Ever since William Henry Harrison who only served as president for a handful of weeks what has happened to the winner of every 4th election in the us? Possible extra point for why.

I am very tempted to give a false answer to this question to lead this student essayist completely astray. Something about a kid just typing in an essay question grates at me — and by that I mean word-by-word and not “subject” or even assortment of words designed to lead directly to an answer. The problem there is that I cannot, off the top of my mind, come up with an absurd yet plausible-enough response, in part because the question itself comes across as absurd. I must have missed that History lesson.

Every fourth election? Well, every fifth election brings us the “Curse of the Zeros”, and the supposed death of a president, but the answer of “why?” can only bring the this.

But every fourth election would bring us 1856, 1872, 1888, 1904, 1920, 1936, 1952, 1968, 1984, and 2000. I could sort out the winners of these contests, and I think I have them in my head (Buchanan, Grant, Cleveland, Roosevelt, Harding, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and … er… Up for Dispute.) It looks arbitrary to me. Good luck with that one! Your teacher is weird.

“The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club and Knight Haffuer is now safe inside the T- together with is well worn femurs, bit and saddle horn,” Mead wrote.

“I was stunned and I felt a little bit like I had stumbled on an illicit treasure and something that does not belong to me and something the world should know about,” he said.

[…]

Let’s hope this is just a myth. Let’s hope the folks who lead our country have much better judgment, respect for history and sensitivity than this legend suggests.

It’s never been proven, but a recently discovered 1918 letter written by a Skull and Bones member has brought some credence to the suspicion. If so, Skull and Bones and its reported high-profile members, including President Bush, Sen. John Kerry, members of Congress and plenty of others in academia and corporate America, should know what’s needed to make amends.

……………………..

What, exactly, can George W Bush and Senator John Kerry do to make amends for their forebears of an elite club grave-robbing a Native American burial ground and stealing the corpse of a Native American chief and Icon? Maybe it’s one more slap in the face for a vanquished culture, but somehow an “I’m sorry for… um… that” does not cut it.

There’s a certain frustration with regards to Skull and Bones. When asked about it, Bush shuts up. When asked about it, Kerry shuts up. Or so went the Meet the Press interviews. The charade of Skull and Bones commences through adulthood, and is taken more seriously than it seemingly deserves.

The rub comes in with, say, Gary Trudeau. He will float in a Skull and Bones satire from time to time. Why is it that the politicians who are or would be president go dead serious on the topic, and the cartoonist behind a comic strip can pass over the ludicrousness of… (ahem)

… the world’s most socially irredemable Fraternity.

Regarding Geronomo’s Skull. Does it just sit there, in a dark cavern? Locked away or prominently displayed? More importantly, wouldn’t it smell after a while? I am aware that the members of Skull and Bones, being the elite and being of the upper-most class of our nation, with wealthy alumni tossing whatever money is needed for the upkeep of Skull and Bones, means that they can afford any and all preservatives to keep the skull from rotting, but isn’t there only so much you can do before it goes from being this “oh so cool” object to being something you just kind of wish you never had?

I think Daniel Pinkwater wrote about what that must be like.

Paul deParrie says he found this amusing and whimsical. (This board has a lot of bugs on it, and it took a bit of effort to get the post up. A bit more than was worth it, but never mind.):

Now that deParrie has shocked the Constitution Party Establishment by declaring something to the effect of “I did not leave the party; the party left me”, he’s going to need a new party. Some helpful suggestions:

http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm

1: The “Constitutional Action Party” sounds kind of like the Constitution Party. Though, it seems to have some organizational and morale problems.

The CAP is a tiny Religious Right party that wants to abolish the federal income tax, ban all abortions, end Affirmative Action, impose protectionist trade tariffs, fight pornography and end federal involvement in education. CAP founder Frank Creel wrote Politics1 in January 1999 that the CAP “has had virtually no success since its 1995 founding. It has no local chapters anywhere, no candidates for office and no prospect of running a presidential candidate in 2000. There is little to no prospect that we will be able to hold a convention anytime soon. … Only some sort of economic or other catastrophe will produce conditions favorable to the emergence of a new party.” Still, the CAP keeps it small web site online, and recently updated the design. The CAP fielded its first candidate in 2002, when CAP Chair Frank Creel ran for Congress in Virginia.

But all the better: ideological purification is assured.

2: Neal Horsley has his “Creator’s Rights Party”. Perhaps deParrie can join this one. deParrie and Horsley share a role as go-to-guy when the Media wishes to grab a quote form someone who comes close to condoning the maiming of abortion providers. On the other hand, Horsley has some curious items in the closet. Is the legalization of Man-on-Mule Sex in the Creator’s Rights Platform?

3: Natural Law Party. Who isn’t against Natural Law? Actually, this has been a liberal party with strong New Age overtones… not conducive to deParrie’s political beliefs. But the key is that the party has disbanded. So it’s there for the taking!

Now of course Paul can create his own party, as he suggests here:

I recall meeting Howard Phillips—at least the old Howard Phillips—when I first became involved in the Oregon Constitution Party. One thing he said that I remember well was, “If some day I, or the Constitution Party, should ever abandon the core principles of the Party, don’t wait. Leave and start a new party.”

I await word of whether the Oregon Constitution Party will secede from the national. If so, I’ll be here. If not, I’m gone.

Well, Theodore Roosevelt left the Republicans and created the Progressive Party. Popularly called the “Bull Moose Party”. Which figures. deParrie’s party’s symbol would have to be either a floating fetus ghost or a Porcupine or a talking beret, or some combination of the three — a floating Porcupine fetus wearing a beret?

I thought I had a week or two, from when I posted “31”, to mentally formulate something bemusing to say when Bush’s approval rating wandered into the 20s — and keep in mind this is “in some poll or other”. But — no… no… no… here we are:

President George W. Bush’s job approval rating has hit a new low, with 29 percent of the U.S. public saying he is doing an “excellent or pretty good job,” down from 35 percent in April, according to a Harris Interactive poll in The Wall Street Journal Online.

Now, in general I don’t think keeping running tabs on poll numbers, and in my case it really is just keeping tabs on poll lows, is good sport or productive or meaningful, but the moment we are in with this Bush Presidency is, to say the least, fascinating. It really is just one new low after another new low, and I really just stand back, jaw gaped a bit, saying “This just does not look possible.” Bush has to have a floor, doesn’t he?

The one thing I don’t understand, and this was in the fine-print of the “31” poll: apparently amongst self-described “liberals”, Bush’s approval rating sits at Seven percent. Now, I understand that the term “liberal” has various definitions — “I’m a classical Liberal in the tradition of John Locke!” — but…

Seven percent? Self described? Liberals? Approve of Bush? I thought, in the parlance of 2002 through — I guess 2008 — domestic American politics “Liberal” is practically defined by a, quote-in-quote “rabid hatred of President George W Bush”. So, I’m stuck at the: who, where, why? Is this the Chistopher Hitchens mob? Roughly 3 percent of the electorate? And … yes, I understand this non-establishment Conservative (never quite part of George W Bush’s base, but probably oughta be) attitude that “Bush’s free-spending reminds me of LBJ.” But we follow that onward and we hit the difference between LBJ’s “Guns and Butter” policy versus George W Bush’s “Guns and Butter” — um… Guns and … Buttrussing, perhaps? Not self-described Liberalism.

The approval rating of Congress remains about ten points lower. Just type that into your head, mentally. The trouble with the dynamics of Congressional polls is that they bump up agains the oh-so-vaulted “the lines are so well drawn visa vie Redistricting” rule. What I see when I take note of the “congressional race” rankings, as per the Experts:

Sure, things are flowing in the Democrats’ direction. But they’re hitting up against the lines. A slew of rankings that were “Safe Republican” have slid into the “Republican Favored” camp. A slew of rankings that were “Safe Republican” have slid into the “Leans Republican” camp.

And that’s where it stops. At least, for the moment. Those seem to be the rules of the current political winds. It does suggest something on the order of a 2006 election result of … a Republican House majority of, like, two.

UPDATE OF SORTS: Joshua Micah Marshall — the answer, as it turned out was: in Four days.

Franklin Roosevelt:
Andrew Jackson, Abraham Licoln, Woodrow Wilson

Harry Truman:
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson

Dwight Eisenhower:
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Licoln, Theodore Roosevelt

John Kennedy:
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson

Lyndon Johnson:
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan (?!?), Franklin Roosevelt

Richard Nixon:
Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower

Gerald Ford:
Abraham Lincoln (twice), Harry Truman (thrice), Dwight Eisenhower

Jimmy Carter
Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman

Ronald Reagan
Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Licoln, William Howard Taft (?!?), Calvin Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower

George Herbert Walker Bush:
Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower

Bill Clinton:
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt

George W. Bush:
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower

It makes sense for Johnson to have up FDR and it makes sense for Reagan to have up Coolidge. Other Democrats sly away a bit from the “Big Government” Roosevelt, and I don’t think other Republicans are as ideologically tuned to Coolidge. But… Taft? But… historian’s pick for the worst president… Buchanan?

The lead of the bumper is disenfranchised. No way is that going to get me down. Let’s boogie to the heartbeat of America. Once it happens, therefore, no news will indeed be good news. Oh so they say, those whacky Looney Tune pundits from Bickleton. For what it is worth, the lint there is more stringy than most. But that’s not saying much. But what it is saying is spiffy. But why does everything have to be full of spiff? Live with yours-okay? Or if you want to- don’t even bother. But only if that’s your cousin’s decision. Because he is REALLY up there. Of course, there are many types of intelligence that encompass everybody. Which is only half-true. Be it as that may, coffee tastes better as decaf. See what i meant by that earlier statement? It’s a really sharp point of mine. Better than a dull one, which is what one learns as a cub scout. Fine upstanding organizations need our support, so support your local marching bands. They beat on. Eccentric people once noted, “I watch birds.” I always liked the south- it’s so sunny. That is, when it doesn’t rain. But no way will that get me down. Only fainting will do that. At which time, shocking allegations will be cleared up. Only then, when the lies are buried, shall progress be impeded. We shall never overcome. Which is what everybody wants in the first place: someone to call Tim with. Hey.

Why don’t you link your blog to leftyblogs.com. I am sure others would like to read what you’ve written.

I provided the answer in the comments, which is simply that I don’t concentrate on localized politics, surrounding Portland, Oregon, enough. I have a recent spate of comments on the City Council race. I regularly check in on the US Representative for my old home. This comment was perched to a post about the Democratic Senate Candidate for Virginia — and I note that at this precise moment a single news item dominates the “latest news” at Leftyblogs: apparently the entire Democratic Machine has stopped pretending that they’re neutral on the primary race and has stepped forward to announce that they endorse James Webb. At any rate, I’m covering something from across the nation with that one.

You know what I’ve entertained mentioning here that traffics from Portland? This bit of inanity. Did he leave the Constitution Party, or did the Constitution Party leave him? Difficult to say, that.

Which is further engaged with this bit of inanity. I focus your attention on this sentence:

At the same time, I must also say that the Constitution Party remains as a mere blip-on-the-radar screen in national American politics because of the public perception that the organization is a Johnny-One-Note conclave where abortion and school prayer seem to constantly dominate the political landscape and discourse of the Party to the virtual exclusion of anything else.

Nay. I call it the “Christian Reconstructionist Party”. It has its devotees, and I suppose if the party splits in two, I can mock the split in the same spirit I mocked the split that occurred in the Prohibition Party in 2004, and to a lesser degree the Reform Party in 2000 (the Natural Law Party tangling in was bemusing). (The Prohibition Party split was hilarious because the party’s vote total — I do not believe — passed the three digit mark in the previous presidential election.) The man leaves out the stoning of homosexuals in his “fringe” equation of single-issue voters.

I last saw Paul deParrie standing outside the Rose Garden before a “March of Dimes” event of some sort, waving a sign featuring an bloodied aborted fetus. I did not understand the symmetry here. March of Dimes. Breast Cancer. Women. Is it simply an anti-woman stand? See… when he stood before the Mall at Christmas time saying “Happy Herod’s Day”, I could make sense of that. Blah blah blah… sin… blah blah blah… Jesus is the Reason for the Season… blah blah blah… Abortion is Sin and Jesus Cries at Abortion.

As it were, Paul deParrie, who the news media can always count on to get a quote for a stand nearly endorsing maiming abortion providers, has left the Constitution Party, and… um… wandered into the Political wilderness? Is he on the political fringe now? Only now, and not then?

Sheesh.

That’s where I will wander back into Oregon politics. Does leftyblogs want to index that? I don’t know.

Last time I murmured about Bush’s poll ratings, it stood — as per one of the polls — at 32%. It looks as though each successive poll shows Bush at one point less than his previous poll, which means we’re still a few away from what I once thought was inconceivable — a Bush approval rating in the 20s. It’s possible that he’ll have a bump back to that vaulted mid-30s range — but in the meantime… the 32%… has now become… 31%.

President Bush’s approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.

The survey of 1,013 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, shows Bush’s standing down by 3 percentage points in a single week. His disapproval rating also reached a record: 65%. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.

Sure, the margin of error means that the slippage from 32% to 31%, and across different polls no less, is meaningless, but it is psychologically entertaining to see one successive poll after another with a 34% approval rating, a 33% approval rating, a 32% rating, and now… a 31% approval rating. Thank you, you’ve all been great! This is the Rise, and Fall, and Fall, and Fall, and Fall, and Fall of President George W Bush.

Still, there may be a certain nobility in Bush’s impossible crushing positioning. It may be true that he considers the Greatest Moment of his Presidency that time he caught a 7-foot Fish (it is impossible to parody this guy — he actually said that) — and at a certain point in time he comes to a “History will vindicate” me position. Historians regard Wilson in high esteem, wrongly says I. Historians regard Truman highly, not as wrongly say I. If historians ever regard Bush highly, I will have to sigh and just say that they did a Wilson Job on him (it’s his second term that I cannot stomach much).

Or you can go to a song — now played at sporting events, though I have to wonder what message it sends out about the “Home Team” — from the band “Cake”, which I think kind of encapsulates Bush’s situation:

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,
Engines pumping and thumping in time.
The green light flashes, the flags goes up,
Churning and burning, they yearn for the cup.

He’s going the distance.
He’s going for speed.
He’s going the distance…

Well… at least the idea that He’s In Dead Last Place, cartoonishly so… if you want to read the song that direction, as opposed to any number of other directions you can read the song into (a love spurned). The problem comes in that the President really is not on much of a course at all at this point. The “Doubt and Remorse” part — if you squint hard enough, you may be able to read that in the scrounched face and his mention of catching a fish as the Great Accomplishment of his Presidency.

The classic iconic image from Jack T Chick’s very first tract:

Well, good news for those of you who wish to “Witness” to a black audience. Jack T Chick is embarking on a process of Colorization: You know what is it, colorization? Well…

Christian workers have been telling us for some time that their work among blacks would be much more effective if they had Chick tracts where the characters in the story were black. Black people on the street are more receptive to black characters than Caucasian.

Beginning this month, we are rolling out a new tract series with the same story but with black characters. We have taken some of our most popular Chick tracts and redrawn them with black characters. To avoid confusion in ordering, we have renamed them. This Was Your Life has become It’s Your Life. Somebody Loves Me is called Hard Times.

I must say, the kid’s hair remains better groomed.

The Angels are changed as well.

Whether this means that there are two Heavens, one for Whites — the other for Blacks — Separate But Equal, as it were — I do not know.

In case you’re not privy to Jack T Chick, and have never picked one out from a public telephone where the Christian Fundamentalists of a certain stripe leave them: Yes, the premise of this tract is that you have an alcoholic dad beat his kid and throw him out into a rainstorm for not bringing home enough spare change from a day’s worth of begging, where-upon the kid dies on the street, his only solace being a piece of paper that informs him that “Somebody Loves You.” A good Christian woman comes by and tells him that that “Somebody” is Jesus. In the first printings of the tract, she leaves, saying nothing else. At some point, Chick realized this doesn’t come off well, so he added the line “I’ll get you some help!” Thank you, Chick, for making this morality tale newly accessible to a multiracial audience!

I’ll be be on the look-out for the new tract line in (our still segregated city) North Portland… The Christian Fundamentalists who do the Chick Tract thing will undoubtedly stuff these things in the phone-books next to (groan away) KFCs and Popeyes over there.

From Born Fighting: How the Scotts-Irish Did stuff and did some Other Stuff

As my grandmother, great-aunt, and aunt told it, my grandfather’s sin was to explain to the black folk of Kensett that they were being charged higher interest rates than whites at AP Mills’s store, thus keeping them in an even worse spiral of debt — and also to suggest to AP Mills that this was not a particularly Christian thing to do. By all accounts, my grandfather than told AP Mills to go to hell. And AP Mills, along with others who controlled the admittedly sparse purse strings of White County, showed my grandfather that there could be such a thing as hell on Earth.

The hard-luck story goes on. Unable to get any other job, he does some Hard Labor, wherein his bones give way, and he dies a horrible death.

When I became assistant secretary of defense in 1984, the deputy secretary of defense was a protege of Weinberger’s named William Howard Taft IV. Taft , who had graduated from Yale in 1966 and Harvard Law School in 1969, is the great-grandson of former President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft, also of Yale, and the great-great-grandson of one of the founding members of Yale’s famous Secret Society, Skull and Bones. Will Taft and I may as well have grown up on different planets. He had gone to Andover, Yale, Harvard Law, heading to Nader’s Raiders after law school. I had attended seven different public schools in four different states between the sixth and twelfth grades alone as my father moved from one military base to another, then headed off to the Marine Corps and Vietnam after the Naval Academy. But I found Taft likable and proficient despite a certain patrican aloofness. And he did not know it, but he also inspired me.

Some people have their Skull and Bones. And some people keep their pride, then die of untreated broken bones.

Rip it; throw it on a brochure’ stamp a “Vote for James Webb — US Senate”; mail it to every Registered Voter in Virginia. There’s your campaign literature.