Mary Starrett leads Mary Stern in the race for Yamhill County Commissioner by four votes.  The fifty or so write-in votes — and here I’d be curious to see a list to see which cartoon character came in third — fall the winner under fifty, and thus we have a run-off campaign.

Kari Chrishom fires off this shot.:
Mary Starrett — the once-perky TV host turned right-wing lunatic fringe activist. (No, really, she founded Oregonians for Life because she believed that Oregon Right to Life was insufficiently pro-life.)

It is a curious point of reference to describe her as “right – wing lunatic fringe” for a variety of reasons — and I’ll get to the main reason in a minute.  Mostly in terms of a sort of political tactic, I refer to how I heard a spokesperson for the “Rural Organizing Project” refer to how they get beyond anti-abortion politics as they talk to rural Oregonians who hold that as a hang-up.  It moves beyond that to the basic premise of a “wedge issue” — no Republican ever wants to actually overturn Roe v Wade, really, because then it’d blow their ticket to re-election.  In this, Mary Starrett agrees completely with just about any Pro-Choicer of the cynical nature of “Oregon Right to Life”, even if such groups do have that effect in … say, weird things are happening in Oklahoma, huh? — which always seem to suggest the purely cynical way the Pro Choice / Mary Starretts look at the organizations is wrong.

But again, go down the list in that article, if her views on an anti-abortion organization isn’t on the fringe, that doesn’t mean that her views on abortion are not  — and I remember seeing that article when it was published in the Oregonian — it does suggest a pretty good working relationship with two other groups.  For the life or me, “Believers Against Child Killing” struck me as an umbrella organization for one man.  The degrees of sepereration to, say, Kopp numbers to two — goes something like: Mary Starrett — deParrie — Kopp.   As I recall, deParrie was either the last caller in or the second last caller to Starrett’s local radio show, calling in to thank her for being about his only defender in the Media he has out there.  deParrie, it should be noted, had on the website for “Life Advocacy” a blurb touting it as the “First publication to explore the doctrine of Justifiable Homocide” — or something to that effect.  But I guess that is ust the kind of thing you’d expect with the Constitution Party — which deParrie left because it was too moderate — in a political party that has some strong adherence to notions of local control and federalism, he didn’t think the Mormons  in Utah’s Constitution Party were sufficiently committed to his issue.  He died of a heart attack immediately after giving his angry speech to the party.)

Try this then.

While looking at the weather online yesterday I stumbled upon this ; did you know that at least half of the voters in Yamhill County are “Fringe Lunatics” myself included ? In a article from Blue Oregon –
Yamhill: Mary Starrett takes four-vote lead; recount is next
Kari Chisholm
[…]

I’ve posted the whole article so there will be no doubt as to what was said! So Miss Starrett from one fringe lunatic to another you have my support in the upcoming runoff!

It’s rare that a person saying they “stumbled upon” something actually “stumbled upon” the item.

Cue “Oregonlibertygirl”:

“I have a message. It’s a message from the Tea Party. It’s straight to the point and does not mince words. We are here to take our government back! ” Rand Paul
Watch out Mary Stern….the Tea Partiers have your number.
So, to clarify the situation:  Rand Paul is coming to take the government away from Jim Bunning, and Mary Starrett is coming to take the government away from Mary Stern.
Wait.  Is Rand Paul the #1 Tea Party accomplishment, and Mary Starrett the #2?

Other appeals?
What a cougar. Keep fighting the good fight.

Anyway, pushing aside the Constitution Party’s call for the – “The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations… The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law” — theocracy, and despite not being a member of the Republican Party, she became the defacto Republican candidate in a supposed non-partisan contest.

In light of various controversies — do they accept 9/11 Truthers for elected officials?  Actually the question isn’t so much that — I imagine a bit of a boomerang in my considerations for such things depending on positions being voted for — it is would large segments of the electorate who voted for her not make an issue if the liberal candidate had any alliance with 9/11 Conspiracy theories?
Also, if I recall right, she has a thing for wondering about Chem Trails.  That is arguably a hobby horse.   “Lunatic fringe” is an interesting label.

I like this “Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment” advocacy — another of those contrarian causes from the sort that demand we never refer to Democracy and always refer to a Republic.  At once it is a theory that if we can just get a crack at crossing out a statues and laws, we will downsize government.  The other theory at work is something along the lines of finding auxiliary causes for “Rise of Big Government” rooted out of causes that broke away from what apparently groups of Libertarians and these groups of Right-wing populists they’ve lead along view as the Golden Age of America — the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.  I recall this surreal suggestion cracked by Ann Coulter about a year ago — maybe two — that giving women the right to vote lead to this inexorable Nanny State.

I am reminded The latter days of the Federalist Party saw them, frustrated by the Democratic Party’s rise and strength out of their Expansionist colonies, shirked to a hold of the power and Supremacy of the Original Colonies.  The peoples seeking to overturn the thirteenth Amendment remind me of those Federalists.

But you know something?  As Rand Paul gives voice to that segment of the population wanting to overturn such things, I’m back to some questions.  It is not uncommon for people to look into the visage of a politician and see what they want to see, and we are sometimes not helped by the bellicose nature of political punditry.  Certain nostrums pop up and lines are drawn for what a Democrat and what a Republican is apt to be doing, and what a “Centrist” is doing to jump back and forth “between” the two.

Rand Paul presents a very peculiar example of this phenonemom as he trades off of his father’s name for undeserved glory.

Rand Paul, upon nomination, announced that he and his crowd were going to storm into Washington and “Take Our Government Back”.  For perspective’s sake, it needs to be noted that Rand Paul is capable of taking one small slice of the government away, and away from current Senator Jim Bunning.  Jim Bunning was last seen emerging for 15 minute’s worth of glory as a Conservative Champion for obstructing Jobless Benefits.  Is Rand Paul going to somehow differ from Jim Bunning’s terms of service?

Last week, I saw that someone had linked an anti-Rand Paul blog post of mine alongside a couple other links.  One curiously from a figure that I’ve trashed about — Webster.  And another from antiwar.com, which I was glad to see that they’ve swerved from their automatic position of extolling the virtues of Ron Paul to consider Rand Paul of that same “War Party” cloth.  (Thus saving Justin Raimondo the disservice of being a hypocrite.)   I do see what the bastions at lewrockwell glean to Rand Paul — whatever leads to a corporate hegenomy, I guess.  But reading through Alex Jones land and the prisonplanet website, and their full fledged support of the candidacy of Rand Paul — I guess I see a good opportunity to assess what, at the end of the day, their political strictures truly are.  What is it that binds Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Cynthia McKinney, Jesse Ventura, and Dennis Kucinich into one tight little package, with Ron Paul coming up in the first fifteen slots and Rand Paul the next six?  I am coming up empty.

I must be missing something about Rand Paul, he’s come out and said that he wants to keep Guantanemo open, that he supports Israel, that he would vote for a declaration of war with Afghanistan and that he’s open to a nuclear strike on Iran. His campaign was even endorsed by Sarah Palin. In what way is he good, besides simply being Ron Paul’s son?

They’re so very easy with the phrase “neo-con”, such that the term has no meaning.  It’s there that I will very easily plunk the term and say “Neo-con Rand Paul”, bitches.

Does it boil down to someone who can lackadasically toss about conspiracy theories together — discuss symbolism on the dollar bill, back over the Gold bugs of the commercial break?  Can they excuse the problems of Israel at Gaza and Rand Paul’s adherance to an “Israeli Lobby” in lieu of ripping off on FEMA?  Are they taking his words as insincere, as the commenter “InfoArsenal” is doing?  These are the questions of the political trade-offs being given, and I’ll have to watch and see.  The only thing I know for sure is we’ll see a fist pump at every positive poll and cries of bias at every middling poll.

And one last question: Are there any other Constitutional Amendments to be culled for nullifying?

You probably missed it if you do the sensible thing of ignoring Beltway Washington Chatter, but the subject of Barack Obama’s Impeachment crept in and swirled off the edges of discussion last week.  Seriously.  Apparently Obama was caught Playing Politics with Joe Sestack.  Or moving to the third degree of separation from standard political operations.

Sometime in the Bush Administration, and more specifically under the Tom Delay Congress, Tom Delay and his sympathetic peoples apologized for any cynical sense of wrong-doing and accused the Democratic Party of trying to “Criminalize Politics”.  This was, mind you, under a lot more a load than what some of the same apologists are tapping Obama with.  Paging Darrell Issa, can somebody please go back and tell me what he was saying about Tom Delay circa 2004 – 2006?

Head tending to spin about, I guess we have seen the future with a Republican Congress — to quote Robert Taft in 1950 — “[Joseph] should keep talking, and if one case doesn’t work out he should proceed with another.”

Some things go to figure.  In hindsight, ACORN was brought down with a heady case of shifty editing.  And looking over at the Oil Nightmare Gulf, I could go well for Obama to insert in his administration some guy who’s made it his special focus to create “Green Jobs” and convert us to alternative energy source — even if I’m not much for accepting many faces who wandered into “Fellow Traveler” mode with ignoble conspiracy theorists and don’t like that precedent.

In the meantime, best to lay off that “Impeachment” stuff and go over to the question of whether the Gulf Oil Spill is Obama’s … Katrina… Iranian Hostage Crisis… getting stuck in the bathtab ala Taft… whatever.

Accordingly, I suggest that we forget about LaRouche and see what can be done for Latvia.

And, if I may add:  I should think there is no time to lose.

Classic.  Move along, nothing to see here.  Overcome that Sales Objection, and Sell that Snake Oil NOW!!!  The fate of Latvia hangs in the balance.

Well, better than the protests in Los Angeles.

While Los Angeles Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s epic “The Ring of the Nibelung” was the main event at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday night, two dozen protesters outside did their best to upstage opening night.

A well-dressed crowd gathered for the start of the company’s first full production of the 19-hour cycle, which began with a performance of “Das Rheingold,” the opening chapter of the Wagner’s magnum opus.

They were greeted by about 25 protesters who stood outside on the Music Center Plaza with banners that denounced Wagner and the county’s decision late last year to approve an emergency loan for the financially stretched opera company.

One banner read: “Wagner: Loved by Nazis, Rejected by Humans.” Another said: “L.A. County: $14 Million to promote Nazi Wagner, Layoffs for Music Teachers.”

The protesters identified themselves as supporters for Lyndon LaRouche, the eccentric political activist and frequent presidential candidate. The group handed out fliers published by the Schiller Institute, an organization founded by LaRouche’s wife, Helga.

The fliers denounced Wagner’s anti-Semitic personal views and criticized the county for rescuing the opera company. “Does Los Angeles County have nothing better to do … than bail out L.A. Opera, so that it can celebrate the monstrous sexual fantasies, and the cult of violence, of that vile anti-Semite, Wagner?” read the flier.
For the Love of Sweet Baby Jes — oh, whatever.

A sense of purpose?

In other news — call it RAPLYM, as the historical origins of that organization come to the forefront, and the time may have passed but remind me again to holler over to David Frum — though I’m not entirely sure what I want him to answer.

Have you heard about those crazy conspiracy theories believed by people in Pakistan, and pushed forward by their media?

Americans may think that the failed Times Square bomb was planted by a man named Faisal Shahzad. But the view in the Supreme Court Bar Association here in Pakistan’s capital is that the culprit was an American “think tank.”
No one seems to know its name, but everyone has an opinion about it. It is powerful and shadowy, and seems to control just about everything in the American government, including President Obama.
“They have planted this character Faisal Shahzad to implement their script,” said Hashmat Ali Habib, a lawyer and a member of the bar association. […]

One of those pundits is Zaid Hamid, a fast-talking, right-wing television personality who rose to fame on one of Pakistan’s 90 new private television channels.
He uses Google searches to support his theory that India, Israel and the United States — through their intelligence agencies and the company formerly known as Blackwater — are conspiring to destroy Pakistan.
For Mr. Hamid, the case of Mr. Shahzad is one piece of a larger puzzle being assembled to pressure Pakistan. Why, otherwise, the strange inconsistencies, like the bomb’s not exploding? “If you connect the dots, you have a pretty exciting story,” he said.

Really strange what those Pakistanis would believe about a clandestine American government and its clandestine activities.

Unnamed former officers told the Washington Post it was one of a number of outlandish plans thought up to discredit the Iraqi dictator before the 2003 American-led invasion.
“It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” said one. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.”
Hm.
Reportedly this was dropped because …
A third former officer said: “Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East – nobody cares.
Sigh.  Also note the cultural problem within the CIA:  A second former CIA officer said the plots were obviously ludicrous and “came from people whose careers were spent in Latin America or East Asia”.  Such is the problem with the retreads from the Reagan Administration, I suppose.
The one line that has gotten the conspiracy theorists of the “9/11 is an inside job” school excited in this country (and any other country, I guess) is:
According to the officer, the CIA did make a video apparently showing Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants sitting beside a campfire quaffing bottles of alcoholic drinks and discussing their sexual trysts with boys.

The “CIA played Osama Bin Laden” part, mind ye.  It is round about there that in the “Is Birtherism or Trutherism” — both tedious objects worthy of scorn — the least demented conspiracy theory — the answer is Trutherism — sorry Jonah Goldberg.  Birtherism ends up parked at sniping at one individual.  Trutherism fades into the shadowy network of clandestine operations.  Then again, the National Review is staffed by people who took Oliver North as a reasonable Senate candidate, so our biases slide forward to the forefront.

Skipping right ahead to the situation in Korea.  What the North Korean media is reporting:
The Korean people have been indignant at the anti-DPRK confrontation escalated by the south Korean puppets since the sinking of their warship “Cheonan”.
Ri Un Chon, 45, a department director of the Ministry of Metal Industry, told KCNA that the Lee Myung Bak regime made public false “results of investigation” into the incident to mislead public opinion inside and outside and isolate and stifle the DPRK.
Accusing the regime of trying to inflict a nuclear war holocaust upon the Korean nation, he said the Korean workers, who have gained in strength under the Songun politics, show no mercy to the enemy.
They are resolved to annihilate the aggressors to defend leader Kim Jong Il and the socialist system if the enemy dare to invade the DPRK, he said, adding:
The south Korean regime’s foolish attempt to impede the advance of the DPRK will only make the Korean workers harden their resolve.
Also:
The United States is taking the lead in disturbing the world […]

I think this is the People’s Democratic Republic’s version of a “Water Skiing Squirrel” story:

One of the virtues of blogging is I have a record of thoughts.  I can point to my hand wringing at the President at the time he announced off-shore drilling, and some griping at the political reporting habits of the Atlantic’s Mr. Ambinder.
The drawback is that I intend on placing up a post as response to this or that piece of writing, and find myself beat to the punch and in the shadows by somebody who is actually read by people.  So Jonathan Bernstein in place of Ezra Klein responds to the National Review’s Yuval Levin on — oh, round about Bush and Katrina and Obama and the Gulf.

Reading Levin, and the biggest thing I can give him is that we jump out of the usual twistings of immediacy, you are not making points off of Obama per se as we are making points off of policies.
But in consideration of the responsibilities of FEMA, what I will suggest is that it was a government agency that was not properly tuned during the George Herbert Walker Bush Administration.  Indeed, this is the reason that Bill Clinton won the state of Florida in 1992.  One upside of the Bill Clinton Administration is that he pulled FEMA into good shape — a corallary response was an up-surge in conspiracy mongering that FEMA is building up internment camps and Janet Reno is coming to round you up, but we can ignore the mutterings from out of the “Patriot” Movement.

There is this broad stroke of animosity against Obama’s response.  A lot of it is more than understandable, but some of it I don’t quite understand.  James Carville has lead one particular charge, which leads to a statement along the lines of “Clinton would be down in the water with a wet suit!”  Sometimes I have to wonder why people are so into a sort of Theater Review.  Is this what America demands?
I guess the rejoinder is that the one power the president has is the Bully Pulpit — and in such a role he (sooner or later, she) can Lay down the Guideposts of what is happening. 

But with glaring exceptions, I haven’t much truck with the post-disaster response.  We’ve had a surreal situation with those Chemical Dispersants — banned in Great Britain and the lowest level of allowables in the USA — which throw into question the power of the US Government against the Corporate state.  Other than that, BP has followed a path in a crisis they did not prepare for, a debacle of hubris.  The Crime comes before the debacle — the severe and never-ending pressure points to relax standards of regulation.  (See, for instance, the elite opinion influenced as suggested by my occasional series of “New Republic” versus “National Review“.)

It’s Massey Energy litigating as a policy to evade the problems of their pile up of safety violations.  And with BP, it is this:
The BP wellhead had been fitted with a blowout preventer (BOP), but it was not fitted with remote-control or acoustically-activated triggers for use in case of an emergency requiring a platform to be evacuated. It did have a dead man’s switch designed to automatically cut the pipe and seal the well if communication from the platform is lost, but it was unknown whether the switch activated.^[59] Regulators in both Norway and Brazil generally require acoustically-activated triggers on all offshore platforms, but when the Minerals Management Service considered requiring the remote device, a report commissioned by the agency as well as drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness.^[59] In 2003, the agency determined that the device would not be required because drilling rigs had other back-up systems to cut off a well.

Assuming that the writer for the National Review is a big proponent of Off-shore Drilling, the deal here is you have to keep a tight regulation in place.  The problem comes the bottom line posits such things as nuisances, and so they are trimmed and trimmed — Big money weakens the Regulatory state year after year, and we go back to the question we heard in 2000 about Dick Cheney of “What’s this fuss about two Oil Men in office?”

To rejoind the Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky, Canada had a PSA campaign.

I’m looking over some headlines at various blog sites — hitting the “Big One” of Huffington Post, and I see this headline:
Rand Paul REPLACES Campaign Manager With Former Ron Paul Aide
And I think “Please Let it be Lew Rockwell.  Please let it be Lew Rockwell.”
Then I see…
Jesse Benton, who was communications director for former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s last campaign, replaces David Adams as campaign manager.

Drat.

Incidentally, as we dig back into that arena:

Ron Paul & Associates (RP&A), Inc. was founded in 1984 by Ron Paul who served as President, Llewellyn H Rockwell Jr. served as Vice President, Ron Paul’s wife Carol served as Secretary and Lori Pyeatt as Treasurer. The corporation was dissolved in 2001.^{[38][39][40][41]}

In 1985 Ron Paul & Associates began publishing The Ron Paul Investment Letter^[42] and The Ron Paul Survival Report;^[10][43] it added the more controversial Ron Paul Political Report in 1987.^[44] Articles were largely unbylined but often invoked Paul’s name or persona. In 1992, RP&A earned $940,000 and employed Paul’s family as well as Lew Rockwell (its vice-president^[45] and sometime editor)^[46] and seven other workers. Murray Rothbard and other libertarians believed Rockwell ghostwrote the newsletters for Paul;^[45] Rockwell later acknowledged involvement in writing subscription letters, but attributed the newsletters to “seven or eight freelancers.

You’d be interested to know that I uncovered an issue of the “Ron Paul Investment Letter”.  I republish the issue.:

DOOM DOOM DOOM.
BUY GOLD.
DOOM DOOM DOOM.
BUY GOLD.
DOOM DOOM DOOM.
BUY GOLD.
INFLATION!
DOOM DOOM DOOM.
BUY GOLD.
DOOM DOOM DOOM.
BUY GOLD.
INFLATION!
DOOM DOOM DOOM.
BUY GOLD.
DOOM DOOM DOOM.
INFLATION!
BUY GOLD.
DOOM DOOM DOOM.
BUY GOLD.

It goes on like that for the entire newsletter.  The only deviation is this small ad for “Survival Seeds”.  That one must have been meant for the “Survival Report”…