A couple of days ago when I heard that the first Republican had come out in favor of axing Alberto Gonzalez, my first thought was “Um.  John Sununu, right?”

Right.  John Sununu.  New Hampshire Senator, up for re-election in 2008, just saw his state go from an overwhelming Republican state legislative majority to an overwhelming Democratic state legislative majority, and just saw most of the Republican House members elected out in 2006.

The other guesses would have been Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Gordon Smith of Oregon.  I don’t know my House members from impkiss, so I am sticking with the Senators here.
Gordon Smith appears to be pulling a fine line of letting people hear what they want him to, fork-tonguedly saying that “it would be helpful to have an attorney general that Congress could have more confidence in”, through an aide as it turns out.  This seems to be Smith’s strategeum — he made national headlines by coming out against the war in Iraq while being in a position for the Republican Oregonian editorial writer to explain how he did not.  (To be fair, he seems to be embracing any major initiatiative coming out of Governor Kulongoski, and former Governor Kitzhaber’s health care think tank.  Which makes for amusement more than anything else.)

Oddly enough, Pete Domenici remains out of my rubric of guesses on these matters.

In the perpetual Silly Season of Presidential Campaign politics, Barack Obama has gone on the record as calling John Edwards “kind of cute” and “kind of good looking.”  Obama, of course, is already “clean and articulate”.

The only news Edwards seems to be generating are these rather blase comments directed at him.  Take, for instance, Ann Coulter’s reference to Edwards as a “faggot.”  That is Ann Coulter’s schtik, though — every Democrat is a “faggot” — John Edwards just joined the hall of Bill Clinton and Al Gore (except the former she referenced as the less offensive term “gay”, still off in that I think Monica Lewinsky has other impressions of Clinton, and the latter was a “total fag”).  It is a strange sense of humour, and one I admit to not understanding — along the lines of a four year old obsessed with the word “poopy”.  Charles Krauthammer has a different schtick, which is to “diagnose” prominent Democrats’ “mental illnesses” (in the pages of his Washington Post syndicated editorials) — and I am not entirely sure which is more offensive — even if Krauthammer’s is by default more sophisticated — but they both seem equally predictable for the individual pundits.

Obama’s statement is a sort of back-handed compliment — he’s a pretty boy of little substance and an empty suit.   It is the current state of both the media and the presidential race that news on Edwards revolves around this stuff, some personality conflicts.  An examination of their health care plans is a difficult task for anyone to perform, and nobody cares.

From a comment left to this list of hypothetical books nobody would ever want to read.:

and there is a brief article about the Federalists that mention the last Federalist candidates and elected officials such as this quote:
“During the last days of their party, the Federalists remained in office longest in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Oliver Wolcott, Jr. served as governor of Connecticut from 1817 to 1827. That state also had two Federalist senators until 1827, one of whom continued in office until 1831. In Massachusetts, Harrison Gray Otis served as senator (1817-22) and so did James Lloyd, Jr. (1822-26). Josiah Quincy was mayor of Boston (1823) and was replaced by his friend Otis (1829-31).

Defeatist Rufus King was the only Federalist outside of these states who held an important elective office during this time. He was senator from New York (1813-1825) and minister of England (1825-26).”

………..

New England is historically the graveyard for political parties — the Federalist Party died there, the Whig Party died there, and the Democratic and Republican Parties have found some low points confined there (the 1936 presidential election and the 1972 presidential election.)

Actually, New Englanders were always threatening to secede from the nation, until the balance of powers shifted (notably the two Adamses — Northerners — were one term presidents while the other presidents up through Jackson were two-termers) and the South seceded first.

Now we know the last Federalists.  Presumably we can get to the debate on whether Jefferson effectively destroyed the Federalist Party by out-Federal-isting them, and just how strongly he hewed to any Jeffersonian principals at all.

Oh.  And there’s also a link analyzing the Larouchites’ victory in the 1986 Illinois Democratic Primaries.   Which effectively destroyed the Adlai Stevenson political clan.  I still don’t fully understand.  I assume a lot of people will end up deciding, partially not fully informed, by looking at the voters’ pamphlet.  Where they would see one statement from individuals promoting a set of principals in accord with the National Democratic Party, and one other set of candidates promoting (ahem) forming a “Nuremberg Tribunal” to investigate drug dealing by Zionists and journalists, represented by Henry Kissinger and Katherine Graham.
And they would gravitate toward the former.  But what do I know?  Many factors have to align just so to create an anomaly.

In a way, this is the only question I have for Barack Obama, and I won’t go back to it because I keep repeating it ad naseum of this blog.  Prominent Liberal Democratic blogger Superstar Icon Guy Kos suddenly popped up with it, but I have something to say about how Kos frames it.

Obama might wish we had poorer memories, but those of us actually trying to end the war can’t forget.

It is impossible not to be cynical about this, and I can refer to a book I referred to yesterday, Walter Karp’s Indispensable Enemies on politicos taking a stance on an issue and then supporting someone with very different stances onto committee chairs, thus always being able to take a popular position while propagating the other — wittingly sometimes, other times not.

Here the problem is mostly ingratiating oneself into a Good Old Boys Network of the Senate.  It is a funny power game, that, and whatever reason Obama had to toss his chips in with the networks behind Lieberman he choose it.

But what pops out at me about kos’s entry here is a rather striking bit of impotence with even this here Prominent Liberal Democratic blogger Superstar Icon Guy.

Obama might wish we had poorer memories, but those of us actually trying to end the war can’t forget.

And what are you going to do about it?  Understand, Obama has just raised a record amount over the blogosphere and has taken another turn in the evolution of blog-land — the “Facebook campaign” which is he seems to be reaching to something other than the “hardcore” of the Deaniac-types (think of it as the rockstar element — Oprah?  Best seller books?  And he’s so… clean and articulate!) in raising this record funds.  He has reached a different audience here, there’s some other gate that has been stormed by someone else, and we go from there.

So apparently, Raed Jarrar, the raed of (Iraqi) salam pax’s “dearread” blog which was a must-read through the — um — “Major Combat Operations Phase” of the Iraq War, is going to be a featured speaker at the Portland 4th Annual of the Event in March of 2003 Peace March / Anti-War Protest. Amazing, because he may be the first speaker at any of these things I have ever heard of.
As an aside for these things, in the past these nationally-coordinated marches were sponsored by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and end Racism), a fairly dismal entity which the right wing could beat up mercilessly. Now I do not believe they have International ANSWER to kick around anymore, but I know they will continue to do so nonetheless.

Raed Jarrar has always fascinated me in certain respects. Salam Pax was always in a strange way, within a plethora of mixed emotions, a crypto-war supporter, in the sense that he could shrug when it came, state that the Iraqis would never dispose of Saddam Hussein or his two sons, and at the end of the statue-dropping make a statement that the Americans had better get this right. Raed is of an entirely different mind, Take:

But if the Americans hadn’t invaded, do you believe that internal resistance would have been able to depose Saddam? If Iraqis decided to change their political regime, it’s their business. If they decided not to change it, it’s their business as well. My uncles were deported outside the country because we come from an Iranian descent. Many relatives died during the Iraqi/Iranian war and we were living with daily oppression. So, when I say that it’s fine with us to have an oppressive government that we have to change, I mean it and I know what I’m talking about.

If Iraqis decided to change their political regime, it’s their business. If they decided not to change it, it’s their business as well. My uncles were deported outside the country because we come from an Iranian descent. Many relatives died during the Iraqi/Iranian war and we were living with daily oppression. So, when I say that it’s fine with us to have an oppressive government that we have to change, I mean it and I know what I’m talking about.More aptly is this analysis, which downplays internal strife:

The current civil conflict—Iraqis in general don’t view it as a civil war—is caused by the foreign intervention. If we took into consideration Iraqi Sunnis and Shia have been living together for the last 1,400 years and they had one period of civil conflict that happened 600 years ago and they have never had any ethnic or sectarian clashes in the last century, and that they started having more political tension among themselves in the last three years, after the presence of the U.S., I think the clear conclusion is what’s happening now is caused by the foreign intervention, because it didn’t exist before then.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
In a sense that would alleviate many Americans from its last impulse to remain, the “We can’t leave a bloody civil war”… (Not that we seem to be leaving. We appear to be ready to cut up the oil — one part to Sunnis, one part to Shiites, one part to Kurds, one part to Chevron, one part to Exxon.)

But starting with the bombing of the Golden Mosque, I really can’t exactly tie into that one. But I would really like to believe it.

Chuck Hagel made a press conference announcement yesterday about his plans for the presidential race, which were that he plans on holding another press conference later this year to announce whether his plans on whether or not he will run for the White House.  There is something ludicrous in this whole process.  Chuck Hagel has gone from my estimation as my favourite Republican to one of the most duplicitious and self-serving of a historically duplicitious and self-serving body.  His votes never seem to follow his actions of his role as “one of the more forceful Republican voices in opposition to the Iraq war”.  The effect is fairly depressing.  My oft-mentioning of Thom Hartmann’s conspiracy theory that Hagel is being primed as a Republican to come out of nowhere and, basically a media-creation, seize a “Center” to pick up the presidency start to have a creepy bit of merit, even as it seems impossible to imagine him winning the Republican nomination.  A bit ago I saw a reference to Hagel as “The Democrats’ vice presidential dream candidate”, which was more than a little naseating — even as I goad myself to a naseating selection of Hillary Clinton from the Democratic brass.
Meanwhile, for no particular reason, Newt Gingrich has surfaced up as a contender for the throne.  Maybe this is a year of Democratic — Republican collusion which the Republicans opt to sit out and have Newt Gingrich run?  I begin to suspect, or rather reserect previous suspicions, that they are all like that, and grab the Walter Karp book Indispensable Enemies, as cynical an analysis of American political history as you will ever see.
Understand something about Gingrich and Clinton.  I heard some clips of Dick Morris saying that the questions regarding Gingrich’s infidelities may have come from the Clintons’ Secret Police.  I have to pause and stop myself from encouraging Clinton just to spite and mock the Dick Morrises of the world.

I saw a billboard today, near the downtown Safeway (now you can see it for yourself) which touted Portland State Univeristy as now being “Salmon Safe”, — in part with a suggestion  that the drinking water at PSU has been improved so that it is… safe for Salmon.

So I can only assume that that means that when I went to PSU, the water had more BDT in it than H or O, and was an entirely different chemical compound than “water”…