I remember at its inception, Air America was supposed to be infused heavily with a strong “comedy” component. It had various bits throughout some of the programs, such as a parody of VH1’s “I Love the 80s” that had comments about Iran-Contra after comments about Cabbage-patch kids. They hired some writers from The Daily Show. The skits tended to be a bit lame, and it’s probably for the best that they’ve been etched out of the fledgling little radio network.

But I bring my mind back to “Morning Sedition”, the cancelled program, and how it compares with its replacement … the “Mark Riley Show”, “The Rachel Maddow Show” combined to form “Air America Mornings.”

There’s an earnestness to it, and a dead seriousness to it, and a… boringness to it. I also note a depressing trend that is set through whom is being interviewed here. Morning Sedition had regular interviews with James Wolcott, some musical blasts from Mark Dougherty, and I once heard an interview with Chris Elliott. Who have I heard interviewed, taped I may add, on “Air America Mornings”? I hear the Democratic governor of Montana call Rachel Maddow a “cowgirl”. I hear an interview with Democratic representative Barbara Lee contemplating her “no” vote on the Afghanistan Resolution. I hear Democratic party politicos.

No fun, and bah to that. I guess it’s what the president of the company wants, and dove-tails to his over-all purpose (the comedy was a ruse?). Or something to that effect.

More later…

Pat Robertson once again offered up his spiritual take on current events, and at a certain point I jhave to wonder: why isn’t he consigned to the LaRoach bin in terms of relevance to American politics?

I note that the Trinity Broadcasting Network has recently cancelled Hal Lindsey, author of several extremely prophetic books such as “The 1980s: Countdown to Armegeddon” (why, he sure nailed that one, didn’t he?), because of simple capitalism. The network is trying to expand into the Muslim world, and for whatever reason Hal Lindsey’s furor over how the Muslims’ place in the destruction of humanity sits less well than Pat Robertson’s. Or maybe Hal Lindsey is too much of a nut for the Trinity Broadcasting Network, unlike — say — Bob Larson and his weekly exorcisms.

But here’s what Pat Robertson had to say. Sharon was personally a very likable person, and I am sad to see him in this condition, but I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who ‘divide my land’. God considers this land to be His. You read the Bible and He says ‘this is my land’ and for any Prime Minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says ‘no, this is mine.’ I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in 1974. He was tragically assassinated, it was a terrible thing that happened but nevertheless he was dead. And now Ariel Sharon who again was a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with, I prayed with him personally, but here he’s at the point of death. He was dividing God’s land and I would say woe unto any Prime Minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says ‘this land belongs to me. You’d better leave it alone.’

Okay. I now offer my rebuttal. Politics aside, and Ariel Sharon is a pretty complicated person in this regard where you can sway from madness to collegiality, you know who Ariel Sharon has always reminded me of?

I can’t quite put my finger on the reason why.

I heard a quote from a world leader to the effect that Ariel Sharon “casts a huge shadow over Israel.” It’s difficult to disagree with that sentiment.

As for the political situation in Israel: just pray that they don’t end up sending up Netan Yahoo. That would be a disaster.

The Weekly Standars is the defacto official magazine of the true Neo-Con Movement, as exemplified in the goals of PNAC. One can accuse PNAC of having an imperial vision for America. I’m weary of cries of “imperialism” to describe even misgotten American foreign policy, but I mention it because what strikes me is that in their article defending Bush’s extra-constitutional malarky of wire-tapping without the FISA search warrent, Gary Schmitt sticks quotation marks around the word… as in:

Congress passed and President Carter signed the bill regulating electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence collection in the wake of an extended, post–Watergate debate about the so–called “imperial presidency.”

The phrase “so — called ‘imperial presidency'” gives Scmitt. Remember how the Nixon apologists came out of the woodwork when Mark Felt was revealed to be Deep Throat to attack Felt for his whistle-blowing? Pat Buchanan, Chuck Colson, Ben Stein. We never knew that such a thing as a Nixon-partisan still existed. But apparently they do.

I marvel at this paragraph:

One irony of today’s debate is that so many liberals are now defending FISA. Previously, a common complaint from the ACLU and others was that the secret federal court that issues warrants for foreign intelligence surveillance in this country had become a “rubber stamp” for the executive branch. Out of the thousands of applications put forward by the Department of Justice to the panel over the years, only a handful had ever been rejected. Instead of a check on executive authority, the court had become complicit in its activities-or so it was said.

A similar dilema confronts us all with respect to the CIA, a secretive government agency with a … spotty… record. And the Bush Administration misuses it, forcing… well… defenses of long-term public officials fighting the politicization of the CIA. With respect to FISA and the “rubber stamp” nature of the organization: that is sort of the point here. There’s a law set up that sets up a secret and very accomodating court to wink and nod toward the Fourth Amendment. Presumably it has a limitation… the line drawn somewhere aways from where it’d okay a president from breaking into the Watergate Hotel and bugging his political opponent — remember Nixon and his “Imperial Presidency” that kicked off the whole FISA court?

The Weekly Standard, William Kristol his own bad self, poo-poos the entire idea that the Bush Administration may be wire-tapping anyone other than a call coming in from “Al Qaeda” (“Hello, Dominoes. This is Al Qaeda. I’d like to order a medium pepperoni pizza, please.”) The Paranoid Style In American Liberalism, the title is a take-off of the classic Richard Hofstadter essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics. I myself once wrote a cutsey essay, found somewhere on this website but for some reason not popping up when I type the phrase into the search box, with the title that theorized that a new and powerful political coalition could be made of the tin-foil hat crew of the right and the tin-foil hat crew of the left that would save the nation from the mushy “see no evil, and everything is skin deep” center. Thus, when I saw the phrase typed in as a search to the website, I always laughed and wondered if a student required to read the Hofstrader piece would think that I was touching on Hofstrader’s thesis, and base a term paper around my concept.

It is funny how William Kristol stops at the PETA example of the round-up of groups who have been spied upon by the Pentagon. The Quakers make for a far more sympathetic group, at least theoretically. I don’t think the average neo-con readership of the Weekly Standard can stand the Quakers, to be honest. But when you purge Nixon from any wrong-doing, and you can rationalize spying on organizations a little out of the mainstream, you can shrug and say “Who cares?” at the fact that the Portland Police Department actually kept files and kept survelliance on red churches. (Time to repaint the churches green, parishioners!) Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are not watching you.

Gary Schmitt jumps in further to defend the Imperial Presidencies of — well, in their case it would be Nixon, Reagan (I know they’d be defending Oliver North) and Bush, and a more robust American police state in general by poo-pooing the Justice Brandeis quotation “The doctrine of separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power” as at best a half truth. This paragraph sees the novel argument that By the time they convened in Philadelphia, the bias against the executive that arose from the fight with the British crown was pretty well gone. — at best a half-truth: cue the battle between the Federalist Party of John Adams (British crown lovers) and the Republican Party (French Revolutionary lovers). I see the use of the phrase “Unitary” to describe the ideal Executive. A unitary government? British Crown indeed!

Aaaaaaaagh! To think that we had a decent human being and intelligent thinking human being in Jay Inslee whom we traded in for Doc Hastings apparently to punish Jay for being the deciding vote on the assault weapons ban. For the love of God, will someone please run against him? I mean, someone with some charisma? Please?

Not that it matters, but I note that Jay Inslee is named in Michael Moore’s stupid book Stupid White Men, somewhere near the bottom of a list that starts with Zell Miller and goes down percentage-wise of “Republican-lite” Democrats that need to be bounced out of office. Moore is a bit clueless. At the time of the book, Jay Inslee had served two full terms of office in the House of Representatives. His service in the Fourth Congressional District is distinctly more conservative than his service in the First Congressional District — and understandably so.

I wondered how Jay Inslee managed to win the Fourth Congressional District in the first place. The year is 1992. Sid Morrison has been Congressman for a decade, and he has jumped out of the race to run for governor. The statewide GOP is a bit clueless, I must say, as they send arch-conservatives to run for governor in 1992, 1996, and 2000. Remember, I suppose, this is the state whose GOP chose Pat Robertson in the Washington Caucuses circa 1988. Sid Morrison does not win the nomination — par for the course for east-side politicians, and par for the course for Republican moderates.

Jay Inslee’s platform, as recorded by the Seattle Times on April 8, 1992: Inslee, 41, of Selah said he would support House Speaker Tom Foley of Spokane, who has come under fire because of congressional scandals. In addition, he called for using the nation’s defense savings to reduce the federal deficit, allowing states to experiment with universal health care, outlawing all discrimination against women and minorities in the workplace, encouraging employers to provide child care, passing a family-leave bill, promoting the export of agricultural products and continuing the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation.

(9-25-92: He did not buy the argument that the district is Republican. “Democrats built Central Washington,” he points out. “There are still statues of FDR around Grand Coulee.” He’s right. It took an activist, Democratic approach to government to build the dams and canals that turned darkness into day and desert into orchards and wheat fields. But voters have short memories.)

The opening up of trade with China for apples was huge. You could not turn on local news throughout 1993 and 1994 without glowing reports of Washington State apples in China. I didn’t quite get it. I remember one report of counterfeit Washington State apples in China, and having to solve that problem. Do the Chinese think of these apples as exotic? I don’t know.

I can’t say whether it was the assault weapon ban that did Jay Inslee in in the 1994 rematch against Doc Hastings. He used the vote as a “profiles in courage” moment to frame his loss for political advantage when he tried to win the Democratic nomination for governor in 1996. It was one “morph into the unpopular Clinton” point for advertising purposes, and that’s about all.

The last time Doc Hastings faced any serious challenge was 1996, which saw a confluence of events conspiring to give Doc Hastings more heat than expected. First, the national Democratic party was targetting and funneling money into all of the 1994 “Contract with America” Freshman candidates’ opponents, running soft-money attack ads. Second, Doc Hastings came face to face with the classic irresolvable conservative politician’s dilemma. He’s a “cut government” conservative. In the Fourth Congressional District, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation sits. What you need to know about Hanford is that it’s a site that requires constant funneling of tax-payers’ money for seemingly little reward in cleaning the dump up, and ensuring as few radioactive tumble-weeds rolling through the district as can possibly be pulled off. Doc Hastings had considerable trouble getting money for the site clean-up, what with fiscal frugality being the order of the day, and thus the Democratic nominee — Rick Locke was his name, had an opening, and (Seattle Times, November 7, 1996):

Hastings beat Rick Locke, a businessman who had never run in an election before and had briefly dropped out because he and his family were unsure whether he really wanted to run for Congress. In five months, he came from having a name recognition of zero, to within 4 percentage points of being elected. Democrats were left wondering what would have happened had more established candidates, such as former 1st District Congresswoman Maria Cantwell and Inslee, run to regain their seats.

And the door for a Democrat to win the Fourth Congressional District was closed after that. I wonder if Rick Locke’s “outsider” status offset whatever good will a Jay Inslee would’ve had in winning the seat. Never mind. Jay Inslee ran off to the First District, and won in 1998 largely on a “My opponent is impeaching the President because of his penis. I wouldn’t do that.” platform. Rick Locke surveyed the landscape, and made a bemusing utterance (Seattle Times, September 20, 1998):

Two years ago, Locke ran a credible campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Richard “Doc” Hastings, a Pasco Republican, and state Democratic Party leaders had hoped he would try again. But last spring, after studying the results of a poll commissioned by the party, Locke concluded he couldn’t win and didn’t want the label of a two-time loser.

“I don’t know what Democrats did to these people, but it sure must have been bad,” said Locke, assessing the party’s standing in Central Washington.

For the Democratic Party, it’s sort of not even worth dwelling on what happened that election.

That explains why Gordon Allan Pross, who keeps the weeds under control on his parents’ farm in Ellensburg, wound up being the only Democrat – sort of – in these parts who was willing to challenge Hastings.

“If you think I want to go sit in that pit of vipers, you’re wrong,” Pross said, that pit of vipers being the U.S. House of Representatives. “But somebody’s got to go straighten this mess out.”

I am of the belief that a party oughta run someone… always… even in the case of a hopeless cause. The Democratic Party was saddled with Gordon Allen Pross — and it could easily have been saddled with a Lyndon LaRouche candidate (and it’s hard to figure out which circumstance would have been worse.) But then again, I am also of the belief that there should be a law requiring every legislative race have a debate, shown over the air (it’s our public airwaves, remember? Public service comes in at some point or other, at least… theoretically.) prime-time 8:00 on the local network affiliates. It seems good to the Democratic Process to air out opposing ideas, even in places where one set of ideas is in the distinct minority, and for the purpose of the minority party’s fill-in-candidate, at least gives him/her a purpose in the race.

My general assessment of the 2000 candidate against Doc Hastings is not to even bother mentioning him. The local press’s description of him is that he basically believed in what Doc Hastings wanted to do, but… in a less rigid manner? I would not have voted for him. Nonetheless. The Yakima Herald Republic, Tri-Cities Herald, and Seattle Times all endorsed the Democratic candidate in 1992, 1994, and 1996. They couldn’t with credibility do so in 1998. They could in 2000. I don’t know about the Tri-Cities Herald or the Yakima Herald, but I can say: the Seattle Times endorsed Jim Davis, DINO for Congress.

I’ve actually read Craig Mason’s website. This is pretty interesting “How the Democrats lost Eastern Washington”. I note that he wasn’t planning on running in 2002, and had an idea that he had 2004 in mind. He jumped into the race to avoid a Gordon Allen Pross-type candidate from being the Democratic nominee, to which I give him tremendous kudos. But, in the grand scheme of running an election… it doesn’t really matter. He’s a poli-sci professor, and from what I read of the debate done against Doc Hastings, he couldn’t escape that as a sort of weird detriment to the thin threshold of “credibility”. For for the moment, I mean a different things by “credibility” as opposed to “electibility”. The Seattle Times decided Jim Davis was credible, and thus was able to endorse him. They did not consider Craig Mason credible, and thus I noted at the time The Tri-Cities Herald sort of mocking him for his “weird History Lesson” in regards to the New Deal and its import on the economy of the region in his debate performance. (To which I can now toss you back to Jay Inslee circa 1992 saying pretty much the same thing.)

I note now this bit from The Seattle Times, October 13, 2002:

Berendt said it’s not worth the party spending a lot of money on races it knows it can’t win. Candidates don’t always understand. Berendt said that Craig Mason, a Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, in the 4th Congressional District is angry that more party money hasn’t been sent his way.

“He thinks I’m stomping on the oxygen hose,” Berendt said.

Which is the way of it. You see the same type of thing coming from Craig Mason’s mouth reported over here, and I should have known better than to take Mason’s bait about his frustration over the “gun control” advocates.

I can’t say anything about Sandy Matheson. Craig Mason and Jim Davis both won my parents’ votes largely by showing up at the County Fair, which simply shows that they exist as alternatives. I was in the Fourth Congressional District during the summer of 2004, and I saw that there was a brief and confusing flurry of ads shortly after the primary election for Matheson which didn’t bother stating what she was running for. It touted her Hanford experience, and that was really the only clue of what she was running for. My father voted for Doc. I know this because I asked him a week or so after the election “You voted for all the winners, right?”, and received a brief scanning silence and a “Yes, I guess I did.” I may have helped him decide to elect Doc Hastings, musing at some point during the 2004 election season that “Doc Hastings basically has just enough clout from not straying from the Republican ticket to bring in the necessary funding for Hanford.” I note the one time he could bring himself to admonish the Bush Administration… involving… cuts to federal Hanford funding in Bush’s proposed budget (pulled from the Seattle Times on April 9, 2001):

“The dramatic cut proposed in this program shows a dramatic lack of understanding on the part of administration budget officials.”

After all, he came close to losing his seat in 1996 due to having to hassle with proposed Hanford budget cuts. I note, though, that roughly the same time Doc Hastings was actually proposing looking into revving up the Hanford plants to produce Nuclear Energy. Talk about a “dramatic lack of understanding”! Think about it: you are the Congressman for the district that has to deal with radioactive waste, and you’re thinking of creating more of it?

We now hover toward the 2006 election. I haven’t a clue whether “Jim Wright” can win, as I don’t know how his place in the Republican Ethics Plague plays there. I do know that you can’t hold it against the National or state Democratic Party should they overlook the race.

Why do I care? I have a theory. It’s sort of a political blogging theory. First off, an offshoot of the previously stated idea that every race needs be contested: every race needs be blogged in some manner or other. Should lightning strike and a race not forseen to be competitive become competitive… you have a blog offensive that has already been snuck in the background, and something or other is off and running. Beyond that, the flow of information allows for niches to be filled. So why aren’t I “doing” Earl Blumenauer or (good god no!) David Wu? Why not? Actually, it probably has more to do with a slight spike of Doc Hastings’ “q” rating once he became the head of the House Ethics Committee, and a desire to explain what that’s all about… over and over and over again, in a repetitive running joke.

Message Board musings:

An Elder of the “Greatest Generation”: I hate to bring up a thought like this at this Season of the year, and I do not like to keep referring to my Military Years, but I believe in this instance I MUST pass on an old, old, Military Maxim [saying?] that I cannot seem to shake off; there are people in this world who are too damn dumb to live. There, I’ve said it and I’m glad! And I do not care what the Dumbass’s reasons are for going to a war Zone, unarmed, unknown, untrained, and definitely unthinking.

After reading the Post I was completely at a loss to visualize what his thought processes??? must have been like to bring him to doing such a thing. Does he NOT ever watch the News, at least CNN? And the thing about going down to the Mosque is beyond thought and Stupidity… Sorry! There I go, getting emotional again…

On the good side of the boys life I can give his parents one bit of advice on the boy’s future education; Dentistry! that will keep him out of trouble and may just be the Career that can keep him alive for a few years more while doing good things for them and their “adopted” country.
………….

Moi: I don’t know quite why, but I find myself shrugging and saying “Good for him!”

Stupid? Sure. But at least he did something.
…………..

“Zen” Libertarian-like guy: I’m afraid I must admit that I, as a young Zenman, did any number of really stupid, dangerous things. Things so ridiculously idiotic that I’ve rarely, over the years, divulged the details to any of them. Things so incredibly asinine that I, to this day, cringe when I think about them.

H’mon, you have a point, tho, lol. At least he wasn’t just sitting in his room playing Mario Brothers. For some reason I’m reminded of Lawn Chair Larry who, when they asked him why he tied 24 large helium balloons to a lawn chair and headed for the stratus sphere, said: “A man can’t just sit around.”
……………………….

Moi: Farris’s remarkable adventure came to a sudden end on Tuesday, when, apparently realising the danger he was in, he walked into the Baghdad bureau of the Associated Press news agency to ask for help. “I would have been less surprised if little green men had walked in,” said AP editor Patrick Quinn. He was collected by soldiers and delivered to officials at the US embassy, who had been looking for him, and arranged a flight home.

A military official said that Farris’s looks saved him from harm. His parents, who are divorced, were born in Iraq and moved to the US 35 years ago. AP reporter Jason Straziuso said Farris would have been in trouble as soon as he opened his mouth. “He hadn’t picked up any mannerisms or customs. Any close inspection was going to reveal that he was American,” he said.

Um. Am I too young to be allowed to say “Ah. The naivette of youth.”?

Sometime during the 2004 election, I had this joke. “Where did he stand on the Kitten Extermination Act?”

Perhaps I’d preface the Kitten Extermination Act as coming from Bill Frist, who… once upon a time… actually… did… kill kittens. (No. Really. You can look it up. Google it. Bill Frist: Cat Killer.)

I’m surprised by this charge, at the end of this article.:

LAROUCHE GETTING WHAT HE DESERVES
Chicago Tribune
January 30, 1989
Author: Mike Royko.

But I hope that this column finds its way to his fellow inmates. They should know that they have a cat-killer in their midst. And I hope any cat-lovers among them do whatever they feel is appropriate.

I will reconstruct the story of LaRouche’s AIDS initiative in the mid-1980s (on the way to Fidel Castro’s program). But I just had to say: Cat killers? Really?