In 1992, investment banker Chuck Hagel, president of McCarthy & Co, became chairman of AIS. Hagel, who had been touted as a possible Senate candidate in 1993, was again on the list of likely GOP contenders heading into the 1996 contest. In January of 1995, while still chairman of ES&S, Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald that he would likely make a decision by mid-March of 1995. On March 15, according to a letter provided by Hagel’s Senate staff, he resigned from the AIS board, noting that he intended to announce his candidacy. A few days later, he did just that.

As might be expected, Hagel has been generously supported by his investment partners at McCarthy & Co. — since he first ran, Hagel has received about $15,000 in campaign contributions from McCarthy & Co. executives. And Hagel still owns more than $1 million in stock in McCarthy & Co., which still owns a quarter of ES&S.
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In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel’s first election victory was described as a “stunning upset” by one Nebraska newspaper.
……………………..

Now I look back with the benefit of google’s cache of Usenet posts and find:

Having once held double-digit leads, Max Baucus now leads Dennis Rehberg by only 46-41 in a recent independent poll taken for the Senate race in Montana. In Nebraska, Gov. Nelson’s lead over Chuck Hagel has shrunk to two points, 49%-47%, also an independently conducted poll. (Both were done by newspapers.)

It appears that the election was trending Chuck Hagel’s way. If this was a conspiracy, it would have to follow through that Diebold or the Right-wing Cabal had influence on key polling institutes, to show a double digit lead for Nelson vanish and help legitimize the eventual quote-in-quote “vote” total. (This is what is alleged and speculated before hand with concern to Gallup circa 2004.) Further, Bill Clinton was pretty unpopular in Nebraska, and had to have had negative-coattails for Ben Nelson (who won the 1998 election, and is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate).

Read this month’s Mother Jones article for some odds and ends concerning Ohio 2004.

Puzzling over the rumours circling around the entire Republican Party right now… which is to say that there are supposedly 22 individuals who are ready at any moment to be indicted, that Dick Cheney may well have to step down and be replaced by Condelleza Rice… that George W Bush’s approval rating has floated down below 40 percent and does not really seem to be in any position to rise above what is generally considered a floor of public approval… that the Republican Party can’t for the life of them recruit candidates for the 2006 mid-term elections… the amazing spectacle of a Supreme Court pick named Harriet Miers who turned in an incomplete preliminary questionaire…

In a parlimentary system, Bush would be sacked right about now. Well, I guess that depends on the parlimentary system in question. I’ll just say that in the British system, Bush would be sacked… the ruling Republican Party would replace their party leader with someone more palatable for the near-term fortunes of the party. (Note that Tony Blair is more or less assumed and assured of not completing his term.)

At this point in time, something has to give. The rumours have to fizzle out and prove to be unture (seriously: twenty – two indictment targets?) or… something strange has to happen within the Bush Administration. Or, some other piece of news has to throw us into a new news-cycle, completely unrelated to the Republican Season of Discontent. (We knew that second terms for presidents could be brutal… but how the hell did things fall apart so quickly for this guy?)

I now don’t believe Cheney will make it to the end of the term. I’m hard pressed to figure out George W Bush.

And I now believe the appropriate book for the moment is Carl Bernestein’s The Final Days.

……………………
Here it is. Tom Delay’s mug shot!

I also note that the Tom Delay Arrest Warrent used to be posted at http://www.democraticleader.house.gov/pdf/Delay.pdf , but in a show that the Democratic Party are wussies (or if there’s a different story to why it is no longer at this address, feel free to clue me in), it is no longer posted there.

CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY
MONEY LAUNDERING => $100,000

To any sheriff or peace officer of the state of Texas, greetings, you are hereby commanded to arrest Thomas Dale DeLay and him safely keep so that you have him before the 331st Judicial District Court of Travis County.

Imagine what would have happened in 1992 if instead of Ross Perot running for president as a third party candidate, somebody sane would have taken up the mantle.

Why, perhaps a third party candidate might have won the thing! Or maybe the whole Perot phenomenom rested a bit strongly on the eccentric’s ability to garner news coverage.

At any rate, 1992 looks a bit like what 2005 looks like: complete dissatisfaction with both parties. (Though, to be honest, that appears to be the norm in American history whether than the exception. Political partisanship amongst the electorate is DEAD — but it has always been dead, or is your reading of post-Reconstruction Party Machine Politics different from my reading of the subject?) Granted the Republican Party is falling apart at the seams, but the Democratic Party has already fallen apart at the seams.

It’s a curious consideration. John Anderson wound up with a fairly meager 6.6% of the vote, compared to Perot’s 19%. Both of them, at one time in the campaign, had poll numbers that suggested they could win the damned thing… before the inevitable “can’t waste the vote” thing came into play and people gravitated to the two parties.

I mention this because Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel is rumoured to be mulling an Independent bid at the White House. Liberal conspiracy theorists maintain that he won his first Senate election via Diebold-type vote manipulation, but… he is as good and decent a Republican as there is in Congress. He is conservative, despite the neo-conservative’s gnashing at him for feignt criticisms of Bush’s Iraq policy (witness the American Spectator piece on Hagel.) I would vote for him over Hillary Clinton, and certainly any of the Republican-oids that the Republican Party seems to be pushing right about now.

The basic problem, for me, is he is a Republican, and I want him noted as being one for the good of Republicanism… not “in the middle between the two”.

We’ll see.

I had a middle school English teacher who once provided the class with a weird meandering speech about how fear is good for us, and fear helps drive us. It was a response to the popular, and somewhat naseating t-shirt slogan/brand that had popped up on virtually every adolescent boy: the “No Fear” t-shirt.

The slogans tended to go over my head, and were simply nonsensical. I can’t remember if there was a “Would you like a little wine with your cheese?” shirt to riff off of the phrase “Would You like a little Cheese with your wine?”, though I remember my brother commenting that he would like such a shirt if not for the dagnabbed “No Fear” branding.

But one slogan struck me as … kind of fascist. And, in relation to the environment the t-shirt wearer was living in, plenty pathetic.

“If you’re not living life to the edge, you’re just taking up space!”

What does this even mean? How, exactly, do you “live life to the edge” while attending this small town middle school in Central Washington? How do you “live life to the edge” as an awkward 13 or 14 year old (or, for that matter, non-relatively non-awkward)?* Presumably this “No Fear” slogan is referring to unspecified athletic prowess… but that doesn’t fit this kid.

This was an affected attitude shift on this kid’s part, a mood change that undoubtedly troubled his parents. Imagine a confirmed bookworm who was always picked last on any PE team. (Yes, even after me… though, I managed to become a good soccer player and thus was moved upward in that line-up when we got around to soccer.)

And I wonder what are you supposed to do with everyone who is not “living their life to the edge” and thus is “taking up space”? Send them all to a Concentration Camp? What the hell are the marketing wizards of this t-shirt trying to tell the youth of America, exactly?

I guess Consumer culture is even more brutually exploitive and destructive on the young adolescent and post-adolescent Female Psyche. (I basically saw through it.)

* The basic emotional grounding of this time of at least my life is summed up in these lyrics:

I ain’t happy, I’m feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I’m useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
It’s coming on
It’s coming on
It’s coming on

The key to “I’m useless” is that you are useless to society in general, and there’s nothing you can do to change that fact. Thus “living life to the edge” is not an option.

“My job isn’t to assess the government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.” — Judith Miller

“There’s a story in the New York Times this morning — this is, and I want to attribute to the Times. I don’t want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources — but it’s now public that in fact he has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring, through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge.” — Vice President Dick Cheney

This juxtaposition reminds me of a science fiction plot device (and I suppose theoretical physics conundrum). It’s the classic time travel paradox. Suppose a person travels to a time before she was born and breaks a causal chain that led to the traveler’s birth. This problem has been commonly explored by asking ‘What if you killed your own grandmother before she first conceived?’ (Curiously the problem is never expressed in terms of killing your own mother). The apparent paradox is then of a logical sort: P entails NOT P and NOT P entails P. If you kill your grandmother then you would not be born, which in turn would bring it about that you not travel into the past, thus you would not kill your grandmother, thus you would be born causing you to again travel into the past to kill your grandmother…. ad infinitum.

But hold on a second. Take a look at the scenario from a sort of third-person limited perspective. Look down upon it, and what you see is a strange man killing the old woman. Now here’s the mystery to this person: WHO IS THIS STRANGE MAN and WHERE DID HE COME FROM and WHY DOES HE NOT EXIST ANYMORE? He simply has no history, and no relation to any point in time and space.

Judith Miller lays out the government’s case for war with Iraq. Dick Cheney then cites Judith Miller, and he wants to attribute it to the Times (not the government, which is what Judith Miller has told us she is writing from). Something existed in between the two, connecting the two, but… it no longer exists in time or space because reality has been subverted by this time travel paradox. Nature abhors a vaccum, so someone somewhere is just going to have to invent something out of whole cloth to act as the placeholder.

I read at the time that the first few weeks of the XFL broadcasts were packed with shots of cheerleaders who seemed to come straight out of the strip club, who answered the hosts’ questions with double entendres. So, someone scores a touchdown, the stripper / cheerleader smiles and says “He really knows how to score!”

So, um… with that in mind… I guess… The Minnesota Vikings… really know how to score?

Or do they? I think they pretty much bought the services of everyone they screwed on those little party boats of theirs.

The big news in the NFL this week was allegations that 17 Minnesota Vikings players chartered a pair of yachts, stocked it with call girls and strippers and had a sex party on Lake Minnetonka until the boats’ disgusted, fearful crews returned to shore early.

Crew members have said they had to step around people having sex and that they felt intimidated by football players demanding that the alcohol flow more quickly. Female crew members say they were propositioned aggressively. There are also charges that some of the players urinated on a nearby lawn.

Further reports indicate that the crew members have photographic proof… so look forward to that, I guess.

The NFL has a weird problem that they inflicted upon themselves when they divided their teams into 8 divisions (instead of the prior 6). The possibility of a losing team making the play-off increases, with the chances that there might be a poor division. With two weeks to go in the regular season last year, an Arizona Cardinals fan waved a sign saying “Do The Math! We’re Still In It!” for his 4-9 turned 5-9 team, as the team defeated either the Saint Louis Rams or the Seattle Seahawks.

With that in mind, a look at the standings for the NFC North, and a further obsevation:

Chicago 2 wins 3 losses
Detroit 2 wins 3 losses
Green Bay 1 win 4 losses
Minnesota 1 win 4 losses

If Minnesota were going into a “chip on our shoulders, me against the world” type mode, they would have won last week… as it is, the team’s owner is reportedly waiting around to figure out how he can fire everyone on the team. I dare say that I like Green Bay in this pathetic race. After losing their first four games and becoming the joke of the league, they are now coming off a 52 to 3 victory, and thus have more momentum than anyone else in this division. Which is comical, as Brett Farve became the dumping ground of criticism. It’s all ultimately meaningless, but I hope Green Bay wins the division with a 7 and 9 record.

The theme song for the Minnesota Vikings, as per The Dead Milkmen.

The National Review piece on Hillary Clinton is here. Something pops out at me as incredibly hypocritical, and kind of stupid.

Ladies and Gentlemen… from the Top… the Creation of Agitprop:

A single memorable photograph from Hillary’s years in the public spotlight illustrates the intimidating determination that marks her political ambitions. It was early January of 1998, and her husband was preparing for his deposition in Paula Jones’s sexual-harassment suit. During their New Year’s vacation in the Virgin Islands, the presidential couple were “caught” dancing together on the beach. In Bill’s arms, Hillary gazed lovingly at her affectionate husband, her 50-year-old body revealed in all its bathing-suited glory. Most middle-aged women dread leaving a dressing room in a bathing suit, yet Hillary readily posed for a photo bound to grace front pages around the world. It was a perfect façade of normal matrimony, and succeeded brilliantly in distracting attention from the Jones suit. I remember thinking, “Wow, it’s true that she will do absolutely anything for the sake of political survival.” In the months ahead, after Monica Lewinsky had been exposed as Bill’s latest paramour, Hillary would endure even greater public indignities. But she stuck with her husband — and, in the end, she had her reward: a seat in the Senate.

Now then. Bill and Hillary in a bathing suit. Dropped to the press like so many celebrities drop these things to the press. I was going to do an extensive google search to drop it here, but now that I think of it, nobody wants to see Bill’s fat pasty thighs.

Now if I may present to you a slightly creepier, more obnoxious piece of staged agit-prop… as presented in the news just last week:

The first photograph comes from footage that accidentally made it to the press, the mic was mistakingly on. It was preparation and a run-through of the script for the footage that the second image comes from: a candid conversation between Bush and the troops about how great things are going in Iraq.

An interesting factoid: what polls there are about Bush’s impeachment show a greater pull for impeachment amongst the American public than the polls for Clinton’s impeachment. (But maybe that comes with an approval rating that for the last month has been below the 40% baseline.) The focus on their agit-prop may help explain this phenomenom.

I see that Cindy Sheehan has posted on why she cannot support Hillary Clinton. Probably a month or so ago now, I was going to do a triumprant of posts on the troubles with Bob Casey, Harold Ford, and Hillary Clinton as representatives of the Democratic Party — but I only got around to Bob Casey. The reality of Hillary Clinton is that I’ll have to at some point or other dig into the archives (probably the usenet archives, where people have posted news stories) from as far back at the Democratic Primary race of 1992 (maybe even further back, but this is where America was introduced to the Clintons) to describe the surreal and repeating cycles of the relationship between Hillary Clinton and the news media.

The weird thing is it may be more an indictment of the media at large than Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton has been forced to play these games, but… it isn’t the total output of the problem with Hillary Clinton, but it looms there as low-hanging fruit.

Hillary Clinton was recently profiled in National Review. If I could navigate National Review’s website to the article in question (I’m not even sure they post articles from their magazine), I’d link to it… right next to the (mostly positive) Nation article that it riffs off of. The Washington Monthly cover articles are useless for my purpose, because they deal almost exclusively with electoral chances.

In lieu of anything focused, I’ll give you some exchanges I had on the message board I frequent:

Poster: [i]Just a question on that subject if you have the time: which of the two would you prefer, given the choice, a President Bush II/III or Super Cunt, as she is described in some circles? Think carefully, now, you have a situation that could spring to life instantly if Elder Bush chooses to spring for the Other Son’s rise to fame and glory and Big Oil Forever. It could very well happen, and easily, since it is only a matter of their spending the money to ensure it will happen.
[…]

At least we have the vote, don’t we? We have the vote and the NutFringe Christians devalue it, we have the education system and the NutFringe Christians strive mightily to water that down, water it down to the same Mantra-like belief system as a truly dumbshit Muslim would have; “Forget Science Ye Unbelievers, for it is written in the Holy Book in Words of Fire that ….” fill in the blank as needed.

Personally, given the choice, I would prefer Hillary to anyone named Bush since I always come down on the side of intelligence if at all possible. [/i]

Me: [i]Some additional thoughts on our quasi-republican democracy. If you consider the nation to be divided 50-50 as per the 2000 and 2004 elections … you will also note that the nation is divided 30 to 20 as per states go (New Mexico flipped from blue to red; New Hampshire flipped from red to blue). Do the math with regards to the US Senate.

I can’t say I approve of the word “Super Cunt”. What is the male equivalent to that insult? The story of why I do not like Hillary Clinton includes this whole “into the memory hole with inconsistent storyline” bittocks and begins with the Clintons Superbowl Sunday appearance on 60 Minutes 1992 to handle the Gennifer Flowers piece. It continues to her place in the 1992 DNC Convention, includes the “Cookie recipie” contest with Barbara Bush… the entire set of circumstances is actually that “Triangulation” word I keep using (Did DIck Morris really invent the term) — only in this case she was playing against her perceived personality as opposed to party policy. Flash forward to the Clintons’ post 1994-ass whupping, and there’s still more creepy politics in action there (panel 4 of this cartoon: here… a situation that improved somewhat when Bill Clinton got his political footing back, but it’s all part of the Grand Futt-Mucking.

Yeah, I know. I should be discussing the real issues of Hillary Clinton, as with any politician you know where they stand by who purchased them…

Well, here’s a Spanish newspaper that has already endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.

http://www.watchingamerica.com/elpaisco000002.html

But like Dick Morris, I suspect that they don’t quite get the idea that you have to go through a primary first. (Then again, at the start of the 2004 cycle, everyone assumed it would be Kerry, and by the end of the 2004 primary cycle — after a whirl with Dean and Clark — it was… Kerry. I suspect the powers that be decide these matters after all.)

28 percent of Americans believe that America is heading in the right direction.

My problem is simple: I don’t see how Hillary Clinton is going to head us into a different direction, the political labels notwithstanding, and the National Review cover declaring she’s “Liberal and not Centrist” not-withstanding… she’s apt to spend her time looking for “Sister Souljah Moments” of various varieties, and has already cashed in her chips with the DLC.

I guess she’s for stem cell research. That’s… good…