Well, let’s see. First we get this call to action…

… and in that shadow, and at the very same blog, you have: this news. Which wouldn’t bode well for the breaking-line-point of throwing the Democratic Party ashunder over Samuel Alito, and the seemingly coerced-into-existence “conventional wisdom” that his confirmation was and always will be a fait accompli.

Well, I note this, for what it is worth:

The continued existence of the United States as a republic may depend upon the defeat of the nomination of Federalist Society member Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. The issue is Hitler!

Not that I want Harry Reid to use those words or anybody in either party to sound off much of the concerns of Lyndon LaRouche (um. No. The issue is not, quote-in-quote, “Hitler”, but some issues that are bad nonetheless), but there is a story of how nature abhors a vacuum.

Sigh.

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?

A look at Richard Wright’s campaign website, as it is now:

http://www.wright06.com.

Hm. Looks good. Let’s send a theater troupe to Congress!

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.”

# of Congressional Districts won by George W Bush in 2004: 255
# of Congressional Districts won by John F Kerry in 2004: 180

# of Congressional Districts won by George W Bush in 2000: 228
# of Congressional Districts won by Albert Gore in 2000: 207
Please note that Al Gore won more votes than George W Bush.

For the Democratic Party, this is an uncomfortable statistic. The Democratic – safe seats are packed tighter than the Republican – safe seats. A large part of it is the nature of geography: draw a reasonable line in metropolitan areas, and you’re guaranteed to get a heavy dense “urban” population of liberals; draw lines in the vast wasteland, the density varies throughout the region. Suburbia is — let’s just say for the sake of argument 55-45 Republican. Rurality trends as Republican as Urban trends Democratic. It’s weird to say that an urban district is more heterogenous politically than a rural district, but maybe this is a function of how narrowly partisan politics gets defined versus … something entirely different. But in the end, Doc Hastings’s Democratic opponent wins more votes than Jim McDermott’s Republican opponent.

Effective, and you can add “unfair”, gerry-mandering does the trick as well. And the truth is that members of the minority party are comfortable enough knowing that they have a job as long as they want. California is gerry-mandered in support of the Democratic Party, and Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to get some sort of Redistricting-Reform through the ballot. Assume for a second that the proposition was fair-minded: it needed to be flunked out because one party cannot “unilateraly disarm” while a Texas goes its merry way with a re-districted redistricting. It is easy to see the effect redistricting had by subtracting the effect a 3% differential would have on the swinging of congressional districts from Gore to Bush, and seeing what remains by way of the large Kerry deficit in terms of how many congressional districts he won.

# of states carried by Bush in 2004: 30.
# of states carried by Kerry in 2004: 20.

# of states carried by Bush in 2000: 30.
# of states carried by Gore in 2000: 20.

Another uncomfortable statistic for the Democratic Party. I would also add, of course, that if you threw out the 2 Senate seats that factor into each state’s electoral seats in the electoral college, Al Gore won the election in 2000 without Florida.

The net result is that the Legislative branch is more Republican than the nation as a whole. And this extends to the Democratic Party — after the South finally broke away from its Lincoln-era aversion to the Republican party on the local and state levels and the Republicans gained the Senate in 1994, it was a hard slough for the Democratic Party to get to 50 seats — a feat they managed in 2000. (and Jeffords made for the majority 51 in 2001.) And this includes Zell Miller as a Democrat (along with a cadre of Southern Democrats that are more Republican than the Northeastern cadre of “Moderate Republicans” are Democratic.)

My comment to Howie in Seattle: Sadly, nobody of front rank has emerged to take on McMorris or Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.: There aren’t a whole lot of elected Democrats to choose from in that area to be the traditional “front rank” candidate. It’s a funny game… trying to get someone competitive to make up for the huge discrepency in the Republican versus Democratic drawn district, even at a crest of what should be a Democratic year where Hastings’ name is repeatedly mentioned in the Abramoff- (and DeLay) ordeal. (Are these the positions of the district at large? The story of how people vote tends to puzzle me.)

I’m leading this to somewhere, so watch for further comments sooner or later. (I still need to get around to my part 2 of “radio gaga”. And the LaRouche-post fan is likely waiting impatiently for me to write something new up on LaRouche. Maybe he can chew on this before I get around to one.)