Perhaps Joe Biden was simply bitter as he was watching his 1988 presidential bid go up in smokes due to scandal — he cheated on a law school exam. But the Senator from the Great State of Delaware immediately did more than his fair share in turning the name “Bork” into a verb, meaning “to make a nominee completely unacceptable and unpalatable.”

Today, the state of politics has devolved to: “I love you, but you’re not very candid so far.”

His vote in regards to confirmation of Alberto Gonzalez, in case you can’t tell, is “yes”. The same goes for Lindsey Graham, the conservative Republican everybody is now watching for weird signs of dissension, who offered similar retorts in the hearing process.

I found this message printed out in a random public location:

To Tom Potter Mayor of Portland Oregon

Dear Tom,
I was glad to be able to talk with you yesterday (01/04/05) at City Hall about my idea to get people worldwide to chant “Peace and Security!”. I heard you say on TV and I have the PortlandTribune (01/04/05) reading it right now about our children being canaries in a coal mines warning us “we’ve forgotten the basic laws of humanity.” That is why the idea I have is the right one at the right time. http://fourloves.info/chant2
The children are warning us the basic laws of humanity are saying “PEACE AND SECURITY” is the basic need for ALL children of the world! And we ALL are someone’s children and need security and peace or teaching ALL to learn to work out ALL world problems in a peaceful way! A world chant can get that idea to become the WORLDS FOCUS POINT! Even if we can get Bin Laden and those thinking like him to have a change of heart about how to fix things that would stop war worldwide would it not? Am I naive to think that just might happen? Might be! BUT WILL IT HURT TO GIVE IT OUR ALL OUT TRY? Can we save ALL those little canaries (children) worldwide? Let us be zealous in trying and make that our ALL OUT TRY! Is that not a great positive world fix idea?
Nathan IBO # 3581775
PS If you will please, fax, mail, email, and have ALL to put my link on ALL websites worldwide. And more so try to get Bin Laden like leaders to see it! And I have info that the United Nations needs to fix things with terrorist once they have that right info. But I will keep that until after the chant is going earth-wide! I have the answer to the terrorist problem worldwide! Fact! Tom, you said, “Together, we will ensure our children’s future by working with our business community” and that is a great idea for our local community. But for children to have a peaceful future in security we need a key to our worldwide community! You can work on the local community but give me the key to the worldwide community by getting all to link my website to their websites. Have it say, “Peace and Security Chant” on all websites. You have the power, I do not! I know I need a proofreader but other than that I know what is needed to bring peace and security! Believe it or not I do! Do you know of any greater positive goal for ALL the earth? I have not heard of one! I might be a little naive and odd in my way of doing things but I am ALL heart and sincere! Nathan 01/06/05.

Does anybody watch TBN non-ironically?

I’ve clicked past and stopped twice within the past week or two. We know that the channel broadcasts from a parallel universe where the laws of physics work entirely different from our own, though there are similarities between our universe and theirs.

Ronald Reagan was evidentally president over there. I sat and watched a 3 minute collage of Reagan, music set to patriotic music. It brought to mind this letter Reagan sent to Robertson or one of those guys: I sometimes wonder if these are the end-times described in the Book of Revelations.

Apparently not, because the bible is encoded with messages about Bush and not Reagan. That’s the other thing I watched: an MIT computer specialist of some kind is shock-o-locked to find that the bible is encoded with such that if you read some passages backward and inside out crossing out this and throwing in that over there, the words “George Bush”, “Taliban”, “World Trade Center”, “WTC”, ” “9/11”, “Trinity”, “Broadcasting”, and “TBN” all show up. What’s more Bush read that bible passage: “When I walk through the valley of death I see no evil” — or something like that.

Which can only mean… the End of Days. Or God is redundant, ie: why does he have both “Trinity Broadcasting” and “TBN”?

On second thought, it was a good thing that a Senator joined in what seems at first glance a lackluster protest of Ohio’s electoral votes.

It is the role of the minority party to find nooks and crannies with which to draw attention to problems they, if in power, would seek to correct. Study the past, study the Republicans circa 1993, and force issues at any available opportunity. Thus, after snickering at the second tier blogs and the liberal radio hosts ramming on and on about something that seemed destined to go nowhere, I’ve come around.

The Democratic Party Leadership? They didn’t want any part of this. Note that John Kerry skipped town, and there’s no other way to see his scheduling as anything but avoiding the specter in case some Senator actually took the plunge. Dragged in, they had to prepare themselves with some sort of coherency statements… downplay Bush v Kerry, the towering vote at the end which I’d have voted “Present” on had I opted for a “Conciousness” vote as a theoretical Senator or Congressman, in the same spirit I find myself never voting for a major party presidential candidate due to its uselessness in determining an actual president.

Which is how it’s just going to have to be… and by that, I mean every sentence in the preceeding paragraph.

Next up, I guess: taking note of the handful of “no” votes to Alberto Gonzalez.

See, when Will Eisner returned from World War Two to resume his work on The Spirit, he found that he was a bit embarrassed by the minstrel racial charicature that was the sidekick — Ebony. So he had him go off to get an education, so as to clean the character up a little bit. In the interim, The Spirit found a new temporary sidekick:

A fat eskimo boy named Blubber. (?!?!)

…………
If you ask for a list of cartoonists, a mention from me of Eisner might come across as a bit cursory… he kind of gets lost in the shuffle in my estimation… but nonetheless, I can’t take anything away from him.

Saith DeLay:

“A reading of the Gospel, in Matthew 7:21 through 27.

Not every one who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven; but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?

“Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you: depart from me, you evil doers.'”

Everyone who listens to these words of mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man, who built his house on a rock:

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse; it has been set solidly on rock.

And everyone who listens to these words of mine, but does not act on them, will be like a fool who built his house on sand:

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

He finishes reading, says nothing more, and sits back down.

……..

Somewhere buried in the 2004 election results, the obvious creeps out at you: What, you honestly think you’re going to defeat Tom DeLay over there in Sugarland? Get real!

Not that it matters too much. DeLay is defeated, he worms his way into an equally as powerful lobbying job.

As for Phelps… you knew that was coming, didn’t you?

Do you believe an angel rides in a whirlwind? Well, do you?

The “silver linings” of the Democrats’ 2004 election results starts off strongly, and then becomes thin. The Democrats saving grace for 2004 centers on some Mountain West results.

Montana is exhibit one. The Democrats gain control of the governorship, both houes of the state legislature, and just for the hell of it — Congratulations to Montana’s Potheads. (An issue that the Democratic candidate for governor had to battle against to score credibility, along with constant images of the man with a boatload of guns.) And, for what it is worth, Kerry did better in the state than Gore did. As Tom Brokaw mentioned in the eulogy to the Democratic Party, and the troubles they face outside the coastal enclaves and upper MidWest, Clinton won the state in 1992… now Montana elects Democrats to state office.

Colorado is exhibit two. Here we head toward the famed “Salazar brothers”. Ken Salazar won the state’s US Senate seat. His brother took a House seat. Everything is peachy keen. And Colorado almost looks like a bonafide swing state for presidential elections!

From there, the great “linchpin in the Mountain west” fades out considerably, and I’m left scratching my head. Wyoming had a county that voted for Kerry… Dick Cheney’s county, as a matter of fact. Idaho elected an openly gay woman to the state legislator, from that great bastion of Idahoian progressivism — Boise. Salt Lake City, if you squint hard enough and look in places…

Things go to Hell in a handbasket from there.

The map starts to look pretty much the same… you know, the inverted 1896 map all over again.

As per usual, Art Bell in his annual predictions show (where callers generally gravitate toward predicting huge-scale earthquakes, alien landings, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis tearing the Earth ashunder) warned the audience not to predict political assassinations, as that always gets a visit from the Secret Service.

Occasionally we’ll get a story like this one, or closer to home for me because it came straight from “Mad Cow Country” (where I grew up) this one.

It occurs to me that I very easily could have been met by the secret service. I was following the lawsuit involving the Army of God and vagrant members, and the so-called “Nuremburgh Files” with that list of abortion-providers and maybe politicians… if they ended up dead, their name crossed out, if they ended up wonded, they were in a gray font. Um… “inspired” (?)… I posted onto my website a list of assassinated presidents, crossed out were Lincoln, Garfield, McKinnley, Kennedy … grayed were Reagan and Ford … and Clinton was at the end of the list for no good reason. I had it up for about six hours, taking it down for a number of reasons. #1: Bad taste. #2: In the event of a meeting with secret service, I’m not entirely sure how the hell I could explain. (Not that I could expect any law enforcement officers to check into it. Who was reading this thing? Me, my brother, and two dudes from school, more or less.) #3: The cross-outs weren’t showing up on the web, thus the joke was muddled, and I thought it was so slight that it wasn’t worth the effort of fixing.

The matter of whether or not I would have been questioned by the Secret Service hinges on where on the front page of my old website I would have had listed the “Assassinated Presidents” list. Local police officers did end up looking at my website… for my purposes here, the less said about the incident the better. And they ended up printing out the first three pages of the thing, to alert my father. (Alien Abduction Story, Debating Whether I am a Diety… up at the top because, they were my favourites on that site… which, of course, suggests the whole deal of the “Assassinated Presidents List” is moot, because I doubt I would have had it up there…

… though, perhaps it would have been bunched up with … Uh, who the freak knows?)

And away we go…

List Your Top 5 Presidents!
——————————————————————————–
#1: George Washington
As president, displayed a kind of brilliant minimalism.

#2: Thomas Jefferson
Saved the country from the Fascist Tyranny of John Adams. Though it’s worth noting that he jettisoned his prior philosophy of “A Revolution Every Twenty Years” when he took office.

#3: Franklin D Roosevelt
Saved the nation twice. Or so it seems to me.

#4: Grover Cleveland
Because “Grand Vision” is overrated, and often just a mask for “Power Lust”.

#5: William Henry Harrison
Just name me one bad thing he did while in office.
…….

Presidentz

1. Calvin Coolidge
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. William Henry Harrison
4. William Jennings Bryan

That’s all I can remember.

……….

William Jennings Bryan never quite made it. It’s like saying that the Buffalo Bills are the greatest Superbowl Champion of all time.

The next list is “5 Bottom Presidents”. Which I guess I’ll go with:

1: Woodrow Wilson
2: Calvin Coolidge
3: William McKinnley
4: James Buchanan

#5 is tricky. I’m tempted to, since their admirers are going to pretty much sticker them together, proclaim a tag-team of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, never mind Reagan kind of floats in and out a little better in my esteme. Or I could say another mixed bag in Andrew Jackson…

Anyways… I’m probably hazing over 20-some presidents anyway. (Chester Arthur, anyone?)

………

oops!
You’re right, Bryan was never prez. I will replace him on the list with :

5. Nelson Rockefeller

bottom 5

This is much more difficult (so many to choose from):

1. Tyler
2. Tippicanoe
3. Buchanan
4. Nixon
5. Quayle

………..

As far as top 5: really, the only one I can think of that I liked was Reagan. He was the one who had the foresight to bankrupt the world’s 2 superpowers.

Bottom 5? I have no particular anti-favorites, really, except maybe Clinton, mostly because I still see him flitting around with his every move so obviously based on his obsession with becoming the NWO king (UN Sec Gen).

……..

Moronicism from the right-wing media group “AIM”, through the magic of my “LaRouche” key-blog search function. Headline: AARP, LaRouche Oppose Private Social Security Accounts.

Yes. AARP and LaRouche must be in complete cahoots and have regular meetings to discuss how to save social security. Alert the media!!

Guilt by vague association… Link around and you’ll find (the horrors!) campaigns for medical marijuana campaigns being targetted at the elderly (last I checked, tend to have more medical problems than us young whipper-snappers).

In the meantime, I clicked through the AM radio dial and caught some of generic right-wing talk show host discussing his outrage at…

… Ramsey Clarke offering to defend Saddam Hussein at trial…

… and I’m thinking “Who the fuck cares about Ramsey Clarke?” It’s like