I was having trouble breezing my eyes through the Democratic debate to find the totality of Mike Gravel’s comments regarding Oil. I first stumbled upon this analysis from a professional pundit:

My vote for the least politically savvy statement from last night’s debate goes to former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who offered a tough-love approach for America’s pain at the pump: “There’s nothing I would do as president to lower the price of gasoline right now. We Americans have to grow up.”

Pandering is clearly not Gravel’s strong suit.

“Political Saavy” my asphalt. We have found the reason that the debates, 17 months out from the actual Election, need the Mike Gravels of the world. To keep at least one meaningful statement into the equation, meaningless equating to political saavy.

The rest of Mike Gravel’s statement to that question of what he would do about high gas prices — the answer is “nothing” — and more importantly, the hidden price of gasoline:

If we want to get off of the dependency in the Middle East, we have to own up to the problem. These things cost money. They’re controlling our society.

And the sooner we stop fighting these wars — here, stop and think. You only see $3. Just watch those wheels turn. There’s another $4, which is what we spend to keep American troops around the world to keep the price.

So you’re paying more than seven dollars a gallon; you just don’t know it.

I am reminded of an answer Eugene McCarthy gave to a question during his 1968 bid for the White House.  As written by Tom Wicker in a preface to a Eugene McCarthy book released in 1975, this passage comes to the old refrain about a gaffe being the telling of unwanted truths:

On the eve of the Democratic convention, when McCarthy still might have had a chance to be nominated, the Warsaw Pact powers invaded Czechoslovakia and put an end to the “Prague Spring”.  It chanced that McCarthy had a Washington news conference scheduled for the next day, and when it commenced, the reporters demanded to know what, as president, he would have done about events in Eastern Europe.

Nothing, McCarthy replied, in a few unexcited words to that effect.

Astounded, the reporters demanded to know why he would have done nothing, against every tradition of the Imperial Presidency.

Because,  McCarthy replied candidly, there’s nothing I could have done.  He went on to suggest that the lights that had burned late in the White House the night before, the agitated comings and goings of LBJ and his cohorts were mostly window dressing.  Johnson was not going to do anything either, could do nothing, but was making a great show of doing something anyway — managing the crisis, firing off cables, phoning up bureaucrats, solemnly briefing Senators.  When all that was finished, McCarthy observed, the Prague Spring still would be over and the Warsaw Pact in charge of Czechoslovakia — as they were, a subsequent fact which failed to dispel the outrage and disdain of reporters used to imperial bluster from every president back to Harry S Truman.

AMC was originally a premium cable channel that aired classic movies during the afternoons and early evenings, largely pre-1950s, in a commercial-free, generally unedited format. It was not uncommon for the channel to host a Marx Brothers marathon, or show such classics as the original Phantom of the Opera. In the early 1990’s, the channel shifted to a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week format.

The network has since dramatically changed its programming, shifting from premium to basic cable, emphasizing more recent movies, adding a new logo, with a lowercase a (seen above at right) and using a new slogan: “TV For Movie People.” With competitors such as Turner Classic Movies and Fox Movie Channel, AMC changed its format from a classic movie network to a broader movie network, airing movies from the 1970’s onwards.

That is what wikipedia has to say.  Jarring enough is this shift in definition of “classic”, but so far you can get away with it.  We no longer have a good outlet for, say, Joan Crawford movies, but there is something a bit interesting about, say, Smokey and the Bandit and the Blues Brothers — they are and have become “standards” and they fit a spry and lucrative demographic niche which older movies seem to be fading away from mass appeal as time goes on.
But the thing is…

Okay.  I watched the first hour or thereabouts of…

Catwoman…

On American Movie Classics.

Again with the Wikipedia:

Catwoman was poorly received, both critically and at the box office. The film appeared on the list of Roger Ebert’s most hated films. He criticized the filmakers for giving little thought to providing Berry “with a strong character, story, supporting characters or action sequences.”, but his primary criticism came from the failure of the film to give the audience a sense of what her character experienced as she was transformed into Catwoman.

MSN Movies ranks Catwoman as the third worst superhero movie to date, behind Batman & Robin and Daredevil.

You watch it in that ironic mocking manner, which is all good and well.  I am pretty sure that your thoughts when watching the movie will be nearly identical with my thoughts, as it seems created to throw softballs at your inner Tom Servo.
I check out the American Movie Classics website and see that, as I type this, they are airing Home Alone 3.  I actually did see Home Alone 3– under interesting circumstances (some Turks showed it — dubbed in in Russian — in Krasnoyarsk).  I bet you didn’t even know there was a Home Alone 3!  Maybe you can justify Home Alone or even Home Alone 2 (perhaps better still Home Alone 2, as its New York ambiance reportedly allows it to hold up pretty well), but I don’t know if you can do so for Home Alone 3.
So.  AMC.  What the “C” stand for?

I was thinking about something I saw at the National Journal rankings of who’s up, who’s down, who’s sideways for the Democratic party candidates.  (It, along with Dailykos’s, is an embarrassing guilty pleasure I seem to have decided to return to over and over again.)  Their description for Dennis Kucinich.  Regretfully they have updated their page, as per their 14 page cycle, which means I have to dig it out of google’s cache.  But here it is:

He’s been on an Iraq-oil kick, and it must frustrate him that no one is listening all that much. And it’s safe to say that Rep. Obey is endorsing someone else.

Coming a day after the fact — May 24 posting, This was in reference, in part, to what I guess I will call a stunt that Dennis Kucinich pulled, where on May 23 he… well, let his press release speak for itself:

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will invoke a rarely used House procedure today to discuss the privatization of Iraqi oil on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Kucinich plans to invoke a point of personal privilege under House Rule IX to respond to published remarks regarding efforts he has made to inform the House Democratic Caucus of the details of the Iraqi Hydrocarbon Act.
Kucinich will have one hour of time on the House floor in which he plans to explain why Congress’ insistence on benchmarks in the supplemental, which includes passage of the Iraqi hydrocarbon act, demands that Iraqis privatize their oil.

An important matter, that.  I half wonder if the Iraqi Parliament’s famed Vacation was in part to avoid being stuffed with the matter of tossing their oil forever and a day to the multinationals.  But nobody bothered to notice Dennis Kucinich.  Not least of which MSNBC, which is the host website for that National Journal rankings which reported on how nobody was paying much attention.

What came out of the debate yesterday?  Well, Mike Gravel said some things about the hidden price of gas that I sort of internalized back in high school which I used to get a couple of my teachers to roll their eyes in current event discussions on rising gas prices, back when the price of gas was rolling all the way up to a buck and a half a gallon.(*)  Ergo, on that basis alone, Mike Gravel won the debate.  With all of those five and a half minutes he received to speak.

Actually I probably ought not comment on these matters.  I haven’t had a chance to do my usual reading of the debate transcript.  I suppose I may better yet catch the redux CNN has scheduled for today, wherein they invite Clinton, Obama, and Edwards to do it the way they want it to be done: without those pesky others to placate.
Back to Kucinich and this strange situation where he is mostly ignored.  Another interesting matter are those there Iraqi Military Bases.  We have had a strange couple of weeks in terms of the sort of nauseating official discussion on the future of the Iraq War and future American plans therein.  Read back through the White House to news outlet stenography (ie: the slightly rewritten press releases that make up a type of news story that CNN, Fox News, and the rest always have their full share of), and you will see announcements that we may be pulling out right in the forseeable future.  They are Stepping up; We are stepping down.

And we are leaving humongous already irretractable military bases.  For…

We are going to treat Iraq as we do Korea.  The exact same situation is extent in both Korea and Iraq, apparently.  Entrance Strategy, remember, not Exit Strategy.

I mention Kucinich here because I am just going to have to hold my breath for Clinton, Obama, and Edwards — the proscribed Only Candidates that Matter — to mention such things.  Kucinich, I believe has and will.

(*) Actually my favorite game, and really I was treating it as a sort of cynically apathetic game, was two-fold:  pointing out the price of gasoline in most European countries,  And the costs of gasoline emissions which land into our health care system.  The military costs did not enter into my equation.

It is a theme of mine here at “Skull / Bones” to wonder what to do with these undeniably entertaining but ultimately pointless “Cattle Calls” of “Who is Up, who is down, who is sideways?” for the presidential candidates.  I throw my hands up and go ahead and place mine up for your consideration.  Here are the Republicans:

1. Ronald Reagan’s Ghost

2. Mitt Romney

3. Fred Thomspson
4.  Rudy Giuliani

5. John McCain

6. Ron Paul

7. George W Bush’s Ass

I think the most controversial in terms of how the mainstream media posits these things is the placement of Ron Paul ahead of the Mike Huckabee — Sam Brownback embargalo and the Jim Gilmores of the race.  It is easily defendable because while I can posit a scenario where Huckabee or Brownback might rise in the polls and threaten to get the nomination,  it does not seem to be happening.  Jim Gilmore, meanwhile has nothing — Ron Paul has an entirely entertaining Army which is frustrating the Mainstream Media to the point where they must issue snide comments about Ron Paul.  Such is the Power of Ron Paul.

George W Bush’s Ass is the unwelcome addition to the troupe.  The other candidates can roll off of Ron Paul and ignore the rest of the flanklings, but they don’t quite know what to do with George W Bush’s Ass — which always seems to be in the room.
Anyway, Instructive would be to look at my rankings for a comprable spot for the 1992 Republican race, which would have been… December of 1991?  I consult that blog I was keeping back in the early 1990s, now inoperable, and see that I had:
1. Ronald Reagan’s Ghost

2. George Herbert Walker Bush

3.  Harry Truman’s Ghost

4. Pat Buchannan

5. David Duke

6. Harold Stassen

7. Dan Quayle’s Brain – to – Mouth Connector
It is interesting how the candidate rankings are placed in similar slots.  Maybe.  Maybe not.

BILL O’REILLY, HOST: In the “Miller Time” segment tonight, Dennis Miller has been having a lot of fun on his syndicated radio program for Westwood One. And he joins us from L.A. to share the joy.

Now I know you saw “The Factor” last night. We were pretty tough on John Edwards. We showed his house from above and went to the trailer park across the street to interview the folks who don’t really like him. Were we unfair to the former senator from North Carolina?

DENNIS MILLER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Bill, first off I have to say that “Factor” was like the night the Beatles were on the Sullivan show. My favorite “Factor” ever.

O’REILLY: Thank you.

MILLER: And I love it when you weighed in on Edwards, because to me the guy’s just an overly coiffed pillar of dim. He makes Clifford Irving look like Sir Thomas Moore. And if you say you can’t see through that guy like used Neutrogena, then that Democrat apologist was in complete denial.

……………….

When did Dennis Miller lose me?  I don’t think it’s entirely a case of his political changes — he is now full-score on the Rudy Giuliani bandwagon, but I admit it might be.   It started with that Monday Night Football stint, where all his jokes added up to a rehearsed play off players’ names, ridiculous to the point I watched Dennis Miller ask one of the other color commentators if he could have a second to get his little pun in.  A bit later, I watched an episode of his most recent HBO program, I think but am not positive from before his MNF gig, and it seemed that he was trying a little too hard.  What was then his newly honed schtik of placing the “Rant” up forth and categorizing it as such dribbled a bit toward a tiring novelty.

This John Edwards riff strikes me as stunningly weak.  It is a compilation of obscur-ish literary references, and a pop cultural artifact, floating there, grabbed from the sky, pushing down the Helium filled balloon toward the ground lest they float away.  It is an act that I will never be able to tell if he mailed it in or if he’s legitimately considering it clever.
The background for the John Edwards riff largely focuses into that $300 haircut.  As acts of extravagance, I don’t see how this can concern me.  It looks forever like a permanent fixture of attack — Bill Clinton had one early early early on in his presidency which supposedly delayed a flight, but it was an urban myth (Not the expensive haircut; the flight delay).  At least that Al Gore Energy parade made sense, even if that attack was only half correct in half of its purview.  I guess John Edwards is the equivalent of Mitt Romney in terms of a plastic and somewhat disingenuous appearance.  The difference, I suppose, is that John Edwards’s focus on poverty somehow chafe against his Income bracket.  Thus we get lavish praise for Mitt Romney without any backsliding into “latte liberal”-ism.  (Incidentally, I am currently drinking a cup of latte.  I also have no money to speak of.):

O’REILLY: But you’ve got a very — how important in this world is Romney’s appearance? Which, I mean, you can’t get more presidential looking than Mitt Romney.

Dennis Miller tangled his references in that I don’t think of Staples as “cutting”.  But that may be too fine a point.  More striking is that hypocrisy showed in Bill O’Reilly’s asinine discussion of Mitt Romney’s “little gray thing in there”, probably the product of a $150 hair dying formula.
Oh Sam I am.  I do not like Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, or John McCain.  Give me Green Eggs and Ham.

Sometimes in the midst of horrible to imagine World Occurrences, a little bit of dark comedy springs through.  For example, John Ukec Lueth Ukec and his trade threat against the threat from America to impose Sanctions on the Sudan.
Genocide in the Darfur region? “The United States is the only country saying that what is happening in Darfur is a genocide,” Ukec shouted, gesticulating wildly and perspiring from his bald crown. “I think this is a pretext.”

As diplomatic threats go, that one gets high points for creativity: Try to stop the killings in Darfur, and we’ll take away your Coca-Cola.

Okay.  Everybody and the mother has linked to that story.  It is henceforth a classic.  Congratulations Dana Milbank, for finding that odd mix of substances — Genocide and obscure cola ingredients — that makes a story run down smoothly down the American public’s psyche.  I think the video for this press conference is available here.
It is difficult to figure where John Ukec Lueth Ukec can get his side of the story out in America.  Evidentally he can sprout out to a lecture at a the University of Utah, where he is met by skeptical students.

  His arguments failed to satisfy students such as Briawna Howard, who said the militia are still being supplied with arms by the government in Khartoum. In addition, she said, “nothing is being done to protect the internally displaced people in Darfur, or the Darfur refugees in Chad.
“A Darfurian dies every five minutes,” Howard said. “Thirty died in the hour we were in that room.” Ukec, she said, “is trying to downplay the magnitude.”

I note this comment at my sort of Internet Message Board watering hole:

I stopped buying name-brand soft drinks about two months ago. 12 packs cost $7.00. The 12 packs of of off-brands are still between 2-5 dollars. I was wondering what was up–I just thought it was price-gouging.

I honestly haven’t noticed such a thing, and I’d find it difficult to imagine its effect would have happened already.  Brace yourself, I suppose.

As for Ukec’s media appearances, and more importantly positive coverage, um… Howzabout …?:

May 26–Sudan’s Ambassador to the United States, John Ukec Lueth, will be the guest June 2, on The LaRouche Show, the weekly Internet radio program, on the topic, “Globalization or Sovereignty: Why Sudan Is Under Attack.” He will be interviewed by Lawrence Freeman, from EIR News Service, in a discussion including activists from the LaRouche Youth Movement. Ambassador Lueth is a member of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement, which signed the Central Peace Agreement in February 2005 to form the Unity Government of Sudan. The LaRouche Show is an audio talk show, broadcast live on the Internet every Saturday, from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern time, on

I think they misplaced an “Ukec” there, but never mind.  Sudan’s Ambassador does realize how big a non-factor Lyndon Larouche is to world events, doesn’t he?  He would be better off making an appearance on Opie and Anthony.  Whatever, you get your positive coverage where you can get it.  In a month or so you will be able to find this interview tucked inside one of those pamphlets, probably printed in Canada now (cheaper printing presses), abandoned in bulk as they always are after a hard day’s work by Larouche card-table workers, ironically supporting this genocide-enabling government while carrying on with how Al Gore is committing Genocide in Africa by carrying on about Global Warming.  (Don’t ask.)
…………………….

I may as well sneak these in, because I’d just as soon not return to this category when I sit down at a computer tomorrow or the next day.  Corral them later.

1979, p 76:  “Although I have profoundly respected Goethe’s extraordinary skill in poetic composition, one poem of Goethe’s which touched me with more than a special sense of admiring amusement was his Prometheus. Making men in my own image was the conscious articulation of my central purpose from approximately 1946. First, one must become adequately qualified to accomplish that purpose. That task, especially as I saw the methodological hopelessness of existing institutions known to me, prescribed assimilating and developing a body of knowledge adequate to the undertaking to come. In the immediate postwar period, I set myself the goal of acquiring the necessary degree of adequacy between my thirty-third and thirty-fifth birthdays.
The result of that approach was the National Caucus of Labor Committees.” 
Dec. 20, 1987: “Creativity is one of my obsessions. If you don’t have creative insight, you can’t see how we can win; if you can see how we can win, then we will win.

… Look around you. Who will support us? Who will rally to us? The ones who will rally to us are the emotionally crippled, the grey-faced, the neurologically impaired who, in rallying to us will do the only worthy thing to give meaning to their lives. Thus they will be able to say, ‘I wasn’t important but I contributed to victory.'”

2007:  Well, they’re both fascists. Essentially, it’s true, that Al Gore—and I try to get it out of the people—did you ever hear this song, this country song from Tennessee about the company store [“Sixteen tons”]? Now, who owned the company store? Who owned the company that ran the company store, which was made notorious by this song? The company store? Al Gore, personally. Al Gore is, essentially, a fascist. And he comes from the Tennessee swamps by pedigree. He is also a confirmed racist; he’s done things which he is guilty of as hell. In Africa, he’s a racist; he’s a killer racist in Africa. He’s also listed as a Democrat; so are many leading members of the Ku Klux Klan, and he comes from that particular pedigree. I don’t know if it’s mint juleps or something else. [A good standard, that song.  Not about Al Gore, Senior or Junior.  Actually this is a reworking of the Bush Family Conspiracy mythology — and I won’t comment here on what I believe on that matter because it is irrelevant here — to fit the Gores, who… is Larouche’s vaunted intelligence services telling him that Gore is going to seek the presidency, and the Aristocracy is going to place him in power, because — won’t he sort of fade away a bit in public consciousness otherwise?]

The first two quotes are where I end with what TJ Simpson is reprimanding a group of individuals for, I suppose me included for passing it forward.