chimed in on the “End of Life Counselling”, and his role in the past in championing it.  And then, when that became inconvenient in arguring the reasonableness and generally bipartisan nature of that particular policy, he had to pull it back in.  I guess with him we’re just in a state where he cannot allow a part of his portfolio to provide Obama with with bi-partisan cover for an item suddenly politicized.

  Then there is Chuck Grassley.  He represents a sadder example, frankly, sucking himself into the Demagougic Whirl.  It is not enough that he fits the generically understood obstructionist role in Max Baucus’s committee in that arena of wheel-dealing.  (Can we just blow that one up?)  Perhaps the fact is that the space in the role of “Obstruction” has just shifted places.

Enter Arlen Specter, the Democrat turned Republican turned Democrat who has a bit of a “trust” issue with his Pennsylvania primary voters (and, for that matter, general election voters).
  He is the one who hosted what I think can now be thought of as the sort Example number One of the Disrupted Town Hall meeting.  I do not know how that one played politically for him — he didn’t really come out looking well in handling it (unlike, for instance, Claire McCaskill of Missouri).  Polls show him now losing to his 2004 Republican primary opponent, the otherwise basically unelectable man of CATO, Pat Toomey — we’ll see how much he can twitter back some trust to someone somewhere.