Shortly before Al Gore pulled himself out of the 2004 race in December of 2002, and thus pulling out the center of gravity to what in hindsight looks like a farcical charade en-route to the party-determined Kerry nomination, when it was assumed he was running based on some speeches blasting Bush’s Iraq War policy with a brief nod to “universial health care” and guesting on one of the greatest episodes of Saturday Night Live ever… I was the contrarian who thought he was not going to run. I guessed he was surveying the political landscape, decide that Bush was unbeatable, and would decide to bide his time by shoring up the historically skeptical liberal base of the party — but a base that thought he was robbed in 2000 — and run in 2008… a carbon copy of the game Richard Nixon played between 1960 and 1968.

I shrug now. Who knows? He’s since spent his time creating a “youth-oriented” public affairs television network, which is somewhere around channel 420 on your mega-cable package, (bizarrely derided by Rush Limbaugh as the “all blowjob network” because that’s “all the youth is really interested in”). The venture may just be an excuse to work his donor network. He’s made a couple speeches about Global Warming, occasionally on a day that Matt Drudge can sophomorically paste the news to his website alongside a “Record Cold Temperature in Winter Blast Storm in NYC”. He sold out his appearance in Portland, Oregon. And he made a speech yesterday, which was quote-in-quote:

the first sign of leadership from the Democratic party in six years.

… a sure sign that the Democratic Party apparatus hates his guts. I do dare say that there is a chance that Gore, freed from the restraints of having to suck up to the powers that be for his political lifeline, is speaking with conviction and a “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, and his second act is speaking on the troubles that plague our republic as a converted outsider. I dare say.

And so comes the inevitable Hillary versus Gore talk. Hillary, who has occasionally triangulated to a spot right of Attila the Hun in her attempt to corner a mythical center, and who draws a crowd of almost equal size in Portland, Oregon. I trifle over Huffington’s criticism. American history is full of enough presidents who have overstepped their executive power that to say “worst”, “one of the worst”, or even “middling” is a silly parlor game.

Still, we know Hillary Clinton is running. I haven’t got a clue about Gore, who presumably would have the support of Bob Barr if not Bob Barr’s former supporters who must hew closely to Bush lest their heads explode. (But probably not.)

A curious religious debate is raging in Egypt. The question is: should you keep your clothes on when having sex?

Another religious scholar suggested it was OK for married couples to see each other naked as long as they don’t look at the genitals. To avoid problems in that area, he recommended having sex under a blanket.

And so it goes. Meanwhile, the new president of Iran — Mohammad Khatami — is a certifiable nut. In the United States, we have the problem where George Bush keeps claiming that Jesus is telling him to do this and do that — Jesus wanted Bush to bomb Iraq, you see.

— Just to remind you.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes he is being divinely guided to help bring about the reappearance of the Imam Mahdi, the Shia Muslim equivalent of the Messiah, which would herald the Last Judgment and the end of the world. Some of his most devoted followers believe that he is Imam Mahdi. It’s never a good thing when significant parts of various nations have this in mind for a positive result of International affairs:

Others view him as an Islamisist version of Hugo Chavez, the populist Venezuelan president I personally cannot make heads or tails of, despite my aversion to the former IMF regimes that have flourished throughout Latin America (hrm) — but he certainly is making a good career of demagouging the United States government — and remember, everybody, it’s not just about George Bush — for [ahem] “Mr. Danger is not a person but an imperial system of hegemony that personifies within himself all other names and figures.”

Actually, come to think of it, this makes him something like what a President Pat Buchanan though nobody has ever confused Pat Buchanan with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It’s a strong reliance on the culture war, wedged with the economic battle for the lower-class “common man”, losing their way in the new economic structure. Toss in some Holocaust denying to boot, and the case becomes air tight. (This was Pat Buchanan’s idea:

)

Of course, Israel has its set of nutcases, who keep wanting to kill off anybody who gives a whiff of approaching some peaceful resolution to the irretractible conflict.

I’ve decided that “Pat Robertson” is a noun and a verb, as well as a verb. To pull a Pat Robertson is the phrase I have in mind. The embattled mayor of New Orleans pulled a Pat Robertson on MLK Day. He talked to King past the grave, (is that pulling a John Edward, of “Crossing Over” fame?) and then … got weird:

And as we think about rebuilding New Orleans, surely God is mad at America, he’s sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane and it’s destroying and putting stress on this country. Surely he’s not approving of us being in Iraq under false pretense. But surely he’s upset at black America, also. We’re not taking care of ourselves. We’re not taking care of our women. And we’re not taking care of our children when you have a community where 70 percent of its children are being born to one parent.

We ask black people: it’s time. It’s time for us to come together. It’s time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don’t care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.

Was there a Chocolate City in Willy Wonka? Never mind. Nagin a Republican turned Democrat, Democrat supporting the Republican gubernatorial candidate last time around, and more to the point a man who received a greater proportion of white votes than black votes in his election. Now he tells us what Martin Luther King, Jr is thinking across the grave, tells us how angry and vengeful God is, and expresses quite awkwardly the perils of getting New Orleans back in business.

So. Islamic radicals who have sex with their clothes on, and await the coming apocalypse. Jewish radicals who sanke-handle for the death of Israeli presidents. Christian nutcases who exploit racial fears and express the desires of the vengeful God in the Sky. Pick your poison.

There’s a gleeful absurdity with the Florida Marlins. This franchise has won two World Series in the past decade. After each world series victory, they’ve slashed payroll — the first time immediately, the second time a season or so afterward. Dizzying highs and numbing lows, and somehow things can’t click into economic viability for Miami.

So, if Portland were to get the Florida Marlins, could they claim two World Series victories? Sure, why not? I say they oughta keep the name “Marlins” for just that purpose! It’s not like the franchise is going to win anything in Portland. The effect of a Portland Major League baseball team would be two bad sports teams, and given the current climate of major league baseball — the baseball team doesn’t look to be terribly hopeful. (See, baseball doesn’t have a lot of parity. In the NFL if you can’t get your team to have a successful season every so often, it’s your own damned fault. In Major League baseball, there are winners and losers, and I don’t like Portland’s chances. And you become a money-generator, for the city at large, by winning.)

I scan the “Sports Talk Radio” 1080 The Fan. Oh boy do they hate Tom Potter. He ain’t no Vera Katz, who was actively working to get baseball into Portland. Actually, it almost looks like he’s actively working to drive Major League Baseball away from the city. More power to him! Despite some sophistry on his part in claiming “Education” as the issue he would rather spend time and money on. (Sorry, Tom Potter, but economic development is important. That building a MLB franchise is not the thing to go with doesn’t obscure the importance of bringing money into the local economy.) The second point, that most Portlanders could care less, has every appearance of being true, a statement that couldn’t have sat well with the Florida Marlins officials or the bringers of baseball into the city of Portland. The people who do care are calling into “Sports talk radio”, saying “We want Portland to be Major League”, which I wonder: well then, why doesn’t every city go ahead and pick up a major league franchise to become, quote-in-quote, “Major League”? Why, if Hartford, Connecticut had managed to get the New England Patriots into their city (during the late 1990s lull that the team found themselves in, where they asked Foxboro for some money for a new stadium-deal), they would three Superbowl victories! (Urm?)

Why am I supposed to consider a statement that “Portland oughta be ‘Major League'” as assuredly self-evident?

Actually, everything breaks down on the Sports Radio front. Talk of economic development ifalls away, and we get to brass tasks with the sports fan lament “The real deal is that we want to be here, during the middle of the season, talking about how the team needs an extra couple of pitchers.” And an outfielder or two. Maybe some more hitting. A better mascot.

I cannot escape the basic thought that taxpayers will be on the hook for a failed baseball franchise, despite all assurances that the revenue to build the stadium will come from the standard list you get with these things — a Hotel tax and stadium parking.

fan fiction they might be giants

So, John Flansburg was getting married to his new wife. John Linnell was his best man, of course. The pastor said, “If anybody has any reason these two should not get married, speak now or forever hold your peace.” John Linnell astounded the audience by shouting out his undying love for John Flansburg. Stay tuned next time to find out how John Flansburg reacts.

ben nelson unitary executive

Ben Nelson is for it. He needs to prove to Nebraska that he is not a real Democrat in order to get re-elected, thus he’s not giving an inch in his all-out effort to sell out.

came to a 22-year-old activist named brian kim last september

Oh. That’s a classic one. See my post here. Nutty, aren’t they?

where was andrew johnson administrated the oath of office as president of the united states?

Kirkwood Hotel, 12th St. & Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. I know that because a google search delivered me to this.

pimp my saturn

Your Saturn’s da bomb.

judge alito and skull and bones

Hm. No. Sorry. Not every public figure that comes up is a member of Skull and Bones. His undergraduate college career was, as you heard from Joe Biden’s amusing elite-to-elite Ivy League jab, at Princeton.

we are about to be attacked by al-qaida. wave flags if you have them. that always seems to scare them away. i m kidding.

I’ll take your word for it.

kim jong seattle seahawk skit

Well, there is a joke about Seattle being in “Southern Alaska”, accounting for the team’s relative anonymity in the franchise’s best season ever. Is Kim Jong Il a fan? I don’t know.

freemasons skull and bones meaning

You’re mixing up your conspiracies. Btw: if we ever have an ant-Skull and Bones Political Party, please don’t be like the old anti-Mason Party (who nominated a Mason to run for president) and please don’t run a Skull and Bones member.

I am told that you need to read up on your Robert Anton Wilson. His novels put various `factions’ of masons against each other. His early stuff looks to have been written during a major drug trip, though… Maybe later.

skull and bones wadsworth

Many Wadsworths, yes. An elite family of Yalies. Like the Bushes.

erin geek in the city oregon

Erin? ERIN? ERIN???

the weird thing that happened in the election of 1796

The president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was running against the president of the American Association of Arts and Letters. Is that weird enough for you?

how a masonic can win election

Well, just get his Mason friends to write him up in the Mason press, and next thing you know you have an astro-turf campaign springing up.

taxidermied baby ducks

Cute?

I took too many cough drops. what do i do?

Whatever else you do, do not cough. I repeat: DO NOT COUGH.

video for miss venezuela 2005 when losing her bottom bikini

I’m skeptical, only because I’d think a google search would surely deliver me that, if it existed.

what is before noon?

11:00 am.

who is the inventor of string?

The Babylonians, maybe?

what teleivision show that gave rock and roll a place to flourish

You’re probably thinking of “American Bandstand”.

ron paul & vermont succession movement

He’s all in favor of the secessionist movement. I don’t think he cares if it succeeds or not. I apologize for misspelling “secede” like that.

david kaplan wife transcendental meditation

David Kaplan, as of June 9, 2004: Last month, David Kaplan publicly cut all ties with the TM movement. In a letter, Kaplan said he and his brother investigated the movement’s leader, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and the TM movement closely, and subsequently he could “no longer support or be associated with Maharishi, his ideas, his knowledge or any of his organizations in any way whatsoever.”

“For that I was kicked out of the movement,” he said in an earlier letter. David said he will continue to develop a 5,800-acre parcel of land he owns privately and said he hopes Heavenly Mountain will become a “normal development, not a TM development.” What that has to do with his wife, I do not know.

portland state university and sex party

I wasn’t invited to it. Nay. But I think you’re looking for this story..

dogs

Dogs is the #2 search word that arrives at struat.com. DOGS!!!

What does that mean?

I noticed it took the Lew Rockwell site quite a while to pick up on the “Vermont Secessionist” movement, something these maddeningly contrarian (to wit I refer to the Christmas-time defenses of Scrooge) fringe-libertarian (and defenders of the Old Confederacy, no less) would consider their stock in trade. It took a few days longer for the site connected with conspiracy-nut Alex Jones to pick up on it. I guess it would be easy enough to uncover how the meme worked here. I had it a few days before I posted this, on the sidebar. cursor.org had it shortly after that (though I’m not crediting myself with passing the meme), on its sidebar with its famous little graphics.

A running joke at a forum I … deal with:

5) Howie joins the `Cascadia Now’ group, rapidly rises to a leadership position.

The logistics therein are impossible, as I pointed out if you look at the Cascadia map the would-be secessionists have drawn up: um… there’s a culture class between Eastern (and Southern) Oregon with Eastern Washington versus metro Washington and Oregon. Example: When Lon Mabon’s anti-gay initiatives rolled through the election, I don’t think the would-be secessionists noticed that Eastern Oregon passed it whole-heartedly, and Portland stomped them out, creating the 51-49 split.

Perhaps my cause would be to sell a libertarian-spin on the newest front of said battle — gay marriage (or civil unions). But… The secessionist movement is mostly just graffiti that abounds on signposts anyway, so it’s all academic.

“Awesome Alito”? Who are these people?

During his “discussion” with Cavuto, Schlatter asked Cavuto if he noticed that, “about 15 minutes before she started to cry, an aide came in and moved him [Samuel Alito] slightly to the right because he was covering her, and ten minutes later she started to cry. So, fortunately, he’d moved enough so we could see it.”

And so it goes. Do you remember those creeps who broke in and smeared holy water into all the seats in the hearing room? Well, God has worked his magic. Sam Alito’s wife has shed holy-water tears. Right in view of the camera. As Alito’s coach, Lindsey Graham, smirks on. Welcome to the post-modernist age of television politics. The irony is that this isn’t for the voting populace (not even that swarm of sign-waving supporters, and most everybody else is not even paying attention) as it is for the pundit class, who decided from the out-set that the script ends with Sam Alito’s confirmation anyway, so with that conclusion as the starting-point, everything they will have to say ties into that frame. They are all busy just entertaining themselves.

Make no mistake. Sam Alito is as bad as Robert Bork was. And Robert Bork — literally a neo-conservative by the definition of old leftist who moved the other way, and there is nothing worse than a Recovering Anything — was worse than Robert Bork looked at his confirmation hearings (have you ever actually read Slouching Toward Gommorah?). But I guess everyone moderates themselves at these things.

So what was bad in 1987 is good enough in 2006. I weep for the future of the nation. The Unitary Executive shall be firmly enshrined, particularly during Republican Administrations. And glory to the Police State!

He’s on record in a memo as believing that to shoot an eighth grader, known not to be armed, who was trying to climb over a fence in escape, is a proper use of deadly force by a policeman. In a discussion of immigration cases that have been regularly occasioning inexcusable, vile, un-American heartbreak on people who missed obscure deadlines or violated arcane requirements, all he could say was that the courts get bad transcripts and it was hard to find translators for some of the plaintiffs, but that was a problem for Congress.

I google for an Alito image. I find this:

I scratch my head. What does that even mean, and what are they talking about? As I said, welcome to the age of Post-Modernist politics. Say anything. Anything at all. Make stuff up if you have to, because who the heck cares?

I was on the Max train, passing the Rose Garden with a large number of people coming out of the Blazers game. (Inexplicably, the Trailblazers beat the Lakers. Don’t ask me how that happened.) Travis Outlaw Bobble-heads abounded. (Perhaps the team can have a “Sam Bowie” bobble-head night while they’re at it, to celebrate one of the most famous Portland Trailblazers in team history?*)

There was a group of yuppies who went to the game. The bobble-heads all went into the hands of two men in the group, the two who have children.

“So, who’s mayor of Chicago these days?”

A bone-headed question. “Daley.”

“So, it’s not really a Democracy so much as it’s basically a monarchy in Chicago?”

“Basically, yes.” A pause. “I think after a few years, the new Daley is required to stick a “III” after his name, so Chicago always has Mayor Daley the Third.”

President Bush issued a stark warning to Democrats on Tuesday about how to conduct the debate on Iraq as midterm elections approach, declaring that Americans know the difference between “honest critics” and those “who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people.”

Hm. Let’s try that again.

Kent Hovind issued a strong warning to his critics about how to conduct the debate on evolution, declaring that Americans know the difference between “honest critics” and “those who claim that the Earth is billions of years old, that a fossil record exists, and those who deny the Great Flood’s role in creating the Grand Canyon.”

And again?

Bill Clinton issued a strong challenge to his critics about how to conduct the debate over his sex life, declaring the Americans know the difference between “honest critics” and “those who claim that there are not multiple meanings to the word ‘is’, and that oral sex is indeed sex.”

Should I try this one more time? It’s kind of awkward, I admit.

So, Judge Sam Alito, during his college years, was a member of the organization “Concerned Alumni of Princeton” (or so he said on a Reagan-era resume), CAP being an organization famous for its stance in trying to keep the Old Boys Network alive and down on the admission of women and minorities. He is asked about it. He says he doesn’t remember being a part of CAP, but if he was…

“The issue that had rankled me about Princeton for some time was ROTC. I was in ROTC for a time and the unit was expelled from the campus. And I thought that was very wrong.”

Neat. You want to know who he reminds me of?

“When Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have all these problems over all these years, either.”

So, Trent, what do you mean by “all these problems”?

When I think back about Strom Thurmond over the years, what I’ve seen is a man that was for strong national defense and economic development and balanced budgets and opportunity, and that’s the kinds of things that I really had in mind.

I sympathize with Sam Alito and Trent Lott. I joined the KKK because I needed some white bed sheets, and I thought the KKK was mostly just a charitable organization that gave white bed sheets away to those who needed them. Today, I get a lot of heat because of my joining the KKK.

I’m changing some things around on the sidebar a bit. My list under the “Bull and Scones”, a sort of unofficial listing of blogs I find interesting enough to high-light, grew a bit stale. The “Memory Blog”, the blog auxiliary of the Memory Hole collection of documents, was never updated. The Reverend Moon Watch declared itself over, meaning I now dump it over to “Documents” section. I do ask that if he’s no longer watching the whereabouts of Reverend Moon, who is?

So I added a few things to this section. The cadre of Clyde Lewis listeners. For good or ill. Hey! Look! I’m at the bottom of the list. I haven’t heard too much Clyde Lewis, ever since corporate X decided to rip apart the radio station he was on in favour of a generic pod-shuffle stimulation, but he’s bopping around on Internet-streams. “Clyde Lewis makes Art Bell look like Larry King.”

Crooks and Liars is a great blog full of video-tapes from the talking head programs and C-SPAN. A member of Duran Duran helped found this blog. I don’t know what that means, the Duran Duran connection, but it’s a strange bit of trivia that I feel the need to pass on.

Josh Reads, your source for musings on the sex life of Hi and Lois. (And what’s with the shape of Luann’s new cat?)

I quietly enter Jim McCranium, a Democratic blogger from … roughly my old stomping grounds… though he’s from the Land of the Radio-Active Tumbleweeds, or Rick Emerson Country if you will, and I’m from “Mad Cow Country” (or, to spell that out, a town neighboring Mabton, Washington.) This explains the blog’s appeal. It may be affirmative action in giving him the award, as spelled out with “outside of these two urban centers” (Seattle and Portland), but geographic diversity is important. As for the points of comment on his blog: My mother wanted me to register to vote in 1999 or 2000 to defeat a Tim Eyman initiative (she saw the damage it could do to extra-curricular public education services). But Oregon has its own version of Tim Eyman in (name escapes me at the moment), and had a Lon Mabon religious nut to boot, so there’s trouble everywhere.

I’m trying to figure out how to change the stale list of books. To that end, step one is found with this page. Some thoughts on the list of books: #1: Matt Taibbi is a poor man’s Hunter S Thompson for the twenty-first century. The Adams vs. Jefferson is not a particularly good book. #2: The “federalist bloggers” mistake is endemic of the type of problems that confront the book. I imagine that mistake made as the author types out his first draft for the book, and finds this line funny. In re-reading it, he knows the right thing to do is to drop the phrase, but he can’t… let… go. In the parlance of high school essays, when I left in these jokes, the teacher may or may not grade me down, but s/he’d always leave a comment next to my little joke. I suspect that the book that sits next to this one in the library, which I think is entitled “Jefferson vs. Adams”, is a better book that covers the same material. #3: John Dean’s biography of Warren Harding leaves a lot to be desired (it brushes aside the scandals that defined his presidency). I find it amusing that more or less no current listing of presidencies in terms of “greatness” has him last (Buchanan gets the honor these days), but historically Harding had been listed last. Harding’s stock has, evidentally, risen ever-so-slightly. Anyway, Dean’s book on Harding is as haliographic as Harding is ever going to recieve. #4: My “1984” selection, Walter Karp’s somewhat hysterical book on the Reagan administration, mentions Walter Mondale maybe … twice. That seems appropriate for a book on the 1984 presidential election. Actually, for a more traditional slant on the election, Time Magazine (or was it Newsweek) did their every-four years book on the election, where we learned that Reagan’s advisor announced the election over as soon as Mondale selected his running mate. #5: Anyone have suggestions, particularly for years that I do not have here? 1860 seems important to read up on.

Step number 2 is going to be a listing of various other books, with its cover published here (and it’ll be hot links to the image from Amazon). I have a number of items in mind. I know you’re sitting at the edge of your seat, excited by the prospects of seeing them.

Anyway.