#1:  Chris Dodd is being battered about quite a bit right now, from what I can tell not really deserved — he not the culprit.  But he’s easily tagged by partisans who need a dirty Democrat to hang up as a poster-critter, really the rule is that if you want to find politicians with alliances to the financial industry you look over to the states of Connecticut and Delaware.  The problem with the current outrage at AIG is that I had pretty well extrapulated it as part of the rot of the bailout bills, the “threading of the needle” which was heavily justified in not getting to the problem with their Corporate Culture.  This sort of ticking time bomb form of outrage is getting annoying:  we jump from one outrage to another — Bernie Madoff to AIG — without fully assembling it into one package.

Chris Dodd is toast, and the model for a Republican take-down of Democrats in 2010.  But does anyone believe any of the Congressional Grand-standing?  Maybe he deserved to be toast, but I have little doubt that his allowance of the Big Pile of Bonuses would not have been alleviated if the current Republican Populists had been in his position — toastier toast they oughta.

#2 and #3:  One of those curious contradictory storylines I’ve seen is this conflicting analysis visa vie Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden.  First I read that Hillary Clinton has usurped some power and role ordinarily afforded Joseph Biden, and Biden is getting less than he signed up for.  Then I read that Joseph Biden has usurped some power and role ordinarily afforded Hillary Clinton (a bigger name and star power, natch) and Hillary Clinton is getting less than she signed up for.  I don’t know if this is supposed to mean that we have a co-Vice-President co-Secretary of State combo.  And maybe some pundits are trying to stick them too fit into some pre-ordained box sizes.  Noteworthy is that Barack Obama passed on the annual GridIron Dinner, a passing I whole-heartedly agree with and hope will be continued by future administrations to tap down a certain chummy back-slapping with the press corp, and sent Biden instead.  At the very least, Joseph Biden has been inserted into a hefty ceremonial role.

One thing that needs be said about Hillary Clinton — the Clinton Problem was my general inability to sepearate the two Clintons and her likely administration, the chief point of departure for my basic weariness in her acceptance, reaffirmed as the nation wrestles with the current Financial Meelee, with large points of departure from policies enacted and signed into law during Bill Clinton’s Administration.  It is impossible to get ahold of whether Bill Clinton was a good president or not, and overall I’m glad Hillary Clinton is working for President Obama instead of Obama working for President Hillary Clinton.

#4:  Bill Richardson, the man who should probably be Commerce Secretary (Quick!  Give me the details of the scandal that derailed him from that position.  And don’t cheat by googling it up!)  has suspended the Death Penalty down there in New Mexico.  The suspension of the death penalty is the “Last Refuge of the Scoundrel” if you want to cite the example of former corrupt Illinois Governor (aren’t they all?) George Ryan.  In this economic climate, capital punishment is apparently the first item on the chopping block to trim the state budgets.  Or Bill Richardson was swayed by the examples of wrongful convictions, or his days of seeking national office are over.  Take your pick.

#5:  Dennis Kucinich.  I can take take two routes with him.  First, I see that in the trailer for the “Alex Jones” “Obama Deception” film (which I also associate with Walter Tarpley, though I know it has a cast of many another conspiranoid freak) there is a sound-byte of Obama referencing “Republicans and Democrats” who have come out opposed to the TARP bill — and naturally a flash of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.  (There are Republicans and Democrats a tad more mainstream than them.)  Secondly, Kucinich probably weighs closer to having some form of foundation underneath his Congressional Grand-stands that make it less absurd.  But that big “BUT” inherent in being the voice selected by your Alex Jones always hangs right over him.

#6:  That brief shining moment when this blog was bouncing around in the first two pages — between #4 at its absolute peak and #19 — in google searches for “Mike Gravel” — which spurred a furious blogging on the subject of Mike Gravel to see if I could maintain that honor.  I do think I did uncover some quasi-unsavory elements from Gravel’s long-gone Senate career — better to say a politician acting like a politician, which would be okay if it weren’t that Gravel was casting himself as a sort of anti-politician.  Last I knew, Gravel had signed himself up for this type of thing.  But otherwise his profile has been busted right on down to (#7) current John Edwards level.

It is always interesting to note the crusades of political figures who have sort of been cosnigned to the fringes of “acceptable” mainstream politics but who are “mainstream” enough to be pulled in by the causes, “fringe”.  Ie, Mike Gravel and his search for 9/11 Truth.  But, from the moment he announced his run for the presidency on the Democratic ballot, I noted his odd gray area of political acceptibility — which we saw play out to acceptibility on the edges of the televised debate (quite literally, on the opposite end of Kucinich, with Clinton and Obama in the center, with the media mavens claiming the order was random), his youtube stardom, and to a failed an puzzling run for the Libertarian nomination (shouldn’t the Libertarian presidential candidate be… Libertarian?).

And now to this.  And, as some commenter points out:

The 9/11 Truth Movement is only growing stronger every day.

… Why!  They have former Alaska Senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel working for them!

… and his presidential bids give him just a little bit more of a stage for press than he received when he was advocating a stronger world government and a National Initiative process, which was what he was doing sometime between his lost Senate seat (and he was a real weasel during the 1980 Democratic Senate primary, avoiding the issue of the Selective Service instead of Championing Against it) and his presidential bid.  Which is something I can guarantee you did not notice, if not not noticing during his presidential bid than not noticing as he was championing those causes.

Since the last time you checked, Mike Gravel has done three things.  He has endorsed a Green Party presidential candidate.  He has switched his registration to the Libertarian Party.  And he has released a new youtube video version of The Beatles’s “Helter Skelter“.

And now he is apparently making a bid for the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, which is sending shock waves as that party’s current candidates figure out what his effect will be.  Debate held on the 5th?  I’m… not there.

Anyway, Helter Skelter?  What?  And does this mean his Democratic bid is finally over?

It might be about time to dissect the significance and meaning of the Mike Gravel presidential campaign.  A flow-chart should be drawn to explain where certain themes became prevalent and tactics became prominent.

When launched, I gathered he was setting out to advance a few relatively esoteric ideas he had been championing — most notably the National Initiative.  Whatever degree he ever had covarage, they tended to be pushed aside for more immediate items on the political cultural scene — which is to say, his anti-war credentials.  It got to the point where he disowned his tax proposal, more or less, when asked saying not to worry about that because no congress would ever pass it.

Rounding through the debate circuit — the stage set up gravitating toward a set up which moved from the center to the edges — Clinton and Obama, Edwards and Richardson, Dodd and Biden, and then Kucinich and Gravel — question time following this line of progression, and the point of his campaign became the message of not being allowed to speak, even as he became noted for robust barbs against his opponents.  Thus his mute youtube videos — minimalist one item of symbolism.  The last of the youtube videos — just after the cane came and pulled him off debate stage Vaudeville style, a rendition of “Give Peace a Chance”, holding his banishment from grace as coming due to him being the one taking on the Military Industrial Complex — and the duct tape pulled right onto his mouth.

But I suspect this all should be pushed aside for the real message, the bottom line, of Mike Gravel Candidate for President.  Asked whether he had ever had premaritial sex, he teased the question before gloating about his premariatial sex.  Thematically roll this to the proposal to lower the drinking age, and then toss in his words of wisdom to a high school audience last week — which was that you should not drink because smoking pot is better.

It is about the only Gravel is going to make news, if only minor blurbs.  I don’t think it can carry him that much farther, and of course electorally there is by definition no underaged sex-recreational drug- drunk voting block.  One could look at Gravel as either being the Uncle who is trying to hard to be cool with the kids, or as somehow addressing the America that we live in as opposed to the one we like to pretend we live in.  What platform he has to continue I do not know — maybe now these civic lessons teachings are the only platforms that will be available for him.

Mike Gravel… will not be participating in the next presidential debate.  Too bad.  I guess all I have to look forward to is a new youtube video where he stares into the camera with intent silence.

Rudy Giuliani, Mr. New York and Mr. “Look at my Yankees cap!”, made a major faux pax by saying, for the benefit of New Hamsphire primary voters — still Red Sox Country, that he was rooting for the Red Sox.  I don’t think you can underestimate the power of the sports fan in dashing about such wanton pandering.  He declares it is a matter of rooting for the American League, something akin to rooting for a piece of architecture, methinks.

Fred Thompson has been putting his audiences to sleep.  It is a really strange campaign where he is the Republican Saviour.

Hillary Clinton has been playing along with Drudge, developing a wink and nod strategy with that tedious Internet standby.  In addition, Rudy’s baseball gaffe has spotlighted her old gaffe of a few years ago where she said that if the Yankees and Cubs both made the World Series, she would alternate between rooting for the two teams.  I admit to having done such a thing before with two basketball teams I could care less about – to the confusion of the people I watching the game with — in cheering on any play that looked cool.  (I need to work up my Skull and Bones racket regarding Hillary Clinton, and line things up for a thought-bubble.)

The scandal that has been plaguing Barack Obama involves the fact that he is not wearing a flag-pin.  I will say that I would have greater respect for him in the flag-pin flack if when asked he hadn’t given a spiel about the true meaning of Patriotism, but instead had told the questioner to bug off.  Anyway, this matter may be one of those wink and nod jobs with Hillary and Drudge — Who knows?

It is claimed by the world’s most famous Crystal Stroker that Dennis Kucinich saw a UFO.  But supposedly so did Jimmy Carter.  Perhaps they can get together and compare and contrast.

If I were the Republican Party, I would nominate Mike Huckabee.  I firmly believe he to be the party’s best chance in snagging the White House in 2008.

A trip to Mitt Romney’s blogonetwork shows the Romney supporters trumpeting his Mormonism as an asset in terms of fire-fighting.  It goes along with the Mormon tendency to prepare for the rugged Apocalypse to Come.

Various Internet sites of Conservative status, redstate and free republic, have taken to banning Ron Paul supporters from their site.  “Retarded Vulture Fringe” is how redstate calls it.  Wrong critter, I says.

John McCain made fun of Woodstock at the last Republican debate, which only added to the sense that he is old and out of touch.  You don’t make Woodstock jokes, and you shouldn’t have for maybe the last 20 years.  (Maybe he can go back to the “Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran” singing?)

Chris Dodd’s campaign has proven to be most useful, in setting a bar with which his fellow Democratic Senate Presidential hopefuls need to meet, currently in line with Amnesty for the Telecom industry regarding FISA misdeeds.

I don’t think Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, Joseph Biden and Alan Keyes have done or said anything interesting, and it speaks volumes about the campaigns of anyone whose name I have not mentioned.  But now that I’m thinking about it… Say… what’s John Cox up to?

I already went through this one, somewhat naseously, but Mike Gravel’s 1968 Senate campaign was a lie.  So, here’s a transcript of an NPR “All Things Considered” profile on Gravel and 1968.

Mr. GRAVEL (in 1968): The proposal that the United States leave

Vietnam unilaterally is an unsound one and I think a very immature

one.   

KASTE (NPR): The thing is, even as he was making these ads, Gravel

privately shared Gruening's dovish position on Vietnam. He was 

simply telling Alaska voters what they wanted to hear.   

Mr. GRAVEL: I said what I said back in 1968 because it was 

to advance my career.   

KASTE: It worked. Gravel beat Ernest Gruening in the primary

and won the Senate seat in the fall. Since then, he's been 

quite frank about how he passed Gruening on the right. But 

what's important, he says, is what he did with the Senate 

seat after he won.   

Mr. GRAVEL: I now become opposed to the war, as vigorously as 

Ernest Gruening was. I released the Pentagon Papers in my efforts. 

So, there you go.  The Mike Gravel campaign worker who posted a comment here more than half a year ago was correct.  It is indeed outrageous to say he would have been voting to fund the Vietnam War right up to 1968.  That statement was based on his campaign, and it the fabled Oscam’s Razor has always suggested simply that he was lying — or that would be one Hell of an epiphany.  This is the first time I have encountered Mike Gravel acknowledge this fraud in his little presidential campaign, but I guess that this may be have been the first time a news outlet had it under their purview to cover it.

Oh well.  Progress in politcs sometimes works off of duplicity.

Hm.  Shifting through the spam folder of my comments section, and I get this:

Awesome write up discussing Spurious Sexual Scandal of Mike Gravel Coming Out of the Wormhole and Being Thrust Into Dark Corridors of the Internets. What was the spuriously claimed manifestation of Mike Gravel doing on the evening of August 10, 1972 and what was the sexual pro quid quo which resulted in the re-coronation of a minor landmark? Does this spuriously claimed manifestion of a possibly fictionalized account of Mike Gravel know no shame?! I love this interesting posts.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever takes a look at what the “fill in the blank” formulas that their created- spam-bots  spew out.  Note to the spam-bot creators, though — you will be docked points for the “I love this interesting posts” — grammatically incorrect is it.

Yes.  I did indeed have a post entitled “Spurious Sexual Scandal of Mike Gravel Coming Out of the Wormhole and Being Thrust Into Dark Corridors of the Internets. What was the spuriously claimed manifestation of Mike Gravel doing on the evening of August 10, 1972 and what was the sexual pro quid quo which resulted in the re-coronation of a minor landmark? Does this spuriously claimed manifestion of a possibly fictionalized account of Mike Gravel know no shame?!”  I was being kooky at the time in examining the Senate career, and controversies thereof, of the man who would not be president.

… yes, but Ron Paul won’t really have arrived until the sort of soft-core porn* web-video maverns who keep releasing those music videos of hot chicks slinging double entendres regarding the presidential candidates (And, yes, I just watched the new “Giuliani Girls versus Obama Girls” one, so I am no better than anyone else)…

… release one with some barely clad busty lady prances about for Ron Paul.

I think I see better how this “Chattering Class Consensus” on which candidate is legitimate and which is not works.

Interestingly enough, the Hillary one appears to be unaffiliated, which is strange because it is professional and with the same techniques and cues as the Obama video it was responding to.

I swear, these things make me want to go read somebody’s legalese-worded Health Care proposal. And it makes me appreciate Mike Gravel’s tossing of rocks into rivers.

…………………………………………………………………….

* In this case, a very broad definition that includes these cutesy, but titillating, things where the comment wowoweewa! this song was actually kinda catchy. and yes, i did masturbate to this video… eleventeen times! is not out of place, and probably — for that poster– true.

A quick check of ebay and I encounter a signed photograph of Mike Gravel, circa 1971.

I wonder if this is a situation where the seller has been sitting on this for years, and it just dawned on him that he can now cash in on “Gravel Mania”.  I note that the description fails to mention his current presidential bid, focusing instead solely on the Pentagon Papers.

It should come with a free rock, to tie the historical threads together.  I’m just saying.

How about if Mike Gravel walks the path, comes to a fork in the road, and takes the path less traveled?

Likewise, Mike Gravel could avoid walking in the middle of the road?

OR He could take the high road while the other candidates are taking the low road and he will get to Scotland before them?

Maybe Mike Gravel could hit the bullseye with his bow and arrow, and we can just be invited to stare at the target for a couple of minutes?

What if Mike Gravel puts a stick of gum in his mouth, and then walks as he is chewing gum, proving that he can walk and chew gum at the same time?

Perhaps Mike Gravel could be in a room full of a dozen clocks — all with different times on them, and he could walk around and coordinate all of the clocks to what we presume is the correct time, but at any rate the same time?

Mike Gravel could point up to a flying bird?

He is standing in a barn, where he watches the eggs in a hen’s nest crack, and then he counts the chickens AFTER they hatch!

The list is endless.