By all accounts, they’re throwing out the delegate for Randall Terry.  But now I guess the Democrats are stuck throwing out delegates left and right for various floating fringe candidates.

Louisiana is not hospitable for Obama Democrats

According to the state party rules, any candidate who reaches the threshold of 15 percent of the vote in any of the seven congressional districts gets a proportional share of that district’s delegates. It appears that Wolfe easily cleared that bar in the 7th Congressional District in Acadiana and southwest Louisiana, and probably also in the 3rd Congressional District, which encompasses the heavily Cajun country stretching from New Iberia to Plaquemines and St. Bernard. While the state Democratic Party has not yet commented on the results, it would seem that Wolfe is eligible for one or two delegates out of the six apportioned from each of those districts.
In the 7th District, Wolfe beat Obama outright in Cameron Parish, 30 percent to 28 percent. In the other parishes that are in whole or in part in the district, he finished second but won 24 percent of the vote in Acadia, 25 percent in Calcasieu, 23 percent in Evangeline, 24 percent in Jefferson Davis, 16 percent in Lafayette, 14 percent in St. Landry and 29 percent in Vermillion.
He had a strong, though not quite as uniform, run in the 3rd District, where, for example, he won 28 percent in St. Bernard — where Obama was held to 51 percent — and 29 percent in Lafourche, where Obama only received 39 percent of the vote. […]

I love this self-awareness of the political situation.

The outcome was news to Wolfe. “And I was last on the ballot, ” said Wolfe, apprised of his success Sunday afternoon.

Actually in terms of making a mark — all things being equal, you would prefer to be last on the ballot within a long list rather than anything beyond third.  Other reasons for his strong showing… his name is Wolfe, which is catchy.  And perhaps this came through in the voters pamphlet:
Wolfe, who has lost a congressional bid in Tennessee, said he was in the race to offer a progressive alternative to Obama who, he said, “has mesmerized, anesthetized and effectively disabled the left. They have been turned into stone by his charm, his eloquence and his huge intelligence.”
This is better news than if he had been running off the tea party gambit.

Looks like things are getting tougher for Wolfe.  Do we have the whiff of a full blown political scandal, or is this just political manuevering from one of her Presidential candidate rivals, playing that kind of hard nosed political tactic Obama used when he forced Alice Palmer off the ballot for his first Illinois legislative seat?:

But one of Wolfe’s other Democratic primary rivals — Floridian Darcy G. Richardson who finished fourth on Saturday — does not find credible Wolfe’s claims to have spent so little, and has written Democratic Party officials asking that he be removed from the May 29 Texas primary ballot for his failure to file the FEC reports.

In an email Tuesday to Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie, Richardson, identifying himself as “one of President Barack Obama’s little-known Democratic challengers,” wrote that Wolfe had clearly exceeded the $5,000 threshold in filing fees alone — $1,000 in New Hampshire, $1,000 in Missouri, $1,250 in Louisiana, $2,500 in Texas and $2,500 in Arkansas.”

Not to mention, Richardson wrote, that “Mr. Wolfe has also traveled to at least two states, New Hampshire and Arkansas, spending a couple of weeks in the former state where he also purchased newspaper ads in the state’s largest newspaper, the New Hampshire Union-Leader, and reportedly ran radio spots and hired paid staff from the Occupy New Hampshire movement. More recently, it has also been brought to our attention that Mr. Wolfe conducted an extensive round of robocalls in Louisiana where remarkably, according to newspaper reports earlier today, he apparently won a handful of delegates on Saturday, March 24th.”

Of course, what his delegate will do at the Democratic convention — hm… throw a pie at one of Obama’s delegates?

I hasten to predict the outcome of the Supreme Court decision on Health Care — we are long past the time we can pretend that the Court system isn’t another branch of partisan politicians, with more ideological lee-way to them —

And we get the Theater.

In this guise, the protests for and against the law outside the court shouldn’t make any sense… in theory, this is just laying down the law from an impartial land on high… Justice is Blind and takes no note of protesters…
At one point a middle-aged group of women started singing in harmony with a young drummer at their side. “Health care for everyone, I’m gonna let it shine,” they sang soulfully to the tune of the hymn “This Little Light of Mine.”
Around the same time, Keli Carender, an opponent of the law, started belting out a freestyle song through a megaphone about “strong, independent women” us.

And there’s the “Don’t Tread on Me” signs and the Anti-Abortion activists with tape on their mouths — actually, symbolically I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean: it’s a bad metaphor.

The most depressing quote I read was from a woman who had coverage from her employment who claimed that if Obamacare were upheld, she would boycott the Mandate  — and … have no Insurance.  All kinds of bizarre… I’d put it here if I could find it with any immediacy.

And here’s your Protester of the Year.  I want to hear more from her.

In 1932, William Z Foster, the Communist candidate for President, published Toward A Soviet America, perhaps the least welcoming campaign book in the history of that genre.  Once a brilliant labor organizer, Foster now seemed intent on shocking voters into immediately ditching all their “bourgeois” ideas and traditions.  he mocked religion as a “monstrous system of dupery” clung to by “superstitious dolts”‘; vowed that Communism would “liquidate” all other political parties and anyone who engaged in a “socially useless” occupation such as law or advertising, and promised that a workers’ state would nationalize the press and radio and transform them into “institutions of real education”.  With such talk, it’s no wonder Foster’s comrades had trouble winning votes among the uninitiated.  As one Chicago militant put it, “w had not only to teach the principles of Communism, but we had to create a dictionary.  The workers did not know what we were talking about.”

— American Dreamers
Michael Kazin
2011
p 165

It involved me getting thrown out of a church-looking place for having a “knife” in my purse (don’t ask me how they got inside my purse to know this) but when they showed it to me, it was just an exacto knife, the kind that craftsmen use….still in it’s plastic protection cap. And it wasn’t mine but I couldn’t win as I knew the accuser guy was kind of judge as well. Oddly, come to think of it, it was a guy that looked a lot like Rick Santorum. Kind of like a witch trial, come to think of it.

I think the church-like place more resembled Congress, and the dream might have been a fear of the far right taking over politically….and accusing me of hiding a “scalpel”….

Rick Santorum is the boogie man?

In this Willamette Week article about the Oregonian coverage of the death of former Oregonian editor Bob Caldwell — who died, as it turned out after the first obituary was published, while engaged in sex with a 20-something year old women …

Skip through the parts describing the woman as a more professional prostitute than described in the re-do (which had Caldwell “helping” her out with books and such)

Clients who wrote reviews of her on [notgoingtoposturlhere]dotcom praised her technique—“to die for,” as one poster described.

Simple question.  Was this posted before or after the death? — I’ve looked around at stories like this one, and do see that morbid dark humor surface about.

I note yahoo’s “Trending Now” list…

Trending Now
01 Tebow trade rumors
02 Dancing With the Stars
03 Gwenyneth Paltrow
04 Kate Hudson
05 Mutual funds
06 Katherine Jenkins
07  Omar Sharif Jr
08 Obesity
09 King of Tonga di…
10 Spring equinox

Item number one is “Tim Tebow trade rumors”.
This comes off the heals of Peyton Manning signing with the Denver Broncos.  Bronocs fans, I assume, will immediately forget about their love of Tim Tebow, now that they have — you know, an actually good quarterback.  (And rooting for sports teams is the equivalent of rooting for laundry.)  Yet, from this vantage point of this particular zeitgeist dig, Manning lies in the shadow of Tim Tebow.

Which is interesting.  He’s spent most of his career in the shadow of Tom Brady, generally considered the second best quarterback in the league — Brady won three superbowls before Manning won one.  Oddly, his season out with an injury brought about a reassessment: see how the Patriots did in their season without Brady against how the Colts did without Manning.  But just as soon as Manning emerged from the shadow of Brady in this way, he has fallen under the shadow of someone even worse:  Eli Manning..

Of course now Peyton Manning, in the effort to escape the shadow of his younger brother, is trying to avoid the pitfalls of the Ghost of Brett Farve’s post-Packers career. 

I recently heard someone gripe abouon ballot. I intend to henceforth run as a Republican as that it the only way to have a chance to win and that rather than as a Democrat since a pro-lifer could never win a primary in that party. I have a plan that fixes everything that I will describe in my next message.
t people not responding to comments online.  With that in mind, I note this comment left by the congressional candidate Alan Jacquemotte .

I ran on the NLP banner for the same reason that Ralph Nader did: it was the only way that I could get on the general electi
I have been accused of “studying rare species of exotic floral”, and so my goes my interest in musing about the ghost political ballot lines such as the Natural Law Party.  I remember they were all down the ballot in Oregon in 2000 and 2002.  Their candidates seemed a bit odd, but what the hey!
And  Alan Jacquemotte just happens to be the last person to use the line.  Unless… somewhere… someone has grabbed a-hold of this year.  I’ll have to check.

It’ll be interesting to see what percentage of the vote Jacquemotte wins. One warning shot: posting messages to this blog is not the way to Reach the Masses.

Today, I pose the question: What is the Reform Party is, and what happens if Buddy Roemer grabs a-hold of it and runs with it simultaneous to a “America Elect 2012” ballot line?

The Republican Presidential hopefuls are simultaneously out-hawking and out-doving President Obama on Afghanistan.

In an interview Monday on NBC’s “Today” show, Mr. Santorum, long among the most hawkish Republican candidates on Afghanistan, signaled that it was time to review America’s options. One option, he said, was to leave even sooner than called for in the timeline laid out by the Obama administration, which would turn over security to Afghan forces by 2014 and end the leading combat role for American troops by next year.
“We have to either make the decision to make a full commitment, which this president has not done, or we have to decide to get out, and probably get out sooner,” Mr. Santorum said.”
One day earlier, Mr. Gingrich, who had previously voiced concern over the direction of the Afghan war, declared on “Face the Nation” that it was time to leave the country.
“We need to understand that our being in the middle of countries like Afghanistan is probably counterproductive,” Mr. Gingrich said. “We’re not prepared to be ruthless enough to force them to change. And yet we are clearly an alien presence.”
He added on “Fox News Sunday” that he feared the mission was one “that we’re going to discover is not doable.”

The phrase that pays here, from Mr. Newt Gingrich “We’re not prepared to be ruthless enough”.

And cue this item:

The comments by Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum came after news that a United States Army sergeant was suspected of walking off his base in southern Afghanistan and killing 16 Afghan civilians, many of them children.

This is one of the components to Obama’s sudden slide in approval numbers — so perhaps he has a point on the American public psyche opinion.  If American opinion could be tied to approve or accept this — Newt would be all “Full Speed Ahead”.
It bears mentioning, Obama’s Afghan policy has always seemed in part an effort to out-hawk flank against his out-dove visa vie Iraq and the “Dumb War”… politically speak-wise.

There are several news magazine covers worth looking at.  There is this cover for The World Today for this article “Why Greatness Eludes Obama”.  There is the cover for the Weekly Standard feature, against the “Rehabilitation” of Bill Clinton’s image.  And there is the Washington Monthly — “The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama” — which, I suppose does dovetail with the other two.

Clinton disclaims the news reports that he was obsessed through his second term with “Legacy”, and that was the subject of conversations he had with Dick Morris — “How can I snag a spot as ‘Great’ President'” — the kind history will get him snagged onto dollar bills.  If you read through the World Today article, you do get the sense that just about every president behaves like Richard Nixon in his final days — talking to presidential portraits.  See:

As Teddy Roosevelt said of Lincoln, even as he lamented the absence of his own momentous crisis:  without the Civil War “no one would have known his name.”

These things go on and on.  We further see the suggestion in this article that “Jefferson, Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, and Truman” don’t make the cut with Washington, Roosevelt, and Lincoln — because of the lack of crisis.  Which would be news to a Wilson throwing his dice in the World War, a Truman off into the Cold War, and a Jackson who faced down Calhoun’s Nullifiers.  And everything here becomes a little arbitrary.  In the categories of what makes these presidents “Great”, a line is thrown out — the category “Character”.  Franklin Roosevelt was a duplicitous two-faced figure — you’d have to define “Character” oddly to get him in there.

A question for Eric Alterman:
People conveniently forget that the now nearly sainted Bush I

I understand Alterman as “setting the record straight” — he does this same remarking about Barry Goldwater’s historiological turn in the popular imagination.  But where are these people who have sainted Bush I?

And now we end up with the odd realities.  The Washington Monthly feature venetrates Obama as a completion of Clinton (see, those swarming advisors who tend to have liberals in a tizzy).  A lot of things depend on public relations — there was an article in the paper about Obama strategy team which has a lot of careful consumer selecting that makes the Joe McGinnis “Selling of the President” book about Nixon ’68 laughable.  The list of Obama’s accomplishments has a good deal of “small bore” things — which is good and well: as the World Today article asks, “Why do we want ‘Great’ness?”  A question which leads to the simple answer: actually, this is your game — the rest of us are content to state that a Bush I or Clinton are… imperfect figures in a dreary system– moderately agreeable or disagreeable after the tumult of their time ends.

Jim Rogers’s political career is not over!
Along with the delegate, Terry also won twelve of Oklahoma’s 77 counties. However, he was not the only challenger to win counties; the 2010 U.S. Senate nominee for the Democratic Party in Oklahoma, Jim Rogers, won three. He finished in third place overall with 14 percent, one percent short of the threshold required to qualify for delegates. Progressive activist Darcy Richardson was fourth with six percent.
Damned!  If I had known he was on the ballot, I would have urged and endorsed his presidential run, and swung my considerable weight behind his candidacy, thus earning him that extra percentage point in the polls, and getting him to the delegate threshold.  What this delegate would do in North Carolina this September — I don’t know.  Poke the eyes of all the Obama delegates, I suppose.
<p>Reasons given for Jim Rogers’s showing.   
The Rogers surname always gets votes in Oklahoma elections.</i>  Sure.  Blame Will.   Don’t give Jim any credit for his outstanding campaign tactic and reaching the people with his message of Hope and his wardrobe choice on the hustlings.