Frederick Douglas:  We must abolish slavery.

Abraham Lincoln:  We must preserve the Union.  To that end, we must abolish slavery.

Douglas:  Sure.  Why not?

(Lincoln and Douglas fidget their fingers for a minute.)

Lincoln:  I wonder if the nation will ever end up with a negro president.

Douglas:  In the year of our lord 2008, maybe?

Lincoln:  In the meantime we should probably just ship you all back to Africa.

Douglas:  Sigh.

(Five seconds of awkward silence.)

I hear you had some debates with Stephen Douglas which were real barn burners.

Lincoln:  I tend to think I won, but you know — he ended up in the Senate, so I guess he won.

Douglas:  Maybe I should challenge him to a Douglas — Douglas debate.

Lincoln:  Nah, I think he wouldn’t go for any talk with a negro.

Douglas:  Sigh.

(ten seconds of awkward silence.)

You know, when you get around to Reconstruction and “Healing the Rift of the Nation”, would you make sure the counter-reaction in the former slave colonies of disenfranchisement by way of ultra violence doesn’t work out?

Lincoln:  Oh, that’ll be up to future administrations to sort out after my assassination.  Andrew Johnson.  Ulysses Grant.  Those guys.

Douglas:  Johnson sucks.

Lincoln:  Yeah, pretty much.

(Various death threats are thrown out from the crowd, but it is difficult to ascertain whether they’re directed to Lincoln, Douglas, or both.)

It looks like Obama’s message that he grew up in Pacific island nations which are kind of like Guam carried the day over Hillary Clinton’s message that she landed in Guam a few times en route to places she was doing Administrative business.

Guam gives Obama the momentum?

My recent re-ignited curiosity in wading through the riddle of the “Libertarian Natioanl Socialist Green Party” took me over to the wikipedia article on the item.  Which is entirely useless.  But what does offer up suggestions comes from the editing jobs to create the page, which is largely made up of the debate over “Is this a joke?” and the debate on “Pointless enough to delete?”  (Though also fairly illuminating is the debate over “White Supremacy”, which has a number of “uh huh”s.)

I checked the archives for nazi.org [1] to see if the the website was previously intended as a joke, and then somehow acquired a (serious) life of its own. As I found out, its ideological core has been consistent througout its existence on the Net. More interestingly, it appears that the party is a much older organisation (existing since 1983) predating online pranksterism (and even predating the Sokal Hoax!). As is symptomatic of most political movements, the core ideology has been maintained and expanded upon, with an intent to permeate aspects of practical life and gain new recruits. Similarly the archive of anus.com [2] shows more or less the same result (as is expected since A.N.U.S reputedly predates the internet). The point here is members of LNSGP and A.N.U.S share a subcultural milieu, that has been existing for at least 30 years. No joke can last that long, and symptomatically resemble a genuine movement. Moreover, such a subcultural milieu is plausible since its co-option of Nazism is (technically) no different from the postmodern co-option of Marx and Freud in the academic subculture. It is perfectly concievable that a group of renegade thinkers felt that “Hitler was on to something” while disagreeing with his genocidal policies. Besides being merely plausible, such a subculture even seems well-timed. The “Green”, “Tribal” and “Pagan” aspects of LNSGP are very countercultural, and seems likely to be championed by new activists in the late 70s / early 80s who were disillusioned by the lovey-dovey (and ultimately flaky) inclusive counterculture of the 60s, and wanted to create a new counterculture based on tribal authority and fervent defense of/attachment towards “tribal lands” (cf: Völkisch movement,Führerprinzip) rather than some ineffective political action.

Right?  Right?

This was on their website, The LNSG will begin supporting candidates for local elections in 2007.

WHO?

I’m still not convinced that this is anything more than a satirical website. Satirical entities with no existence besides a website are not worthy of a Wikipedia entry. And somebody keeps saying over and over “You’ve just got preconceived definitions!” Well, that’s how words are defined. If they weren’t preconceived, there would be no point to the word. The one or two links that mention it sound like they have just been as taken in with the fabrication as this article. I move that this article be deleted. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_for_things_made_up_in_school_one_day

Harksaw 20:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Supposedly made up sometime pre-dating the Internate Age to 1983.  But these seem fairly easily crafted, and all we’re stuck with is “aware of since the early 1990s”

There’s a man named Keith Goodenough running for one of the two Senate seats in Wyoming.  I have no guage on the situation to determine if he is the favorite or likely Democrat nominee against the incumbant of one year, John Barasso.  The other incumbent, Mike Enzi, famces no opposition, and so Barasso’s is the closer to the “Open Race” to place a token challenger’s weight.

Goodenough presents an interesting question.  The name strikes me as both an opportunity and a challenge.  He is “Good enough”, the ad copy writes itself, skeptics of the other guy can shrug and vote for him.  But the opposition can posit that he is merely “good enough”, and Why not the Best?

The oddest image of this Democratic nominating battle was seeing the two candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, addressing an audience of Wyoming’s Democratic faithful.  Something just looked out of sync:  Wyoming, Democrats, national politics.  It didn’t much make sense.

Looking back to 2006, I posted this little survey of a mass of races in what I guess I’ll call the “Inland Northwest”, a mostly deep-red Republican area stretching from Eastern Washington and Oregon sliding through Idaho and landing to Wyoming and Montana.  A number of competitive races which flickered signs of life for a dormant Democratic Party.  And, naturally, they all lost.  Except Tester, but even that was instructive in what I termed a sure thing sort of headed to the thinnest of margins of victory.  So we skidaddle over to 2008 and it is worth surveying this landscape to see… another crack at Sali.  Another crack at Wyoming’s At Large House seat.  And… that’s about it.  Unless you count the sort of half rotten fish certain re-election of Max Baucus.  A lot of Democratic bloggers trumpet the Idaho Senate race, and I guess that is what partisan bloggers do, but I am not about to hold my breath for a rematch of a previous election lost by double digits.

Maybe it is not quite as wide-eyed a prospect for the Democrats in this small corner of the country, but then again, if these two elections fall the right way, the result would be better… right?  Taking a gander at Republican responses to some Democratic boosterism, I see the response to the unveiling of the “red to Blue” races from the DCCC goes along the lines of “A lot of re-match races you lost last time out.”  Which is spin of a sort, the position the Democrats are in is that they are trying to pluck some seats that they just barely couldn’t last time out, better than the Republican position which is… trying to hold down the fort for the same seats they just barely won last time out.

Meanwhile, over the DSCC, the response for Chuck Schumer’s gloating of recruitments running for the Senate, where the horrible map the Republican faces is made manifest, is an admission on Senator Ensign’s spot that the party is playing defense and, well, Maine and Oregon are favored for the Republicans, and after that… North Carolina and Kentucky and Nebraska have second tier recruits from the Democrats, and after that… Kansas is still Kansas.

Which, Kansas.  Jim Slattery.  A “hm”, along with a strata of states that should be rolling to a Republican landslide, which is that the Democrats have a few candidates who do nothing but slow down the Republican incumbent enough to force them to glance over and acknowledge their existence.  After they do that, provided they don’t shout out “Macaca!”, they should all be on their way to a double digit victory.  But this strata of races comes after over ten somewhat or much more credible races.

Maybe I’ll entertain myself by going through all 35 Senate races and glancing at them specifically, just… for my amusement.  One suggestion to Georgians:  vote for Martin and keep your pride.  The other guy, Vernon Jones, voted for Bush in 2004, which is an act that should be a non-starter for any Democrat running for president for at least the next two decades.

And the Democrats are as screwed as the Republicans are right now visa vie the map in the year 2012, so… fans of the letter “D” can only gloat so much, because fans of the letter “R” will have their day.

Image found just about everywhere right about now, most notably Crooks and Liars.

To be fair, they did have a lot of debates, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas.  All very private affairs on matters of policy, and none of them public, as the Stephen Douglas — Abraham Lincoln debates for the Illinois Senate were.  I gather Clinton wants her proposed debates to be public, and that the Frederick Douglas — Abraham Lincoln private dialouges would serve no discernable political purpose.

Somewhere in mulling the problematics of my recent comment from Bill White, which is that in response to perhaps a bit too vague a question he responded with “Since you asked” and went on to answer an unasked question, I clicked over to Bill White’s website, overthrow.com — and at the top of the page sat this editorial:

Today’s Neo-Nazis Have No Respect for Tradition By Karl Quandt.

The other week, I read that the founder of the National Vanguard is in the clink for having child pornography in his computer. What is going on with today’s white nationalists? Here it is, 2007, and global Aryan supremacy is no closer to becoming a reality than it was 60 years ago. I lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of this new generation. These kids today are making a disgrace of neo-Nazism.

In my day, it wasn’t just about mindless hate—we hated because we stood for something. Namely, tradition, discipline, and self-respect: values that these low-life punks have no comprehension of whatsoever. We exalted our glorious forebears, in Germany as well as the United States. But who today remembers the great American neo-Nazi leaders like George Lincoln Rockwell or Matt Koehl? Who honors the great heroes and martyrs of the National Socialist White People’s Party?

It’s enough to make me ashamed to be a neo-Nazi.

You can’t just call yourself the Master Race—you have to act like it, and hold yourself to a higher standard than those you despise and wish to exterminate. Have you seen the way these kids dress? Their idea of a “uniform” is a T-shirt and combat boots. The rural militias are even worse, with their filthy fatigues and long hair and beer guts. Excuse me, but I hardly think hillbilly rejects are what our great Führer had in mind when he dreamed of a world filled with Aryan supermen. I wouldn’t even let them in my front door, let alone conspire with them to blow up a synagogue.

Reading through this, and looking over the rest of the site — which saw items I suppose you would expect from the “Matt Drudge of the neo-nazi world”, and Bill White’s current defense of Zirkel, and current brohauhau with wonkette and littlegreenfootballs (the latter referred to as yellow chickens, or thereabouts), this particular editorial confounded me.  My question was simply, “Is this a joke?”

And then I saw the link to where it came from, and got my answer:  Yes.  Yes it is a joke.  Thank you very much, you’ve all been great.  Which begs a new question, what did the neo-nazi posting it think it was?  Did they have a hearty laugh or did they shake their head in agreeement?  Is this the case where they surf around the web and post items in a sort of vanity-sakes which reference the “neo-nazi” movement, no matter what light it falls under, The Onion giving press to the Movement and that’s a good thing?

Looking about the Internet, I see that Bill White has just passed through legal disputes over a fairly obnoxious matter against one blogger at the conservative blog “littlegreenfootballs” and another at the liberal blog “wonkette”.  (Based off of coverage of the Zirkel matter.)

Jumping through the hoops of allegations of Soliciting Murder of two bloggers.  Interesting.  I think it may be best that I scuttle away my question for an explanation for the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party’s history, which I don’t think he has an answer for anyway, and walk away from the matter.

Amusing is to look at the propaganda outlets for the Senatorial campaign committees of the two political parties, by way of the “National Republican Senatorial Committee” and the “Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee”.  This being a terrible year for the Republicans with a terrible map before them, their page is naturally going to be more screwy.  Take a look at the icons for the various specific campaigns, starting with the only seriously (though maybe not) vulnerable Democratic seat — Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, and running through the eight Democratic challengers of the eight most vulnerable Republican seats.  Nobody anywhere believes that the Republicans are going to be able to recapture the Senate, but to keep the illusion for their page I am guessing that the NRSC really needs to place, at the very least, a second Democratic Senate incumbent up to rationalize the “TWO Seats to Capture the Senate”.  I don’t care if they decide to throw New Jersey up there, or South Dakota, or a write-in bid for Arkansas, just… SOMETHING.

Beyond that, my favorite of the icons has to be “Boulder Liberal Mark Udall”.  Granted, they found a suitably ridiculously harsh image for Minnesota’s Al Franken (as with Mark Warner, but I have to say they somehow fell on their face with Jeff Merkley), but nothing here beats the mish mash of rainbow coloring and flag burning that sits astride Mark Udall.  A burning flag image?  Really?

One of the good things about Reverend Jeremiah Wright popping his head back into the news is that it flushes away and makes moot a question I have had attached to my election theory.  I have this idea that the stasis in this electoral fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is such that they both win the states they are supposed to, demographically speaking, and it continues on in the media’s mind as a tie until Obama wins a state he is demographically supposed to lose.  I was wondering if a hypothetical Indiana  victory qualified as such.  But I no longer have to entertain that question, thanks to Reverend Wright.  So we now go on, Clinton wins Indiana and Obama wins North Carolina.  Next Clinton gets to win West Virginia (where the issue of race is context as opposed to the subtext it is everywhere else) and Obama wins Oregon.  And we march forward from there.

Meanwhile, John McCain gets this interesting little write up from the tepid political editorial writer that is John Broder.  The up-shot is that McCain’s “Forgotten America Tour” through poverty – stricken areas shows the necessary re-jiggling of a Republican message which is broken and needs, electorally speaking, massaging.  I am not entirely sure what McCain’s “tour” gets at, in one sense it echoes in termperament the check-list stylings of George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992 with the quotation, “Message:  I care”.  But, more pointedly, David Broder does not seem to see just how well we are wandering around in circles as a country.  2000, George W Bush has “Compassionate Conservatism”, because, you know, the Republican message needs some massaging.  It is only 2004 which saw Bush (under the guidance of Rove) employ the “Base Hugging” strategy, which appealed to the requisite number of swing voters due to the appeal of “Strength” verus “Vaccilation”.  This was a curious debate which entered political discourse — “Appeal to the swing voters” versus “Appeal to the Base”, the answer to that debate is “Yes”, and thus is the dual struggle of every political candidate.  The upshoot of the 2004 election was the sudden discovery of a mass of right-wing evangelical Christians who Bush must feed, which was a balloon that swirled over the political punditry until it was punctured by public reaction over the Terri Schiavo matter.

So we come full circle from 2000 to 2004.  And, also from 1988 — when Nancy Reagan was chagrined at the implications of George H W Buh’s phrase “Kinder, Gentler America” (Kinder and Gentler than whom?), or… I don’t know, Herbert Hoover in 1928 massaging away a bit from the stern image of Calvin Coolidge.

For the life of me, I can’t quite figure out what Bob Dole was up to in 1996.  But that one probably did not matter much.  Once Bill Clinton established himself as essentially a moderate Republican, the nation wearily wandered through in a most apathetic matter that election, and Clinton was content to let his 20 point lead fritter to 7 points because Dole was not about to win.

As for Obama… oh boy do those two special House elections portend a sizable victory for him in November.  Despite the cultural problems exposed by Wright and Bitter.

I hate my blog sometimes.  Other people have normal blogs and receive normal comments from normal people about normal things.  My mother, for instance.  She has a blog.  It’s the type of blog that you can show to your mother, and your mother would feel more than comfortable leaving a comment there.

Me?  Oh sure, I can tap on the shoulders of a local cartoonist or a famous children’s book author every once in a while.  Or fall into some local electoral politics and mix some things up there.  But otherwise I am swirling around events from Leesburg.  And, seemingly just so the blog fates can mock me, I squeeze out something for the latest cause de jour for Bill White, and receive a comment from this proprietor of, reportedly, the second largest neo-Nazi website.

What is wrong with me?  What is wrong with my blog?

Actually, regarding Mike White, of overthrow.com.  Trumpeting his ideology in White supremacism is an ideology I will call shameless self-promotion, for instance inserting a fictional account of him meeting with Ron Paul people to discuss a supposed Ron Paul covert neo-nazi agenda.  But, what I sort of know him as is the dual bit of particulars discussed here — ie: he managed to insert himself into news coverage of two school shootings.  An unbelievable, somewhat darkly amusing, feat.

Which brings me to my line of questioning for Bill White.  The Libertartarian National Socialist Green Party(!!!)  What is the thoroughline which connects the two seemingly different strands of “the party”: seemingly an esoteric joke website, then a deadly serious website of neo-nazi ideology?  Who, manning the controls, shifted the focus and, precisely, when?  And when, oh when, did Bill White become anything of a “spokes-person” for the thing — What?  He was tapped for membership when Jeffrey Weisz went on that rampage in Minnesota, and that was that?

As for the Indiana candidate in question, Tony Zirkle: White provides us with a typical supposing of mass support for a candidate who once received 30 percent in a Republican primary and is not about to achieve 30 percent anytime soon.  I suppose such delusion clouds every corner of the ideological spectrum, it’s just that it’s more ridiculous a fantasy off to the fringes, basically by definition.

Looking back over the Clinton — Obama Democratic primary race, I have the sense of a peculiar problem by way of perceptions.  At a certain point, the evenly matched match-up becomes one where you can slice the states which either candidate should win based off of demographics.  And that is what has happened.  The problem comes in that the media-storyline, and thus ours and thus the contrived reality, has the rules that a candidate can carry along the contest so long as she wins the states she has been demographically sliced to win.  (Or, you know, he).  As soon as she loses one of those states she is supposed to lose, the momentum is such that the contest is closed.  (Or you know, he).  Further, the fact that the other candidate was unable to win the state he was not suppose to win, based on these demographic cut-ups, he will be questioned on why he can’t win this state he was not supposed to win, in lieu of the next contest where he will almost surely win a state he is supposed to win.

It is all a little bit baffling.  I propose, though, in an even party match-up such as this one, and I tend to like Obama’s response on why he can’t, quote “close the deal” end-quote of “I am”, that it is going to show the demographic electoral faultlines of either candidate by definition of a 50 (plus one) -50 (minus one) contest, and if the line of focus on the problematics were flipped because Hillary Clinton lead by the insurmountable 100 delegates, her candidate’s demographic make-up would shatter to pieces far easier than Barack Obama’s.