Four years ago, Al Gore was pulling an all nighter in Florida — exhausted, voice shot to Hell, shouting out his stump speech theme phrases at a 4 am rally in Southern Florida on that first Tuesday of November, attempting to smash Florida out of Jeb Bush and the Florida Republican Party Machine’s tight-fisted hands.

It never quite came out. The corrupt Florida felon’s list ensured the winning margin of victory — any doubt I had that that story was false was smashed when the 2004 list was subponoed out and we descovered a list swarming with blacks with a smattering of Hispanics — Florida Hispanics being Cuban 1 issue-voters, the issue being that damned Castro guy that nobody else in the whole of the USA can bring themselves to give a damned about.

You will remember that Bush Campaign was quick to assure everyone, after Florida was called, that the state was still not decided yet. A curious game. Bob Dole made that point on the live Daily Show broadcast that night. Bush sent the photo-op conversation of the Bushes eating dinner, a bizarre conversation of the states still in play and about how Florida was not decided yet. It’s difficult to know what to make of that… then and now.

That was the first in a long series of odd photo ops mailed over to the 24 hour news networks. We would have Bush essentially having cabinet meetings — Colin Powell makes an appearance — in retrospect the first of two meetings through the entire four year term. (The second meeting giving him his script before the UN.)

In 2004, in the final week of the campaign, Al Gore was shipped over to Hawaii. Hawaii isn’t polled too often — Reagan nearly lost it in 1984 and it has a grand total of three electoral votes. But, evidentally the last two or three polls from the state showed a strangely close margin, so Bush sent Karl Rove over and Kerry sent Al Gore over. Kerry would be kicking himself if, by some fluke, Hawaii went to Bush and Bush won the total electoral college by 2 votes.

The problem with the idea of Hawaii as a swing state is that it throws a wrench into the “GOTV drives”. Imagine campaign volunteers being given a choice of flying off to New Hampshire to try to pry those four votes out or being flown off to Hawaii for those three votes. Everybody would be leaving to Hawaii, where not much work would really be gotten done.

I hope Al Gore enjoyed himself down there, at any rate.

I can’t say that these comments that I just deleted are terribly humourous… but they’re… amusing enough. I had to delete them because I’m worried about the possibility that things will go haywire and someone might end up with a 12 hour erection, and blame me for keeping the link up there… perhaps have John Edwards defend them in some cross-action suit. (And we all know how effective John Edwards has been as a trial lawyer…)

#1: If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you’re going to
have to get a toehold in the public eye.

#2: Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.

#3: Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.

#4: Carperpetuation (kar’ pur pet u a shun), n.:
The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
— Rich Hall, Sniglets

#5: Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum’d rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome’s overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.

#6: SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.

#7: When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
plane will fly.
— Donald Douglas

#8: Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson’s disease. I don’t have it this morning. It comes and goes.
This morning I don’t have Hunter Thompson’s disease.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
from A Political Disease, Vonnegut’s review of Fear
and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Page C4 of today’s Oregonian has what is, presumably, Rev Dr. Sun Myung Moon’s speech before NY, Chicago, LA, Washington DC on “God’s Providence to Establish the World Transcending Religions and Nations Based Upon the Absolute Values of True Love”.

Creepy stuff.

On the very next page, we have an article “Talk Radio Advice Torments Republican Leaders” about how the Oregon Republican Party chairman Kevin Mannix is upset that Lars Larson is telling his listeners to turn the ballots in as late as possible — which throws wrenches into the party GOTV efforts and ensures fewer Republicans end up actually voting. (Teachers always recommend doing your homework early for a reason.)

Funny stuff.

I admit that I never laughed at Bush’s pretzel foible. Small potatoes. Although, in the annals of the Bush Presidency, the pretzel incident marks a moment where the first chink was thrown into the post 9/11 hazed Bush armor. It was when the late night comedians could subtley turn from safely mocking Osama somewhere in a cave, being prepared for slaughter presumably, an toward something resembling the pre 9/11 Bush. (which would morph and change in various ways through the next couple of years.)

The post Gulf War Bush I image unravelled… I don’t know, maybe when he vomitted on the prime minister of Japan? Then again, the SNL sketch (from the Comedy Central reruns) had Bush provide a second joint-Congress appearance speech after the Gulf War victory, just because the first one provided him with such laudatory applause. This suggests, perhaps, that from the very beginning the one-note was turning into a half-note… “What else you got?”

Schwartzopft (sp?) was People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive”. And today, Rumsfeld is nowhere to be seen.

We’re a small handful of days away from burying the endless supply of anti-Bush books… picking out the small handful that will survive the test of time and supply some cognent analysis of what just happened. And we’re a small handful of days from the return of Phil Hendrie away from a stupor of “super-hawk commentary” to intelligible all-sides get skewered social commentary.

Kerry? We’ll have to see.

I was going to vote for Kerry, until I heard Bush give this amazing and inspiring speech. It seems that if Kerry gets into office, the world will drift toward tragedy.

Then this ad sealed the deal for me. Apparently if Kerry gets into office, I will be eaten alive by a pack of wolves. I don’t want that to happen.

Ed Koch is right!

A vote for Kerry is a vote for Tragedy. A vote for Bush, on the other hand, and the world will drift into Tragicomedy. As any fan of the theater will attest, tragicomedies are much more complex in their depictions of human toils… you swing from happiness to sadness to schaudenfruede to relief and on and on and on.

(Or, you could go to that Simpsons episode where we saw victims of comedic injuries. Ah… it is to laugh!)

Curiously enough, during yesterday’s Red Sox – Cardinals game, the camera rolled to a fan in the stands waving a sign that read,

“We’re Idiots Too!”

I know what it meant in the context of the game (When the Red Sox were down in their series with the Yankess 3 games to nothing, “you’d have to be an idiot to think the Red Sox can win”, and now the Cardinals were down 3 games to nothing to the Red Sox, and…), but nonetheless…

BTW: this site urges you to vote for Tom DeLay’s opponent, Richard Morrison. (Whether or not you live in that Texas district, I don’t care… find a way to vote Afghan style!) But, then again, this site also helps fund terrorists and Iraqi Insurgents. (In fact, Struat.com was proudly responsible for helping the looters at Al Qaqaa!

Tom DeLay is an Idiot, too.

The LaRouchites stand behind a giant placade saying “Kerry / Edwards 2004” — obtainable at various Democratic and Kerry campaign headquarters, and in front of a sign that says “LaRouche Youth Movement” — and a picture of Lincoln, FDR, and… LaRouche.

One LaRouchite has “Kerry / Edwards” stickers all over himself.

It makes sense. Cults co-opt memes; LaRouche co-opts “Anybody but Bush”. It appeals to the kids.

The Tom DeLay Campaign has claimed that his opponent, Richard Morrison, is using LaRouchites as surrogates, and is intimating that references to his corruption scandals are ipso-facto conspiracy – mongering. The same reason he filed a frivulous lawsuit against Howard Dean, one he has no intention of following through with… tie Morrison in with “East Coast Elite Liberals”, and with “Nutball Conspiracy Theorists”.

(The Dean-founded organization’s ad shows a batch of newspaper headlines, which makes one wonder how to define the word “libel”.)

Time to look up those zen exercises to practice in the event of…

well, whoever wins. Zen is good. Zen is the word. Zen is what is needed.

A tree falls in the woods.

A man hangs by a fraying root off a cliff, and eats a strawberry.

Things like that.

The endorsements for the Kentucky Senate race in the state papers goes one of two ways. Jim Bunning’s recent behaviour suggests he’s simply losing it, his campaign has done nothing to relieve us of the suggestion, and his opponent is able and not too ideological so as to be good to do the job for Kentucky. OR. This is how Jim Bunning has always behaved.

It’s the “Doldering Aging Eccentric” card. Kind of worked for Strom Thurmond. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina has thrown in the towel because he doesn’t want to become that punchline.

There was to be a Senate debate on “Meet the Press”. Bunning declined.

The strategy bols down to downplaying any suggestion that the race is closing (thus we get comments from the RNC of the DNC spending some money on the race that “they’re welcome to throw their money into a sinkhole”, and thus the “Meet the Press” snub can be cited, cynically, as just below the dignity of a man who’s cruising to victory), laugh off verbal flubbings and clueless remarks to both eccentricities and attacks on as dirty campaigning. Have the Senior Senator pump him up, and have Bunning only perform in the most scripted of matters. (See also the circumstances of how he handled the debate he had to do.)

I note two Bush attacks as of late. (1) What an outrageous claim Kerry makes regarding Tora Bora! (Never mind the newspapers covered the situation back in 2002, not forwarded to critical discussion due to the still smoldering 9/11 afterglow Bush was enjoying.) (2) The Kerry campaign, devoid of forward-seeking ideas on defense matters, has resorted to simply responding to the day’s headlines. Particularly, the headline that tons of high-powered conventional explosives are missing and now likely in the hands of the Iraqi insurgents — something the IAEA warned the Administration to take care of.

Which is just as well. Bush said he doesn’t read the newspapers. Apparently Bush is making clear distinctions between him and Kerry: Kerry does read the newspapers. Jim Bunning, for his part, when asked about the group of national guard soldiers who refused to follow an order that seemed suicidal remarked that he never heard of the incident, and that he doesn’t watch any news except for Fox News. There’s a punchline there, but I don’t know what it is.

I give Fox News more credit than Jim Bunning does. I know they covered the story. How they squared it with the Fox News mandate of glorifying the troops, promoting a uniform “happy warrior” image, and selling the Bush line on supplying needed military equipment I don’t know… beyond, of course, “isolated incident”.

Lurking for after the election, buried in obscure sub-committee, is a bill sponsored by former-kitten killer* and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called “The Kitten Extermination Act of 2004”. Should Bush win election, it will immediately pass congress and go into effect.

(I’ve always wanted to start an Internet Rumor…)

*No, really. He used to kill kittens. Look it up!