He’s talking with a group of Greek American delegates. You know, if 20 percent of the American public were of Greek, Dukakis would’ve won!

Here’s where Dukakis is going.

Speaks before a few state delegations, moderates a public policy forum, will not be in eye-sight of a camera ever.

As for the spirit of Dukakis: go to Drudge and you’ll find those goofy photos of Kerry in a space-suit. I can’t imagine any lasting image or piece of symbolism coming from the photographs, but if you must…

Rush and company will hype it up.

“people of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war.”

Interesting platform plank. What would happen if every plank looked like that one?

people of good will disagree about whether Abortion should be legal or not.

Or…

people of good will disagree about the proper role of government.

That last one being the reason for political parties in the first place.

If you want to protest at the Democratic National Convention, you are instructed to do so here:

See… it’s a great place to get your message out. Just look at all the signs!

I don’t know. That doesn’t look to me like a particularly endearing place to exercise one’s first amendment rights.

I mean — seeing as standing in a cage is rather uncomfortable, seeing how the Convention itself has gone out of its way to make the speeches generic and uninteresting, how Margaret Cho was booted from her appearance off on a periphreal event…

Where is there left to make crude sexual double entendres with Bush’s name?

From this rather caustic review I find this chart… each chapter followed by number of times that Hannity sees fit to use the word “evil”.

Chapter Occurrences
1 42
2 51
3 19
4 13
5 13
6 4
7 8
8 1
9 3

Actually, read the entire thing. It goes on to do a chapter by chapter look at Hannity’s Cast of Evil. Example:

In chapter seven, Bill Clinton is evil, Hillary Clinton is evil, Osama bin Laden is evil, Ramzi Yousef is evil, Yasser Arafat is evil, Terry McAuliffe is evil, Madeleine Albright is evil, Warren Christopher is evil, Al-Jazeera is evil, Joe Lockhart is evil, the PLO is evil, Janet Reno is evil, Suha Arafat is evil, and al Qaeda is evil.

On the other hand, the name of the book is “Deliver Us From Evil”, so I suppose it fits that we need a comprehensive look at the Evil-Doers that we need to depart from.

So, what happens when he brings on a guest to the Hannity and Colmes Show, after writing on his blog that the recently deceased Ronald Reagan was… well… evil? Well, from memory:

You are an sad, evil person. You have no soul.

I don’t know. Do souls exist? They seem to be a little too ethereal for my taste.

Senator KERRY: What did you do with those drugs?
Mr. MORALES: Sell them.
Senator KERRY: What did you do with the money?
Mr. MORALES: Give it to the Contras.
Senator KERRY: All right.

(via this via dailykos.

The Committee on Present Danger is in DA HOUSE!!!.

I want to vomit.

It was the 1970s. The US public had suddenly soured on the idea of engaging their nation in confusing wars that only tangeantly at best had anything to do with our national security against against nationalistic guerilla warriors. Somebody, anybody, needed to step in to defeat this “Vietnam Syndrome” problem. But, who would step in?

The Committee on the Present Danger was first formed at the dawn of the Cold War in 1950 to educate Americans about the growing threat of Soviet communism. Democratic senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington state revitalized the group in the mid-’70s; this time it was focused on working for a stronger stance toward the Soviets and the increased defense spending necessary to carry out that policy.

Meanwhile, the threat assessments of the Soviet Union didn’t seem to be… terrifying enough anymore. There was a problem with this intelligence! We needed an organization within the CIA to come forward and alarm the public about a Soviet Union that was bigger and badder than ever… unfortunately, an unsympathetic president — Jimmy Carter of his first two years, wasn’t taking heed on this extra-curricular intelligence. Why, if the president isn’t going to sound the alarms and alert us to the need for a massive military build-up, I guess it’s up to the Committee on Present Danger!!

The leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties have so far stood firm in their commitment to finish the job in Iraq and to fight to victory the war on terrorism. But that bipartisan consensus is coming under growing public pressure and could fray in the months ahead. Although the tide is turning in the war on terrorism, a political undertow in this country could wash out our recent gains. We must not let this happen.

Uh oh. The public may decide to rebuke the war with Iraq, and have difficulty fitting it into a sensical “War Against Terrorism”. We can not afford to let that happen. Better organize a bi-partisan support group so that the public won’t be able to make that mistake!

Your membership list for The Committee of Present Danger:

Senator Jon Kyl
Senator Joseph Lieberman
James Woolsey
[…]
Laurie Mylroie, Ph.D. (hee hee hee hee! )*
Norman Podhoretz

And a bunch of other assholes.

* The CIA underplays the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein was Behind 9/11, and, circa 1991, hastily written book on how Saddam Hussein is the Reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, whiplash over our previous stance notwithstanding… co-written by top-notch NY Times journatlist… Judith Miller!

Remember when?

I took note of the New York Post article, saved at archive.org, from May of 2003, for one scurrilous prediction:

GOPERS BELIEVE THEY CAN TAKE NIFTY 50 STATES

May 8, 2003 — ANYONE who watched the dreary first 2004 Democratic debate Saturday can see why some Republicans are dreaming and plotting how President Bush can do what even Ronald Reagan couldn’t do: win all 50 states in 2004.
After all, polls now show Bush could win California, beat Sen. Hillary Clinton in New York, and whip 2004 wannabes Joe Lieberman (Conn.), John Edwards (N.C.) and Bob Graham (Fla.) in their home states.

OR

The District of Columbia is probably safe for the Democrats, but
a 50-state sweep for Mr. Bush wouldn’t be out of the question.

OR

A 50-state sweep for Bush is not impossible, said Stephen Hess, a scholar of presidential politics at the Brookings Institution. “I think one thing Rove will do is make a thrust at 50 states because he’s got the money to do it, and the tactic pins down the other side,” Hess said.

At this early stage, the “other side” does not look particularly threatening.

OR
In June 2002, Campaigns & Elections magazine in its “movers and shakers” column profiled Nelson, who has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Iowa. Asked about his immediate goals, Nelson said, “To expand the majority in the House, take back the Senate and a 50-state sweep for President Bush in 2004.”

OR

Some pundits are now even predicting that Bush may sweep all 50 states in the next election. And, unless the Democrats start facing reality and acting like grown-ups, they’re unlikely to be holding on to many states in 2004. And, at the rate they’re going, the most they’ll be holding on to are the thumbs in their mouths.

Anyway…

Things move fast in politics. What you had there was this weird trajectory where, freedom is ushered into Iraq, Iraqis continue to greet our soldiers with flowers — even now a year into the future, and a bombardment of oil raises the American economy to new heights heretofore unseen in world history. And, the Democratic Party becomes shrill and vulgar to appease their anti-American (by definition, they’re anti-Bush) base.

I’d like to see if Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity made great hay out of that New York Post article back in 2003… or if they had more sense. This was never in the realm of possibilities. If it were to be a landslide for Bush, it’d be, at most, a landslide of Bush vs. Dukakis proportions. But, the NY Post editorialist envisioned something that would put Bush II in the same realm of George Washington (he had two dissent-less electoral victories).

And right above Ronald Reagan. And Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And Richard Nixon. But never mind him.

I wonder if anyone ever predicted that George Bush I would carry all 50 states… you know, back when Saturday Night Live was doing skits about Democratic Debates where the candidates argued that they would lose bigger than the other candidates…

After reading about Bush’s play for the Amish vote here, I’m left wondering what the historical Amish vote trendlines look like.

There aren’t a whole lot of Amish political blogs out there, though I’m left pondering what Amish use meetup.com?

If I had to, I’d look up the specific counties of Pennsylvania and Ohio where the Amish congregate, to try to detect if there’s a blue or red streak in what’d surely be Republican (rural) counties. Otherwise, here’s Ralph W. Loew getting out the Amish vote for a local hospital during the Great Depression-era.

It looks definite that the population of the Amish who vote for national office are significantly lower than the overall population. Other than that, who knows?

I guess I’d better save these customer reviews before Amazon.com deletes them.

First, note the bizarre nature of the “Customers Who Bought This Book Also Bought” page. One could create a Vinn Diagram, 2 over-lapping circles with this one as the shared “connector” book.

5 stars My Pet Goat is a masterpiece of strategic thought., July 17, 2004
Reviewer: oparts (New York, NY United States)
Destined to take their place alongside von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, Engelmann and Bruner have captured the very essence of strategic thought in a mere 32 large-print pages. In this masterwork, when Smirky the Goat is stung on the nose by Osama the Wasp, he jumps over the fence and butts the living daylights of out Saddam the Swine. Advanced students will see the seeds of the Bush Doctrine in this landmark book.

3 stars My Pet Goat or: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE, July 17, 2004
Reviewer: Frank Newgent (Tomahawk, West Virginia)
REPUBLICANS

It’s a weird story alright. A little goat goes funny in the head and orders his airplanes to attack Russia I think. The Attorney General is in a wheelchair – like Ironside – but must have forgot to watch the show because he never catches anyone. And it turns out there’s some kind of giant self-destructing Star Wars type of thing built somewhere in Texas.

I really couldn’t figure out the part when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld starts shouting: “I can no longer sit back and allow this hollow-horned, bearded ruminant mammal to infiltrate , indoctrinate, subvert, and conspire to sap and impurify all of our foreign and defense policy principles.” It was like maybe he thought he knew what was coming or something and then just ended up causing it all to happen himself. That’s why I only gave it 3 stars.

Probably my favorite part of the book is when President Bush falls out of that airplane right at the end, waving his cowboy hat.

5 stars Really Got My Goat, July 16, 2004
Reviewer: gefilte (Crawford, TX)
I only read “My Pet Goat” but I found it riveting. I could have read it for hours without letting anything interrupt me. I think the sociological ramifications of the interspecies relationship truly challenge the dominant paradigm of Hominid pair-bonding. Perhaps a legislative approach such as a constitutional amendment is needed to prevent Genus and Phylum exogamy. On the negative side, the author’s theoretical framework is obviously influenced too severely by a Foucaultian post-modernistic approach. I think some books need a pre-modern approach and should be burned, but not this one. I found it intellectually stimulating as well as slightly risible.

Sometimes goats have to die, July 16, 2004
Reviewer: A reader (Greenville, NC United States)
I like goats. It’s like my daddy always said, a goat in the pocket is a goat in the hole. If goats were money, I’d have a million of them (and give some to my friends too!). I remember goats are animals. They are not part of the axis of evil, but because I’m so compassionate, I sometimes still want to kill them.

5 stars A charge to keep, and I’m keeping “My Pet Goat”, July 14, 2004
Reviewer: A reader (Crawford, TX USA)
I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. My job is to, like, think beyond the immediate. Why don’t you mentor a child how to read? There’s an old saying in Tennessee-I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee-that says, fool me once, shame on-shame on you. Fool me-you can’t get fooled again. If you don’t have any ambitions, the minimum-wage job isn’t going to get you to where you want to get, for example. In other words, what is your ambitions? And oh, by the way, if that is your ambition, here’s what it’s going to take to achieve it. There’s no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide. I’m thrilled to be here in the bread basket of America because it gives me a chance to remind our fellow citizens that we have an advantage here in America-we can feed ourselves. There may be some tough times here in America. But this country has gone through tough times before, and we’re going to do it again. I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn’t here. The public education system in America is one of the most important foundations of our democracy. After all, it is where children from all over America learn to be responsible citizens, and learn to have the skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic society. In conclusion, buy this book today.

5 stars Steady Readership In Times Of Change, July 8, 2004
Reviewer: A reader (Sarasota, Florida)
A riveting story that keeps you glued to the page until the stunning climax. Even a notification from your staff that the nation you lead is under attack can’t keep you from reading the gut-wrenching final words.

5 stars Presidential material, through and through!, July 6, 2004
Reviewer: Lolla Fallujah (Hannah Storm’s house)
After reading the enclosed story “The Pet Goat,” I was stunned by its lyrical beauty and easy cadence. The tempo, the choice of words, and the layout on each page captured my imagination so much that it took me about seven minutes to recover my bearings.

Some generic right-wing radio host declared that Hillary would become president because she is ruthless and will do anything to gain power.

A fascinating prospect, a Hillary Clinton presidency. I can’t say that I want her to be president, but there is a general feeling articulated by Rick Emerson: “I want Hillary Clinton to be president solely to send some red-state Inlaws into a conniption fit.”

But, you know… there is one way to stop Hillary Clinton from seizing control of the presidency. Elect John Kerry. Twice.

Bush wins the White House, four years from now the backlash will send the “ruthless” Hillary Clinton (fenagled control of the DNC apparatus) into the White House. Or so the theory goes.

But, if you elect John Kerry, and then re-elect him in 2008 — the soonest that Hillary Clinton can go for it is 2016 — vice-president John Edwards being at the ready for 2012. Then, it would probably simply be too late in the same way that it worked for the Kennedys, where Ted Kennedy was the man who the DNC apparatus desperately sought to jump into the race as it was clear that McGovern was making his way toward the nomination, the peculiarities of 1976 made the outsider Carter the nominee, the 1980 bid fell short perhaps because of the short-term “rally around the flag” effect of the Iranian hostages being taken perhaps because of that drunken boat death scandal, and after that — it just becomes too goddamned late.

So Stop Hillary Clinton NOW. Elect John Kerry in 2004. Re-elect John Kerry in 2008. And, just to be on the safe side, Elect John Edwards in 2012. Then, Satan Reincarnated will not seize power.