I thought at the time that this was a very unwise photo op. Leaving aside my, and people with political opinions similar to mine toward Bush and the War, view of the absurdity of the photo op, exponentially grown by a sense of cognitive dissonance by how the Media at Large portrayed the event, and going straight to imaginig myself as political advisor. Whatever short term gains in poll numbers Bush could garner from this charade, the “Mission Accomplished” jab would not work for Bush in the long term — one need not go very far to suggest that, um, “tough times” lay ahead with “hard slogging” in Iraq — indeed, Bush placed these bits, albeit in Triumphalist notes, in the speech he gave out there — 20 miles from the coast of San Diego — after riding around in that airplane in that flight jacket at impossible angles designed to avoid the view of the less impressive-looking coastline. For most of the 2004 election cycle my thought was that if Bush was going to lose the election, this photo op was the moment that he lost the election — he did not “manage expectations” well enough. Actually, this photo op was a good example of Bush’s inability to think in the mid to long term — everything is instant gratification; everything is short term fixes. If, in a happier time, Bush envisioned his presidency as an efficient Business model, his Business model is revealed as a corporation that looks no further than the profit margin for the end of the quarter reporting.

The Media gave itself away, waxing enthusiastic on how MANLY this made Bush look. This is the “Alpha – Male” line that we want to believe in. Actually, pondering the great pantheon of American presidencies, the man that is in vogue — a portrait hung by our recent presidencies on that wall of portraits of our Presidents’ favourite Presidents:

I smirk at Chris Elliott’s portrayal of Teddy Roosevelt in The Shroud of the Thwacker. But he, in his “Rough Rider” pose, was the man that Bush was trying to emulate with his “Mission Accomplished” stunt, conciously or unconciously.

The curious thing is how political realities have shifted such that our politicians have ceased to imitate the actions of our ultimate Alpha Male President and are now mimicing, perhaps unconciously as it’s difficult to see what is to gain politically from this man’s political arch, the ultimate Beta (or is it “Zeta”) Male President:

Which strays back to Bush announcing at his State of the Union speech that “America is addicted to Oil” and wanders over to Arnold Schwarzennager’s “Wear a Sweater” – esque suggestions on what is to be done about our gas price upsurge… said sometime before accepting a huge check from “Big Oil” and after walking out of his famed Hummer.

As failed presidents go, Jimmy Carter is a real winner, ain’t he? I wish all our failed presidents could be like him.

One of the unsettling thoughts I have had recently is simply this:

This. Right now. From maybe roughly 1995. To maybe 5 years from now in the future. Is the Golden Age of the Internet. It will go downhill from there, when the Corporate Interests bludgeon out the general small “a” Anarchist – tinged DIY attitude that came with initial Internet Culture.

I pick 1995 as a date because there were enough people not totally immersed in the world of tech to make it a more worthwhile visit to surf about by that time. I remember some students at high school, circa 1998, who complained that the Internet was a lot more interesting before everyone else was online — this small cadre of geeks who were online in the early 1990s. I know there are people out there who were with it in some computer science lab at a University in the late 70s, to which I say “Thwack”. But my point is that to a lay person, even one with esoteric interests, it… really wasn’t that interesting a place. Do the usenet searches all you want, it’s a lot of languages nobody speaks.

Somewhere is amiss that is something that is akin to the TeleCommunications Act of 1996. I don’t know how a President Al Gore would handle this. He invented the Internet, and I’m only half facetious when I say that. But he would be the successor to the Clinton legacy. It may be that these things are inevitable, and they march as the Globalist Leviathan Government does, regardless of who is in power.

5 years from now we may be needing to set an alternate Internet to circumvent the madness that our corporate masters have deigned for the lowest common denominator to enjoy for the Regular Internet.

We’ll see how everything develops.

Every time you see a campaign ad from Eric Sten… Every time you hear a campaign ad from Eric Sten… Every time you watch a campaign ad from Eric Sten… Know that Your tax dollars are paying for it. Tax dollars that could go for blah de and blah da. The Oregonian calls Eric Sten’s Public Finance Scheme a Debacle, and the Portland Tribune calls it the biggest collasol Nightmare in Human History since at least the Titanic, if not the Bubonic Plague. This ad was paid for by the Friends of Candidate Bibbledy Boop, not by You.

Suffer the little children. I note that there’s a candidate for a different seat on the city council, Amanda Fritz, whose campaign is based — to her detriment a bit, too strongly — on the fact that she’s running on Public Finance and she would not be running otherwise. Eric Sten would be a hypocrite if he were to shirk from Public Finance — it is his “scheme” — which in the eyes of Candidate Bibbledy Boop means he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

My first impulse to an editorial written by the Oregonian is to oppose its stand, and then double-back to see if they have a point — which, even on this score, they might — I don’t know how our Public Financed Campaign is set up. The Portland Tribune is a bit of a different animal — I don’t bother checking back to see if they have a point — it’s just the Publishing Organ of the Portland Business Alliance and the Portland City Police, leave it at that — two institutions that have their place, but I don’t particularly want to see dominate over us all. That initial editorial, about taking off to Hawaii (or was it some other sunny place?) with a boatload of campaign cash and not running a campaign, was basically just an editorial worth dismissing out of hand, and you run on from there.

The thing is, learning that the campaign ad was paid for by “Friends of Candidate X” does not inspire confidence in me, because I kind of get the gist of what a political friend is. Nobody is going to be releasing a “Buying of the Portland City Council 2006”, as per the quadrennially released “Buying of the President” books that runs down all the candidates’ financial backers, but that is what a “Friend of Candidate X” generally is.

Biddley boo — the Eastside Guy. My opponents hate cars. Just listen! “I hate cars.” Paid for my Biddley Boo — The Eastside Guy. You are the Majority!

Hm. I don’t drive a car. Biddley boo is dividing car drivers from non car drivers, as well as — East and West, as per Biddley Boo’s statement that he is the “Eastside Guy”. (As opposed to his two opponents who are, evidentally “West-side”). I’m not really paying attention to the geopolitics of Portland, Oregon: do the Westsiders hate cars and the Eastsiders love them? My guess is Biddley boo wants to make an issue of Erik Sten’s botched-from-the-start Tram Project. To do that, he denigrates all of public transportation instead. To wit, I say: Screw Biddley boo.

I have this sense of weariness, trying to open up the political fissures of different political fissures in this nation. For such a thing as the Democratic Party, there is a “Montana Miracle” in the works, a product of strong leadership of Brian Swietzer and a general sense that the Democratic Party can win a meaningful election in a state full of cowboys.

Virginia always looked like another fulcrom. A Mark Warner wandered in, something of a technocrat, received overwhelming approval ratings when he left, and left behind a Democratic gubernatorial replacement.

And the man to continue that re-beat is… James Webb.

I’ve read that Webb was a Dem until 76, and when Reagan ran for Pres. he brought A LOT of disenfranchised Dems to his side. We should welcome Webb back to the party (he supported Kerry in 04) and look at the vision and leadership he’d bring to the table. He has not been in bed with Republicans for the last 10 years, Harris (anti-American worker)Miller has.

I note an interesting debate between the two Democratic hopefuls over Affirmative Action. Webb says that the racial element should be dropped and affirmative action should be used as a means for the lower socio-economic groupings to have a better means of upward mobility. Miller maintains that other government programs (the Hope Grant, Medicaid) work for that end, and Affirmative Action was devised specifically for blacks and minorities. When I hear the argument from an opponent of Affirmative Action cry out, “At what point would society have ‘fixed’ the problem of racism and sexism such that you’d end it?”, I’d reply with a “Thwamp!” and “In an ideal world, it would become a mechanism for the poor to have better access to upward mobility.” As it is, I don’t know where I’d come out on this debate. I’d think it would end up covering some of the reconstructive work that came with … um… the refusal of our government to carry out Reconstruction — but I don’t really know.

Over the years Webb has made impolitic pronouncements opposing women in combat and warning that some affirmative action had become “state-sponsored racism.” Today, Webb endorses affirmative action but not for mere “diversity” reasons. He says that as secretary of the Navy he tripled the number of women in “operational billets” and that he has been endorsed by the only woman to make it through the Special Operations course.

All that said, in consideration of this George Will column, a few footnotes are in order:

Webb, who says he was “pretty much” a Democrat until President Carter “pardoned the draft evaders,” (1) endorsed Allen over Democratic Sen. Chuck Robb in 2000 (2), after supporting Robb – another Marine veteran of Vietnam – in 1994. In 1992, Webb supported the presidential campaign of another Vietnam veteran, Nebraska Democrat Sen. Bob Kerrey, who now is national finance chairman of Webb’s campaign. Webb says, “I wouldn’t shake John Kerry’s hand for 20 years” because of Kerry’s anti-Vietnam activities (3) but “I voted for him” in 2004.

(1) He left the Democratic Party of Jimmy Carter for the wrong reason, then. Actually this deserves some further explication. Later post. Reference the one part of Kevin Phillips’s new book that I read which refers to the South’s attitudes toward Presidents Truman, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton as, in the end, Carpet Baggers.
(2) I understand why James Webb, even if you more fully import him into Republican-land, rejected Senate Candidate Oliver North. But George Allen?
(3) This was a cultural touchstone for the fall of the Democratic Party, in the South especially. Somehow the excesses of the anti-war movement fall onto John Kerry’s soldiers. James Webb ends up with the same crowd as the Swift-Boat Campaigners.

Back to Will’s column.

Long convinced that invading Iraq would “empower Iran, the long-term threat,” Webb thinks the administration’s neoconservative nation-builders “are so far to the left they seem to be on the right.” His challenge will be to harvest financial support, much of it from outside Virginia, from anti-war liberals, without forfeiting his appeal to Virginia’s moderate Democrats and many military families. He is being endorsed by some of the retired generals now denouncing Don Rumsfeld. And he will attract attention if he continues to charge that the Bush administration is “deliberately miscounting the casualties in Iraq,” minimizing them by “counting only those evacuated out of theater.”

Webb says, “I’m pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-Second Amendment.” Two out of three might not suffice, given that Democratic primary voters often have little tolerance for heterodoxy. And he says, “I’m not saying what anti-war people want to hear – ‘Get out last Tuesday.’ “

Will is likely overstating the “two out of three” (which may morph into “two out of four” if he expect it to drag into the “How to extricate from Iraq” — though perhaps Will realizes the Democratic mixed mind on the subject which ends up as “Just so long as they realize we have to leave sooner or later”). But Virginia’s Democratic primary voters. They own guns, don’t they? My vague awareness of Virginia geopolitics is that you have Suburban Washington DC — Yuppie form of Democratic Blue — and you have … the rest — Republican Red. Except, the last governor ripped through the rural red area by referring to Jesus in every other sentence — William Jennings Bryan would be so proud, as might Tom Franks. Doesn’t this supposed “Jacksonian Democracy” uprising that Webb and Webb’s supporters believe him to be helping foster include Two Guns in Every Garage?

“Jacksonian Democrat” was a code-word used by Segregationist Democrats from the end of FDR’s tenure on through the dawn of the political realignment that gave the South to the Republicans. Perhaps there are some things to be gained with it — surely the absolute most onerous part of Jackson’s legacy is no longer even possible. As it were, Jackson lead a rowdy crew into the white house to break John Quincy Adams and company’s dinner plates, as the aristocratic figures of the John Quincy Adams administration looked on and sneered at the “rabble”, and it is for that that we celebrate the legacy of Andrew Jackson.

Referring to James Webb’s book “Born Fighting”, the vision is that the Ivory League Intellectual proponents of “Political Correctness” are the Aristocrats that have been thumping their nose at the the Redneck fans of NASCAR, evidentally all Scotch – Irish Americans. In the strange celebration that Webb has written, thumb their nose at the hyphenated markers that come with “political correctness”, though this doubles back on itself as something that is a source of pride for a group that should assert itself — and I can make out two hyphens in the group listing.

From a newspaper in Connecticut — the Hartford Courant — this letter to the editor:

Does The Courant’s April 23 encomium to Ned Lamont [Page 1, “Out Of The Political Shadows”] have to be reported as a campaign donation? Too bad, but even a puff piece like this contains some hard truths about the aspiring senator. His style (hiding his luxury car, his Greenwich mansion, his Phillips Exeter past) reminds me a lot of another Greenwich “how can we fool ’em today?” pol, Lowell Weicker.

John Lankford

The term “leftist” is something of a joke, and there are those in this nation that have the habit of wrapping the political “left”, liberalism, right up to “Moderate” Republicans into one giant grouping.

I take more forceful aim at his suggestion of Ned Lamont hiding his wealth. Actually, to the legions of Ned Lamontites, the wealth is a great attraction. He has money to spend in his bid to unseat the reviled Joseph Lieberman. The sad fact that the Senate is a Millionaire’s Club means that Ned LaMont would be joining the company of 99 (give or take one or two) other Millionaire Senators, hiding their luxury cars, mansions, and privileged backgrounds when attempting to appeal to the voters as one variety of “populist” or other. This game works across the party aisles.

But somehow or other this gets through to the media. Witness today’s Washington Post article:

Mild-mannered and thoughtful, Lamont has a pedigree that blends old money with noblesse oblige. His great-grandfather Thomas W. Lamont, a chairman of J.P. Morgan & Co., commuted to Wall Street by yacht and helped to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles. His family tree also includes Corliss Lamont, a socialist philosopher and civil libertarian, and an assortment of ministers and adventurers. Lamont served as a Greenwich selectman during the 1980s and lost a 1990 state Senate bid.

In his official biography, Lamont describes the lively, politically charged family dinner conversations that punctuated his childhood. “The underlying theme was public service,” he recalled.

That is how the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy tend to frame their rich pedigree: “Service”. I suppose this is the “limousine liberalism” that gets people tied up in knots — how very paternalistic those bastards! Those with more humble backgrounds, John Edwards — whos background is not quite as humble as he makes it out to be, but we work with him nonetheless, Bill Clinton — and the most humble backgrounds of them all — Dennis Kucinich — can play that other role. (The most aggravating thing I ever heard about Bill Clinton was “I like him, because he’s like an ordinary man.” But at least it wasn’t as annoying as hearing “I like George W Bush, because he’s like an ordinary man.”)

The bizarre trick up Ned Lamont’s sleeve is to use his business pedigree to show him as not terribly a leftist firebrand at all that is supposedly the fire-breathing bloggers’ driving aim — someone who is not playing out Cindy Sheehan’s role — contemplator of a more symbolic primary fight against Dianne Feinstein — but seriously meaning to become Connecticut’s next Senator, and once there, governing.

The trouble with Lieberman:

With nearly $4.8 million of campaign funds in the bank as of March 31, Lieberman rolled out two statewide ads about a week ago, including one that directly confronts the war. “I already know that some of you feel passionately against my position on Iraq,” Lieberman says in the ad. “I respect your views, and while we probably won’t change each other’s minds, I hope we can still have a dialogue and find common ground on all the issues where we do agree.”

is that, by definition, you are already at common ground on “all the issues we do agree” with.

Lowell Weicker sits on the sidelines:

“It appears Weicker has not gotten over the loss to Lieberman 18 years ago, and he’s still trying to get some measure of revenge for that,” said Lieberman campaign manager Sean Smith.

“I want to be clear,” Smith said. “Sen. Lieberman has taken on some controversial positions and he knows that some of the discontent out there is due to positions that he himself has taken.” He then added: “It does appear also that Lowell Weicker is still trying to get back at Joe Lieberman for taking away his Senate seat in 1988.”

Which either misses the mark or it doesn’t. It’s a sub-plot for the chattering classes of Connecticut to yammer on about, of no consequence to anyone other than them and a few Political Insiders.

There’s a bit of discomfort in seeing this less than ideal teen’s online presence (“[lovely] IS LEGAL IN 6 DAYS” — not the last words you’d want, and would be any responsible parents’ worst fear.)

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=7889704

against the backdrop of

http://www.koin.com/news.asp?RECORD_KEY%5Bnews%5D=ID&ID%5Bnews%5D=3541

and

www.katu.com/stories/85448.html

Well, every parenting guide I’ve ever seen tells you that your teenagers wear many hats…

Somewhere she’s here:
www.mydeadspace.com/

A repository of dead teenagers. Um. Hm.

“Oh where, or where did my baby go?” Or is “Leader of the Pack” or “Patches” more appropriate? Someone — Write a new Dead Teen Heartbreak Song NOW!!!

Phil Hendrie has decided to retire from radio and pursue his acting career on a full-time basis. The last live broadcast of the syndicated “Phil Hendrie Show” will be June 23. Hendrie currently appears on the NBC television sitcom, “Teachers.”

SVP Comedy Programming, NBC Universal Television Studio Shelley McCrory stated, “While this is a huge loss for radio, it’s a big win for television. We’re thrilled with the work Phil’s doing on our comedy series ‘Teachers,’ and look forward to a long future with him.”

Yes. Phil Hendrie is going to join the exciting and burgeoning world of … Network Television Sitcom Television… a place that just shouts out “Freshness”. “Teachers” looks like a horrible television show.

Ah well. That sucks. Rest In Piece, Phil Hendrie. I enjoyed you from 1998 onward, and now you fade into nothingness, leaving a blank on the dial. You had a bit of a miss when you slowly brought in your boisterous political discussions, (Hawkish on War), and at times in the last three years it spilled into your schtik (never a good arena for political points)– prior to that you had the one problem of devoting a full hour of your show to talking about how wonderful you are. But I could ignore all that and turn you off to wait for something better. But I am now set to prepare to think about you in the Past Tense. “Remember Phil Hendrie? Yeah, he was funny once upon a time. I liked it when he aped that midlevel Laker Player and talked about his German player as smelling like Cheese.”

From the latest issue of “Mental Floss” magazine, a profile on eccentric (is there any other type) Mathematician, Paul Erdös.

During much of Erdös’ childhood, his father was imprisoned in a Russian internment camp in Siberia, having been captured during World War One. But when he returned to Hungary in 1920, he brought his son a very special gift — The English Language. Unfortunately, said language arrived a little damaged. Lajos Erdös taught himself English by reading books in prison. Having never actually heard the language, the pronunciations he taught his son were, to say the least, imaginative. Years later, Paul Erdös’ speech was still so unintelligible that a documentary featuring him provided subtitles. To make matters worse, Erdös peppered his speech with self-created slang few people outside his circle of friends understood. In Erdös- speak, “wine, women, and song” became “poison, bosses, and noises”; “epsilon” referred to a child or any small object; and international news, particularly when it focused on the Cold War, became “The Sam and Joe Show”.

I like that name.

I don’t expect the Reason-oids to be terribly sympathetic to either the plight of the Democratic Party or an article defending them from the Washington Monthly. (Note the “SmokingPenguin”‘s quip, which pretty much only demonstrates his/her ideological difference with the Party and not any comment about the supposed “lameness” of said party, and leaves out the tactical advancing of the ball against the Iraq War with Jack Murtha, which assuming he is a Libertarian of any purity is a stance he finds more conducive. I assume the “Davis-Bacon” rebuff just slid under his concious reading, a big deal for Liberals that Libertarians wouldn’t stand for.) I can also point out that their reading on the Paul Hackett race is a bit fuzzy, conforming to a certain whistful conventional wisdom advanced by Hackett himself: like it or not, Sherrod Brown was kicking Paul Hackett’s butt in that primary race. I’m a bit disappointed in that the focus of Tim Cavanaugh’s snark on the cover, which focuses on the words “Not Lame” as being faint praise indeed. My snark is that the cover shows the Democratic side of the aisle at the State of Union address, and has a grand total of FIVE arrows pointing to individual members of the Democratic side of the aisle from the words “NOT LAME”, suggesting… here are your five not Lame Democrats, and if we have to point out these five individual Democrats as being not lame, what does that make the Democrats NOT CIRCLED? Well… dare I say… lame?

I will point out one blip in the article, because it is a special focus on my blog and not many other political blogs, that Doc Hastings hovers in the background of this sentence:

She [Slaughter] almost single-handedly forced Republicans to back off on plans to tamper with the Ethics Committee in order to give Tom DeLay a break.

Very well then. Actually, I read a very funny article yesterday where Doc compliments the new interim Democratic Ethics head, thus knocking the ethically-challenged Democrat that is stepping aside for the moment, more of less claiming Mollohan was the man stalling the committee. A great kidder, that Doc Hastings.

There are two strikes against the thesis written within the very article. First of all, on the matter of Pelosi’s “brilliant” straddling to aid Murtha:

Consider, for instance, what happened last fall when Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), a Vietnam veteran and hawk who initially supported the Iraq war, called for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. When reporters asked Pelosi what she thought of Murtha’s statement, she replied that the congressman spoke for himself, not the caucus. Her response was immediately denounced by liberal critics and portrayed by reporters as evidence of Democrats’ lack of message, discipline, and shared conviction. In fact, as Howard Fineman would later report, Pelosi had worked behind the scenes to convince Murtha to go public with his change of heart and orchestrated the timing of his announcement. Knowing that the credibility of Murtha’s position would be damaged if it looked like he was the token hawk being used by “cut and run” liberal Democrats, Pelosi made the strategic calculation to put Murtha in the spotlight by himself for a few weeks before stepping forward to endorse his suggestion.

The strategy worked, and it allowed Murtha to visibly establish Democrats as the advocates of what now looks like the position toward which our Iraq policy is headed. A late February Zogby poll showed that fully 72 percent of American troops think that the United States should leave Iraq within the year; 25 percent say they should leave immediately. In addition, Pelosi’s party now holds the advantage on Iraq. As with Social Security, critics have charged that Democrats can’t win without a plan for Iraq, but a mid-March Gallup poll showed that voters think Democrats would better handle the situation (they hold a 48 to 40 advantage over Republicans), even though only one-quarter of them think that Democrats have a plan for dealing with the country.

Perhaps this is a brillaint tactical decision, but the very fact that that was the best tactical decision available does indeed show a certain “lameness” for the Democratic Party. That is to say, the Democratic Caucus has just over 50 percent of its members having voted against the Iraq War in the first place, and the majority of its rank and file base having always been against the war. But to have credibility in moving forward, you have to get the hawk of hawks to take the stand, and then stand out of his way.

Then there’s this:

Over in the Senate, Reid temporarily silenced his critics when he staged a showdown last fall, shutting down the Senate to compel Republicans to discuss pre-war intelligence. GOP promises to pursue inquiries into how the intelligence was gathered, interpreted, and used had gone nowhere, and Democrats had no institutional means to conduct their own investigation. So Reid forced the issue, invoking an obscure parliamentary procedure that sent the Senate into a closed session. Republicans were furious, but they were also backed into a corner. Reluctantly, the leadership agreed to restart the investigations, putting the issue of intelligence back in the national spotlight. The in-your-face move signaled that Reid had the inclination, and the electoral security, to push Republicans around in a way that his predecessor Tom Daschle never could.

Tom Daschle was lame, and had this impossible situation he should not have been put into: the terms of leading the Democratic Party and the terms of representing the state of South Dakota conflict with each other. I was, in the end, happy to see him lose, and this article does suggest why. That notwithstanding, when he forced the hands of the Republicans to commence with Phrase Two of these Investigations, as soon as the story faded from the news-cycle the Republicans simply silently squelched it. And the definition of lame?

I can think of something that doesn’t so much show the lameness of the Democrats as the lameness of Congress in the face of the Executive Branch claiming Powers and making the Legislative Branch irrelevant in important respects. Torture. Bush wrote a signing statement that made the Congressional’s passing a bill committing ourselves against it meaningless. In this face / farce, the wranglings of the thing: ie assigning the title of “lame”, (ignored when Democrats pushed for it, forced into view when McCain made it an issue) are purely academic.