I’m shifting back over old issues of the Weekly Standard, reading how they wrote up advocating for a War in Iraq. These paragraphs struck me as something worth noting:

The destruction of Iraq’s military force structure would create the opportunity for regime change as well, since it would eliminate some or all of Saddam Hussein and his regimes’ ability to control the population. Simultaneously or prior to the attack, a major covert operation could be launched, utilizing Iraqi exiles and dissident forces trained during the period of diplomacy. This effort would be based on the Afghan model that led to the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Not only would the overt and covert attacks weaken the ability of Iran’s leaders to carry out offensive operations in retaliation, they would cripple the leaders’ power to control their own people.

Iraq’s leaders have threatened to unleash a firestorm of terrorism in the event military action is taken against them. Any country involved in the attack would be subject to retaliation by Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda, the Iraqis have claimed. If nothing else, this threat demonstrates how closely tied Iraq is to terrorist groups. The United States and its allies would have to be prepared for stepped-up terrorist acts. Iraq could also project forces into Palestine, but this is unlikely because they would encounter the full strength of the American military. However, Iraq might encourage proxies among

Okay. This is getting a little strained. Changing Iran to Iraq is obvious, and I think changing Iraq to Palestine was an inspired stroke of genius on my part. But were there supposed “proxies” of Iraq in Palestine? This oh-so-ironic remix of mine ceases to make any sense.

Iraq’s militant Shiites. Coalition forces in Iraq would have to be ready to respond.

The madness continues in the proper cover story “To Bomb or Not to Bomb”, the story of which is pretty much given away with this line:

America is, so CNN says (and the Iranian English-speaking elite faithfully watch CNN), tied down in Iraq.

Oh, Mercy me. If only the Iranian English speaking elite would watch Fox News, they’d know the truth about our cruising success in Iraq.

At any rate, countering the idea that a strike (Nuclear, mind you. Nuclear on the table) would have an averse effect on the Secular or Moderate Iranian dissidents, they have history as their guide.:

In any case, it is highly unlikely that an American strike would arrest Iran’s intellectual progress away from theocracy. This process has been going on since the 1980s–Iran’s loss to Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war was an important catalyst to questioning and dissent.

Wait. Who won the Iran – Iraq war anyways? I thought Iraq was pretty much spent after that one. They invaded Iran, trumpted about because their military might dominated Iranian’s military might, and then they got dragged down because the Iranians didn’t like foreign invaders, and the initial feelings of triumph just became a slow simmering unnverving attrition. Thank you, wikipedia.

The war was disastrous for both countries, stalling economic development and disrupting oil exports. It cost Iran an estimated 1.5 million casualties (1, p. 206), and $350 billion (1, p. 1). Iraq was left with serious debts to its former Arab backers, including US$14 billion loaned by Kuwait, a debt which contributed to Saddām’s 1990 decision to invade.

The war left the borders unchanged. Two years later, as war with the western powers loomed, Saddām recognized Iranian rights over the eastern half of the Shatt al-`Arab, a reversion to the status quo ante bellum that he had repudiated a decade earlier.

I guess I’m looking forward to this week’s issue. “Who’s Your Dada?” indeed.

I saw this headline, in connection with a CNN poll showing Bush’s approval rating at…

32 percent.

The basic problem with that headline is… it’s the headline for every goddamned report for Bush’s approval rating since, seemingly forever. The next poll might be another “record low” and it might be 33 percent — the uptick from this particular “record low”, but that means only that it will be the record low for — say — the CBS News poll.

As these things go, the last time I was shocked enough to comment strictly on Bush’s latest poll ratings, CBS had him at 34 percent. I contemplated on things that I can buy at Fred Meyer for the price of Bush’s Poll ratings. For his new poll ratings, I can now buy… Bumpkis. Just Bumpkis. Shortly after that 34 percent approval rating was released, some right wing commentators (Hannity, Limbaugh) complained that the polls were liberally biased… too many Democrats sampled. There were indeed more “Democrats” polled than in the past, but that is because the basic problem with these polls is that there is a noticable swing of people willing to identify themselves with a party when the head of the party is embarrassing. I don’t really know how they work the numbers, but I assume they have some sort of scientific formula they can crounch into the “margin of error”. At any rate, CBS released a new poll with the samplings more to Limbaugh and Hannity’s likings (or more like deference, as they’d probably just as soon figure that 75 percent of the nation are Republican). Bush’s approval ratings than shot up to that oh-so-astronomical high of 36 percent — or something like that. I’m sure Limbaugh and Hannity were pleased with that.

Bush has not been above 50 percent in the polls for over a year. I stare at the situation, just kind of trying to take various vantage points. Is there a precedent for something like this in American history? This Presidency is just becoming sort of Insane.

I note this book from some schmuck named Hugh Hewitt. Really, not worth reading (and I say that while noting that there is a deluge of anti-Bush books that are not worth reading as well.) But then again, with a comment like Warning: this is the book the Democrats don’t want you to read. attached to the book, I go with a little reverse psychology.

I bring this up because our “How we are going to achieve a Permanent Republican Majority” (with Bush as a bench-mark… yes, we’re going to establish a Permanent Republican Majority with Mr. 32%) popped up one of the chattering class cable talk blathering shows. (It popped up when I checked his book in “Electronic Library” in transcript form.) He was more sanguine and a bit “Woo – Hoop!” than befitting a man with a published book that “The Democrats don’t want you to read.” It seems that the premise of his book is in free-fall right now. The one thing he offered on Bush’s behalf was that Bush should focus on the “Trust-worthiness” issue, because that is, as polls show, his strength. When pointed out that on that issue, Bush is still pretty far below 50 percent, he shrugged and said, “It’s still his strength”, and went on with a partisan explanation on what to focus on to bring those numbers up… and I suppose I can kind of get behind someone who believes such a thing even when it’s an unpopular belief, because if you have any political allegiance and principle you will find yourself behind a politically unpopular politician at some point.

But, really. 32 percent. Each “record low” seems to be about one point less than the previous lowest poll, which means we’re three polls away from tossing Bush into the 20s.

That just doesn’t seem possible. Despite that line about 2-termers tending to end up with less-than-glamourous second terms (which I contend, largely by way of being contrarian is a bit of a myth: Clinton’s second term wasn’t bad; Reagan’s presidential legacy, in my mind, was rescued by his “Reagan and Gorbachev Show”… Granted, Clinton was impeached — with approval ratings that kept rising as the Impeachment ensured, and Reagan got away with extra-constitutional crap, but nonetheless, Reagan got away with his constitutional crap because of his inherent presidential strength having to do with his fine Acting, and there’s something to be said for that, and nobody cared one wit about Clinton’s extra-marital affair and thus his Impeachment goes down to one giant “Meh” with the American public). And yet… here we are.

Reportedly, Bush has hunched with some advisers and come up with a “Comeback Strategy”. One point in the strategy is to “Brag more”. Which is a joke, of course. Even when Bush was more popular (back when he was in the more sane-seeming mid 40 range, for example), the phrase “Arrogant” was attached to him. But I don’t think this Presidency is particularly capable of changing courses anyway, so why not more of the same?

At any rate, When You’ve lost Merle Haggard, you’ve lost America.

You know, I sometimes laugh at our political circumstances in this nation. The name of this blog is “Skull / Bones”, a name that comes from the fact that our two candidates in the last election come from the same fraternity. The situation is thus that I can legitimately say that I have no idea if the Gore / Lieberman (ahem — Lieberman) Administration would have sent us to Iraq or not, despite Gore’s frequent comments against the war in Iraq. The situation is thus that the Democratic Clinton Administration largely simply fulfilled the policy goals of the previous Republican Bush Administration: NAFTA, Welfare Reform, an economy run by Alan Greenspan — who may or may not have been mortgaging our future economic situation just a bit.

But it sure as heck beats the situation we have, in the guise of Democratic choices and political shifts, in other parts of the world.

Smirk about Palestine. I give you a ballot. Fatah or Hamas. Choose one!

Fatah. Hamas. Hamas. Fatah. Come on! Pull that level!! As that 1988 era Bloom County cartoon goes, “Wimp or Shrimp”.

Now let’s look at the political crisis in Nepal. Maoist Rebels are on the verge of overtaking the Nepalese Monoarchy.

I was listening to NPR the other day. They had an interview with this young man who had been kidnapped by the Maoists a number of years ago. The man said that he used to think of himself as having been kidnapped, but since then he has learned differently. There is fun in Brainwashing, isn’t there?

So, the fate of Nepal hangs in the balance. The fate of the region Nepal is in (I would not be able to spot Nepal on the map. It’s somewhere around India, right?) hangs in the balance. The fate of the world hangs in the balance. (Oh, not really.) It’s time for everyone to take sides!

Are you with the Monarchists, or are you with the Maoists?

As great a choice as an Iranian Revolution where you have a foreign-installed Shah versus a Fundamentalist Islamic Cleric.

Monarchists or Maoists. Maoists or Monarchists.

In the week following the Columbine shootings, I and somebody else was looking at a graph print-out from Yahoo or some such entity, which essentially listed the various prominent school shooting incidents. The most prescient observation was simply,

“They all happen during the Spring.”
“The sun comes out, the seaon changes, the kids are brimming with new energy and vitality that is hard to contain, and cannot be contained. They get itchy fingers.”
I did not say that, by the way.

Years have passed; trends have shifted. These days, every year on April 20th, the news is brimming with accounts of students throughout the nation who were preparing, or threatening, to “Celebrate the anniversy of Columbine”.

Hm. John Wilkes Booth’s grave-site is a tourist destination shrine for a type of “The South Shall Rise Again” neo-Confederate. So, this makes the sense that it makes.

Palo Alto police have identified five suspects and are interviewing other students believed responsible for spray-painting swastikas and references to Columbine High School at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School.

At least one of the taggers was a girl, Cox said.

“Fascination with scaring people.” Stating the obvious is a bit cumbersome, but I believe the point attempted is that they were not planning on carrying something out. That differs from a hub-bub north of Fairbanks, Alaska:

Six middle school students in a small Alaska town were arrested Saturday on suspicion of plotting to bring guns and knives to school to kill their classmates and faculty.

The seventh-graders wanted to seek revenge for being picked on by other students, Lindhag said. They also disliked staff and students, he said.

“Middle School”ers. 8th graders or 7th graders. A little math, and that would mean that they were in 1st grade or Kidnergarten when Columbine happened. Which means their perspective of that incident is a little bit too narrow here. In a perverted sense I guess they have a bit more excuse than the Columbine killers — they were one month from graduation and thus should have seen their out here; our middle school squirts have what is thus far a third of their life to go from being out of what is in their mind the K-12 prison complex

Look. This is directed to Miscreant and Disenchanted Troubled Youth. You have nothing to gain from emulating the Columbine Murderers. Even if I grant you some bone in a fascination with mass murderers, they fall far short in this category. Charles Mansion. He had some prescient and very dark philosophical comments to make regarding human nature, and some ability to hold onto people’s imaginations through religious memes. I think there’s probably some troubled loner figure on any number of high school campuses reading “Helter Skelter”. Ted Kaczynski. There’s a certain nobility to dropping completely out of society. And I think everybody has a bit of neo-Ludditism to them. Adolf Hitler. Something about a short, funny-looking misfit who seeks to create a “Master Race” swarming of a type of tall muscular Aaryans nothing like the “Leader”.

Wait. I’m moving a bit too far aswarm. The middle school graffiti in Palo Alto included Swastikas. But even there, they only served to reinforce the “Columbine” myth — 4/20, Hitler’s Birthday, blah blah blah, early news reports connected the two things, whether they were really tied or not is now beside the point.

Columbine… that, within the public imagination, is just a bunch of bad acne cream and a short fuse away from being locked in the gym locker room. There’s no style points with that. I go back to an interview Rick Emerson had on his show with Larry Bagby, promoting the movie “Saints and Soldiers”. Emerson apologized while asking for a short description of the movie, acknowledging that that’s a bit difficult sometimes and mocked the the high-concept mode for simplistic movies and shows — “MTV Cops” for Miami Vice. Bagby joked, “Well… My film is ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ with Guns.” Rick’s response, “No. That movie was called ‘Columbine'”, followed by “Oh. Don’t act like you’re all outraged.”

It’s like that. This just isn’t going to get you anywhere, kiddies. Just… try a different path entirely. And… keep your grades up.

The “Klingon Translator” ad I mentioned a while ago has long been gone, aired a handful of times and faded away. It was never the main point Ted Wheeler wanted to make, and there’s only so much mileage you can make out of an entirely miniscule issue. Dianne Linn has enough baggage elsewhere.

The staple ad of the Ted Wheeler campaign, for radio at least, is of a positive resume quality. Likewise, he pulls a certain trick out of the Job Interview Guidelines, which is you answer the question “What would people say are your negative qualities?” by answering with as innocouous, back-handed item that could dovetail back into “strength.”

So, the ad begins.

“The Willamette Week describes Ted Wheeler as ‘a brainy wonkish man with liberal tendencies. Sounds kind of like a geek to me, but let’s take a closer look.”

“Geek”. Uh huh. What, are we electing a Prom King here? Since the thrust of the ad throws you back to Ted Wheeler being at any number of forums “in your neighborhood”, I guess he wants to throw you into the mindset that he is “personable” and “open” — non-geeky attributes.

But, I have a basic assumption that the majority of our elected officials were somewhat geeky in high school (even elite Prepatory Schools), thrown in the thrust of excelling on the Debate Team, for example. Regionally, Earl Blumenauer and his goddamned bow-tie — he lacks a certain social sophistication. Senator Ron Wyden — how’s that discussion about Nano-Technolgoy rate? Our current President may be an exception to that regard, and we’re lesser for it. As for the phrase that prompted the word “Brainy, wonkish with liberal tendencies”:

“Brainy”: Who does Ted Wheeler think he’s kidding? Back to the job interview. “What would your weaknesses are?” “Well, people say I’m ‘brainy’.” That wouldn’t pass the smell test, and anyone who’d go for that would have a lot of gall to try that one.

“Wonkish.” This is a little trickier, as it could be good or bad depending on the scenario. We need a great deal of “wonks” in government, and everybody in government needs to be wonkier than the average Joe. But you can cut the knife at paying too much attention to detail and losing sight of the bigger picture. Ted Wheeler is skating on thin ice by making sure that the public knows he’s “wonky”and passing it off as a weakness. At any rate, I’m not exactly going to complain about anyone who can rattle some minute details on Urban Boundary.

“With liberal tendencies.” Brillaint, Ted Wheeler, just Brillaint. See, our embattled incumbant, Dianne Linn has pointed to some Republican ties Wheeler has had in the past — why! He was even a Republican until 2001!! (Gasp, if you must, it doesn’t really matter to me.) And in Democratic Multnomah County, what is this phrase going to count against you?

Running back to that list, where the announcer checks off an item about Ted Wheeler and tosses out either “geek” or “not geek” (“Geek” prefigured by an adjective as per “Job Creating Geek” and “Compassionate Geek”)…

In the end, it’s just a product of political consultants, par for the course. What Dianne Linn has going for her is simply less money, and thus no ads, and thus that makes her ad campaigns less annoying.

A ringing endorsement for Dianne Linn! Ah well. I appear to be ready to vote for all the embattled bruised incumbants, including Ted Kulongoski who I’ve sometimes been about the only person who believes is doing a fairly good job. A “Throw the Bums Back In” attitude has gripped me. What can you say?

In honor of Earth Day, I think I’ll try to visit Planet Earth tomorrow.

“Yeeeaaa!!”, yourself!

Despite tending toward the “He’s doing no good” slant, this New Republic article does indeed lay out the divisions of Dean’s “50 State Strategy”– long – term versus short – term. I can lay out various articles through the last two decades starting with the disasterous 1980 election which show complaints of the organization being top-down to the point where only Carter was being paid for… by 1996 they came back full-circle and the DNC was essentially back to buttressing up the top man.

For what it is worth, Charlie Cook believes Dean is doing what he needs to…

… which is, and this is essentially what I was wanting to say here…

What Dean is doing is running into areas of the country where the Democratic Party has become defunct and non-existent — Salatia, Mississippi for instance, and recruiting and laying the money and buttressing up the local Democratic Party organization so that they might be able to elect a Democratic Dog Catcher.

Good or bad, take it or leave it. It pays off when the dog catchers are able to support a Presidential bid.

My peacenik professor assigned the class to argure over whether it was a good thing for the USA to toss a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I argured in favour, mostly because of a bit of Teachers’ psychology I had picked up somewhere around eighth grade when I had an assignment to argure for or against building a prison in town, and I noted that I was graded a bit more leniently than a fellow student who had done a better job of his paper who had agreed with the teacher. Despite what the David Horowitzs of the world want you to believe, I have found that College Professors regularly to the point where it is the norm throw a large net over opinions diametrically opposed to their Left-wing tendencies.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki plague America with a few problems. Number one, Harry Truman threw out the lie that we had just bombed a “military base” after Hiroshima was bombed. The chilling implications is in the malleability of politicians’ and warriors’ definition of military purposes, which extends right into “Collateral Damage”. Number two, there really was no moral decision to be made regarding the bombings at the time, which largely makes the “Should we or shouldn’t we” discussion the professor was throwing at us moot, or rather the question is a narrow and meaningless one. It was really a case of “Bombs Away!”, and the US Government was a couple days away from blasting Tokyo. And the third problem:

Thanks for playing, but the United States remains the only nation to deploy full-borne Nuclear bombs. Perhaps had Kennedy’s bluff during the Cuban Missile not worked out, things would be different — and, by the way, in the wild ways of history, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the last time that there was any realistic possibility Nuclear War-heads might be used by anyone… a suggestion that, maybe God is working with us after all.

Sometimes I think that we have, as a species and collection of nations, and develop nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of having Something, anything at all off limits and beyond the pale for when we engage in war. “Sure, we can drop this new-fangled ‘MOAB’ thing, but at least we’re not spreading Nuclear Destruction!” Nuclear weapons are the province of rogue states, and rogue units of terrorists. It’s okay that we and some other sane-acting states have them — even the Iranian Government would be okay ala Soviet Unions’ acquiring of them, if it weren’t for the possibility it would slip into the hands of Terrorists– but…

I remember it was Bill Maher, in his post 9/11 hawkish state, who was speaking on the subject that “We’re Responsible, because everyone knows that we’re not going to use them.” The Responsible Ones get to have the Nuclear Weapons, you see… the Civilized.

The nation, under the steady leadership of Bush Administration, has lost that moral authority. He will not take a Nuclear First Strike against Iran off the table. The very fact that it “is on the table”, even rhetorically, throws the “We’re Responsible” argument ashunder.

The funniest segment I heard on the radio this week was Tim Riley on the Rick Emerson show staggering about for five minutes about this Nuclear First Strike, playing the part of the sane man in an insane world. Doesn’t anyone think it may be a bad idea to nuke Iran? Everyone knows the consequences of nuking another country don’t they? The President is not ruling out such a thing, and no one is speaking up against the prospect that such a move would bring payback to us here at home. Maybe nothing will change until a dirty bomb goes off in a midwest city. Wake up America! This country is being run by a group of religious extremists, not that much different than those we’re fighting abroad in the so called “war on terrorism.”

The peaceniks, and no less a smart-guy than Albert Einstein falls under this category, have and do frequently argure that we need a shift in Human Understanding concerning war. In a way, we have had a shift. Not precisely that which they want, and the implications for them that, but it’s there. Give almost any war-leader in history an Nuclear Bomb, explain to them what it does, and it would be deployed with no haste. Andrew Jackson’s Genocidial policy against the Native Americans would be expedited a lot more easily.

Similarly, the world is actually more at peace than it has ever been in Human History. This is a staggering thought, but realize that throughout our history and prehistory this basic theme that when the Spring blossoms, you line up your soldiers and fight until winter descends, at which point you go home. The one thing that runs ahead of us and throws us for a loop is that the Technology at our disposal is a lot more deadly effective. And by the way, to the detractors who rail against the UN, I fail to understand how the world would not be simply at each others’ throat without this Institution. If this makes me a defender of a sometimes ineffectual and sometimes corrupt and sometimes morally in-flux with its guiding principles institution, so be it.

There is a strange thought that the passage of time simply makes it inevitable that every and any nation will have nuclear weapons. And the presense of nuclear weapons makes it, perhaps, inevitable that one will be used. And the troubling thought in my mind is that the most likely nation to be the one to breach that line that cannot be crossed is…

… Well. Look in the mirror.

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I’m not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I’m still waiting

I’m through, with doubt,
There’s nothing left for me to figure out,
I’ve paid a price, and i’ll keep paying

I’m not ready to make nice,
I’m not ready to back down,
I’m still mad as hell
And I don’t have time
To go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I know you said
Why can’t you just get over it,
It turned my whole world around
and i kind of like it

I made by bed, and I sleep like a baby,
With no regrets and I don’t mind saying,
It’s a sad sad story
That a mother will teach her daughter
that she ought to hate a perfect stranger.
And how in the world
Can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Saying that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice,
I’m not ready to back down,
I’m still mad as hell
And I don’t have time
To go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I’m not ready to make nice,
I’m not ready to back down,
I’m still mad as hell
And I don’t have time
To go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I’m not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I’m still waiting
……………………………….

To be sure, they “appeased” their “aggressors” during their ordeal and soft-pedaled — lightly taking away their criticism of Bush at their concerts back in March of 2001 — meaning, yes, they were “Ready to Make Nice”. I always thought their problem was that the whole “Country Music” arena was just packed with too many red-neck “Bombs Away” types for them to venture into that arena and not expect controversy… Tobe Keith, anyone? But, the media tried to make up a controversy about a literal handful of people walking out of a Pearl Jam concert after Eddie Vedder made a few remarks, so maybe they were skewered no matter what.

The Dixie Chicks entertained the idea of “Going Pop”, as though the arena of “Country Music” hadn’t been diluted to the point where the terms are kind of meaningless and they were, by a standard lost somewhere in the past decade, “pop” anyways. (I note that Johnny Cash news items are now regularly covered on our “Alternative Rock” station, meaning that Alternative Rock has now claimed ownership of a Country Music legend, who was a decade ago in the arena of Country Music pushed aside as “old”. The politics of the Music Industry never cease to amaze me.) So they don’t have a whole lot of area to claim to have “Stood Their Ground”, fists raised.

Former Alaska US Senator Mike Gravel (D-VA) said Thursday he will run for President in 2008. Gravel, 75, has not faced voters since he lost for reelection in 1980. His three main issues: opposition to the Iraq War, passage of a direct democracy constitutional amendment establishing national referendums on legislation (much like state ballot initiatives), and adoption of a “Fair Tax” plan that would replace all federal individual and corporate taxes with a 23% national sales tax on all new goods and services. “The American people are frustrated with the level of dysfunction of government,? Gravel said. ?The thought of getting out there early, right now, is really the big tactic for me. Once I?m out there and people see the issues I?m raising, it will resonate with people,” he explained. Gravel’s anger over the Iraq War and government secrecy — which he views as very similar to the Vietnam War issues he dealt with in the Senate — prompted him to run. Gravel, who was almost solely responsible for both ending the military draft and for getting the secret “Pentagon Papers” into the press in 1971, actively ran for Vice President in 1972 (and won a few hundred convention delegates).
…………

An overview of an interview with Mike Gravel by Ron at politics1.com is found here (though clicking it it seems to bounce to Tuesday’s entry. This is for Monday’s entry.)

For me at least, this raises a curious question. What gives a political candidate legitimacy? — and by legitimacy I mean enough to get the each member of the news media to have someone on his beat, and for the candidate to make appearances at those debates. Each Presidential Nomination election brings with it this assortment of fringe candidates that get a quick airtime on the “Human Interests” last section of local news outlets, ie: “Ain’t this guy wacky?” They don’t deserve any mind. Beyond them, we have Lyndon LaRouche, who the Democratic Party doesn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, even while he technically raises more money for his campaigns than the majority of the Legitimate opponents. He… has a dedicated following of cult-members.

Mike Gravel falls somewhere just beyond these guys on the “fringe” category, and somewhere just short of the “Legitimate” Guys on the “Granted Respectability” category. In the last election cycle for the Democratic Party these were: Carol Mosley Braun, Wesley Clarke, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Bob Graham, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Joseph Lieberman, and Al Sharpton. Ted Koppel became a bit testy with Sharpton and Kucinich for continuing to campaign past a few primaries — “Their time was up”, supposedly, and truth be told the whole lot of them were probably found these candidates a bit tedious. But they were still there… depending on what criteria you put to mark them they were legitimate and not legitimate. Truth be told, the party itself probably would have liked Al Sharpton to go away (way too much baggage for any candidate, black or white), but could not really offend his base of support. Which was the purpose of Carol Mosley Braun’s campaign, a bit puzzling in that there reportedly was no real campaign apparatus under her — to stop any potential fall-out from Sharpton.

Mike Gravel has a platform (though, that itself may actually take him away from the “Granted Respect” category — which is, the Legitimate Guys (and, hi Hillary, Gal) need Wriggle Room. He has a record, indeed I have to admire placing the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Records and thus releasing them to the public. He probably has as much money at hand as… say… Braun (though not as much as LaRouche, who nobody wants anything to do with).

And he’s not going to come near the debates or, except for a brief blip at this very moment, the media. Maybe he’s like Eugene McCarthy for the 1992 presidential election cycle?