I don’t expect the Reason-oids to be terribly sympathetic to either the plight of the Democratic Party or an article defending them from the Washington Monthly. (Note the “SmokingPenguin”‘s quip, which pretty much only demonstrates his/her ideological difference with the Party and not any comment about the supposed “lameness” of said party, and leaves out the tactical advancing of the ball against the Iraq War with Jack Murtha, which assuming he is a Libertarian of any purity is a stance he finds more conducive. I assume the “Davis-Bacon” rebuff just slid under his concious reading, a big deal for Liberals that Libertarians wouldn’t stand for.) I can also point out that their reading on the Paul Hackett race is a bit fuzzy, conforming to a certain whistful conventional wisdom advanced by Hackett himself: like it or not, Sherrod Brown was kicking Paul Hackett’s butt in that primary race. I’m a bit disappointed in that the focus of Tim Cavanaugh’s snark on the cover, which focuses on the words “Not Lame” as being faint praise indeed. My snark is that the cover shows the Democratic side of the aisle at the State of Union address, and has a grand total of FIVE arrows pointing to individual members of the Democratic side of the aisle from the words “NOT LAME”, suggesting… here are your five not Lame Democrats, and if we have to point out these five individual Democrats as being not lame, what does that make the Democrats NOT CIRCLED? Well… dare I say… lame?

I will point out one blip in the article, because it is a special focus on my blog and not many other political blogs, that Doc Hastings hovers in the background of this sentence:

She [Slaughter] almost single-handedly forced Republicans to back off on plans to tamper with the Ethics Committee in order to give Tom DeLay a break.

Very well then. Actually, I read a very funny article yesterday where Doc compliments the new interim Democratic Ethics head, thus knocking the ethically-challenged Democrat that is stepping aside for the moment, more of less claiming Mollohan was the man stalling the committee. A great kidder, that Doc Hastings.

There are two strikes against the thesis written within the very article. First of all, on the matter of Pelosi’s “brilliant” straddling to aid Murtha:

Consider, for instance, what happened last fall when Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), a Vietnam veteran and hawk who initially supported the Iraq war, called for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. When reporters asked Pelosi what she thought of Murtha’s statement, she replied that the congressman spoke for himself, not the caucus. Her response was immediately denounced by liberal critics and portrayed by reporters as evidence of Democrats’ lack of message, discipline, and shared conviction. In fact, as Howard Fineman would later report, Pelosi had worked behind the scenes to convince Murtha to go public with his change of heart and orchestrated the timing of his announcement. Knowing that the credibility of Murtha’s position would be damaged if it looked like he was the token hawk being used by “cut and run” liberal Democrats, Pelosi made the strategic calculation to put Murtha in the spotlight by himself for a few weeks before stepping forward to endorse his suggestion.

The strategy worked, and it allowed Murtha to visibly establish Democrats as the advocates of what now looks like the position toward which our Iraq policy is headed. A late February Zogby poll showed that fully 72 percent of American troops think that the United States should leave Iraq within the year; 25 percent say they should leave immediately. In addition, Pelosi’s party now holds the advantage on Iraq. As with Social Security, critics have charged that Democrats can’t win without a plan for Iraq, but a mid-March Gallup poll showed that voters think Democrats would better handle the situation (they hold a 48 to 40 advantage over Republicans), even though only one-quarter of them think that Democrats have a plan for dealing with the country.

Perhaps this is a brillaint tactical decision, but the very fact that that was the best tactical decision available does indeed show a certain “lameness” for the Democratic Party. That is to say, the Democratic Caucus has just over 50 percent of its members having voted against the Iraq War in the first place, and the majority of its rank and file base having always been against the war. But to have credibility in moving forward, you have to get the hawk of hawks to take the stand, and then stand out of his way.

Then there’s this:

Over in the Senate, Reid temporarily silenced his critics when he staged a showdown last fall, shutting down the Senate to compel Republicans to discuss pre-war intelligence. GOP promises to pursue inquiries into how the intelligence was gathered, interpreted, and used had gone nowhere, and Democrats had no institutional means to conduct their own investigation. So Reid forced the issue, invoking an obscure parliamentary procedure that sent the Senate into a closed session. Republicans were furious, but they were also backed into a corner. Reluctantly, the leadership agreed to restart the investigations, putting the issue of intelligence back in the national spotlight. The in-your-face move signaled that Reid had the inclination, and the electoral security, to push Republicans around in a way that his predecessor Tom Daschle never could.

Tom Daschle was lame, and had this impossible situation he should not have been put into: the terms of leading the Democratic Party and the terms of representing the state of South Dakota conflict with each other. I was, in the end, happy to see him lose, and this article does suggest why. That notwithstanding, when he forced the hands of the Republicans to commence with Phrase Two of these Investigations, as soon as the story faded from the news-cycle the Republicans simply silently squelched it. And the definition of lame?

I can think of something that doesn’t so much show the lameness of the Democrats as the lameness of Congress in the face of the Executive Branch claiming Powers and making the Legislative Branch irrelevant in important respects. Torture. Bush wrote a signing statement that made the Congressional’s passing a bill committing ourselves against it meaningless. In this face / farce, the wranglings of the thing: ie assigning the title of “lame”, (ignored when Democrats pushed for it, forced into view when McCain made it an issue) are purely academic.

I’m shifting back over old issues of the Weekly Standard, reading how they wrote up advocating for a War in Iraq. These paragraphs struck me as something worth noting:

The destruction of Iraq’s military force structure would create the opportunity for regime change as well, since it would eliminate some or all of Saddam Hussein and his regimes’ ability to control the population. Simultaneously or prior to the attack, a major covert operation could be launched, utilizing Iraqi exiles and dissident forces trained during the period of diplomacy. This effort would be based on the Afghan model that led to the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Not only would the overt and covert attacks weaken the ability of Iran’s leaders to carry out offensive operations in retaliation, they would cripple the leaders’ power to control their own people.

Iraq’s leaders have threatened to unleash a firestorm of terrorism in the event military action is taken against them. Any country involved in the attack would be subject to retaliation by Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda, the Iraqis have claimed. If nothing else, this threat demonstrates how closely tied Iraq is to terrorist groups. The United States and its allies would have to be prepared for stepped-up terrorist acts. Iraq could also project forces into Palestine, but this is unlikely because they would encounter the full strength of the American military. However, Iraq might encourage proxies among

Okay. This is getting a little strained. Changing Iran to Iraq is obvious, and I think changing Iraq to Palestine was an inspired stroke of genius on my part. But were there supposed “proxies” of Iraq in Palestine? This oh-so-ironic remix of mine ceases to make any sense.

Iraq’s militant Shiites. Coalition forces in Iraq would have to be ready to respond.

The madness continues in the proper cover story “To Bomb or Not to Bomb”, the story of which is pretty much given away with this line:

America is, so CNN says (and the Iranian English-speaking elite faithfully watch CNN), tied down in Iraq.

Oh, Mercy me. If only the Iranian English speaking elite would watch Fox News, they’d know the truth about our cruising success in Iraq.

At any rate, countering the idea that a strike (Nuclear, mind you. Nuclear on the table) would have an averse effect on the Secular or Moderate Iranian dissidents, they have history as their guide.:

In any case, it is highly unlikely that an American strike would arrest Iran’s intellectual progress away from theocracy. This process has been going on since the 1980s–Iran’s loss to Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war was an important catalyst to questioning and dissent.

Wait. Who won the Iran – Iraq war anyways? I thought Iraq was pretty much spent after that one. They invaded Iran, trumpted about because their military might dominated Iranian’s military might, and then they got dragged down because the Iranians didn’t like foreign invaders, and the initial feelings of triumph just became a slow simmering unnverving attrition. Thank you, wikipedia.

The war was disastrous for both countries, stalling economic development and disrupting oil exports. It cost Iran an estimated 1.5 million casualties (1, p. 206), and $350 billion (1, p. 1). Iraq was left with serious debts to its former Arab backers, including US$14 billion loaned by Kuwait, a debt which contributed to Saddām’s 1990 decision to invade.

The war left the borders unchanged. Two years later, as war with the western powers loomed, Saddām recognized Iranian rights over the eastern half of the Shatt al-`Arab, a reversion to the status quo ante bellum that he had repudiated a decade earlier.

I guess I’m looking forward to this week’s issue. “Who’s Your Dada?” indeed.

I saw this headline, in connection with a CNN poll showing Bush’s approval rating at…

32 percent.

The basic problem with that headline is… it’s the headline for every goddamned report for Bush’s approval rating since, seemingly forever. The next poll might be another “record low” and it might be 33 percent — the uptick from this particular “record low”, but that means only that it will be the record low for — say — the CBS News poll.

As these things go, the last time I was shocked enough to comment strictly on Bush’s latest poll ratings, CBS had him at 34 percent. I contemplated on things that I can buy at Fred Meyer for the price of Bush’s Poll ratings. For his new poll ratings, I can now buy… Bumpkis. Just Bumpkis. Shortly after that 34 percent approval rating was released, some right wing commentators (Hannity, Limbaugh) complained that the polls were liberally biased… too many Democrats sampled. There were indeed more “Democrats” polled than in the past, but that is because the basic problem with these polls is that there is a noticable swing of people willing to identify themselves with a party when the head of the party is embarrassing. I don’t really know how they work the numbers, but I assume they have some sort of scientific formula they can crounch into the “margin of error”. At any rate, CBS released a new poll with the samplings more to Limbaugh and Hannity’s likings (or more like deference, as they’d probably just as soon figure that 75 percent of the nation are Republican). Bush’s approval ratings than shot up to that oh-so-astronomical high of 36 percent — or something like that. I’m sure Limbaugh and Hannity were pleased with that.

Bush has not been above 50 percent in the polls for over a year. I stare at the situation, just kind of trying to take various vantage points. Is there a precedent for something like this in American history? This Presidency is just becoming sort of Insane.

I note this book from some schmuck named Hugh Hewitt. Really, not worth reading (and I say that while noting that there is a deluge of anti-Bush books that are not worth reading as well.) But then again, with a comment like Warning: this is the book the Democrats don’t want you to read. attached to the book, I go with a little reverse psychology.

I bring this up because our “How we are going to achieve a Permanent Republican Majority” (with Bush as a bench-mark… yes, we’re going to establish a Permanent Republican Majority with Mr. 32%) popped up one of the chattering class cable talk blathering shows. (It popped up when I checked his book in “Electronic Library” in transcript form.) He was more sanguine and a bit “Woo – Hoop!” than befitting a man with a published book that “The Democrats don’t want you to read.” It seems that the premise of his book is in free-fall right now. The one thing he offered on Bush’s behalf was that Bush should focus on the “Trust-worthiness” issue, because that is, as polls show, his strength. When pointed out that on that issue, Bush is still pretty far below 50 percent, he shrugged and said, “It’s still his strength”, and went on with a partisan explanation on what to focus on to bring those numbers up… and I suppose I can kind of get behind someone who believes such a thing even when it’s an unpopular belief, because if you have any political allegiance and principle you will find yourself behind a politically unpopular politician at some point.

But, really. 32 percent. Each “record low” seems to be about one point less than the previous lowest poll, which means we’re three polls away from tossing Bush into the 20s.

That just doesn’t seem possible. Despite that line about 2-termers tending to end up with less-than-glamourous second terms (which I contend, largely by way of being contrarian is a bit of a myth: Clinton’s second term wasn’t bad; Reagan’s presidential legacy, in my mind, was rescued by his “Reagan and Gorbachev Show”… Granted, Clinton was impeached — with approval ratings that kept rising as the Impeachment ensured, and Reagan got away with extra-constitutional crap, but nonetheless, Reagan got away with his constitutional crap because of his inherent presidential strength having to do with his fine Acting, and there’s something to be said for that, and nobody cared one wit about Clinton’s extra-marital affair and thus his Impeachment goes down to one giant “Meh” with the American public). And yet… here we are.

Reportedly, Bush has hunched with some advisers and come up with a “Comeback Strategy”. One point in the strategy is to “Brag more”. Which is a joke, of course. Even when Bush was more popular (back when he was in the more sane-seeming mid 40 range, for example), the phrase “Arrogant” was attached to him. But I don’t think this Presidency is particularly capable of changing courses anyway, so why not more of the same?

At any rate, When You’ve lost Merle Haggard, you’ve lost America.

I was riding the Max-line the other day, and I overheard a conversation between two relatively elderly, but not that old, women.

“It’s great that Spring has come, and we have such nice warm weather now.”
“Yes. But there’s one thing I don’t like about the Spring.”
“What’s that?”
“The Un-Clothed Women.”
“What’s that?”
“Un-Clothed Women.”
“Oh, well. You’ll get used to that.”
“I never do.”
The other woman walked off the Max on the next stop, leaving her to utter, more or less to the world at large “I believe in Modesty.”

I was very much tempted to interject somewhere in the conversation, from across the aisle, “Hey! It works for me!”

You know, I sometimes laugh at our political circumstances in this nation. The name of this blog is “Skull / Bones”, a name that comes from the fact that our two candidates in the last election come from the same fraternity. The situation is thus that I can legitimately say that I have no idea if the Gore / Lieberman (ahem — Lieberman) Administration would have sent us to Iraq or not, despite Gore’s frequent comments against the war in Iraq. The situation is thus that the Democratic Clinton Administration largely simply fulfilled the policy goals of the previous Republican Bush Administration: NAFTA, Welfare Reform, an economy run by Alan Greenspan — who may or may not have been mortgaging our future economic situation just a bit.

But it sure as heck beats the situation we have, in the guise of Democratic choices and political shifts, in other parts of the world.

Smirk about Palestine. I give you a ballot. Fatah or Hamas. Choose one!

Fatah. Hamas. Hamas. Fatah. Come on! Pull that level!! As that 1988 era Bloom County cartoon goes, “Wimp or Shrimp”.

Now let’s look at the political crisis in Nepal. Maoist Rebels are on the verge of overtaking the Nepalese Monoarchy.

I was listening to NPR the other day. They had an interview with this young man who had been kidnapped by the Maoists a number of years ago. The man said that he used to think of himself as having been kidnapped, but since then he has learned differently. There is fun in Brainwashing, isn’t there?

So, the fate of Nepal hangs in the balance. The fate of the region Nepal is in (I would not be able to spot Nepal on the map. It’s somewhere around India, right?) hangs in the balance. The fate of the world hangs in the balance. (Oh, not really.) It’s time for everyone to take sides!

Are you with the Monarchists, or are you with the Maoists?

As great a choice as an Iranian Revolution where you have a foreign-installed Shah versus a Fundamentalist Islamic Cleric.

Monarchists or Maoists. Maoists or Monarchists.

In the week following the Columbine shootings, I and somebody else was looking at a graph print-out from Yahoo or some such entity, which essentially listed the various prominent school shooting incidents. The most prescient observation was simply,

“They all happen during the Spring.”
“The sun comes out, the seaon changes, the kids are brimming with new energy and vitality that is hard to contain, and cannot be contained. They get itchy fingers.”
I did not say that, by the way.

Years have passed; trends have shifted. These days, every year on April 20th, the news is brimming with accounts of students throughout the nation who were preparing, or threatening, to “Celebrate the anniversy of Columbine”.

Hm. John Wilkes Booth’s grave-site is a tourist destination shrine for a type of “The South Shall Rise Again” neo-Confederate. So, this makes the sense that it makes.

Palo Alto police have identified five suspects and are interviewing other students believed responsible for spray-painting swastikas and references to Columbine High School at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School.

At least one of the taggers was a girl, Cox said.

“Fascination with scaring people.” Stating the obvious is a bit cumbersome, but I believe the point attempted is that they were not planning on carrying something out. That differs from a hub-bub north of Fairbanks, Alaska:

Six middle school students in a small Alaska town were arrested Saturday on suspicion of plotting to bring guns and knives to school to kill their classmates and faculty.

The seventh-graders wanted to seek revenge for being picked on by other students, Lindhag said. They also disliked staff and students, he said.

“Middle School”ers. 8th graders or 7th graders. A little math, and that would mean that they were in 1st grade or Kidnergarten when Columbine happened. Which means their perspective of that incident is a little bit too narrow here. In a perverted sense I guess they have a bit more excuse than the Columbine killers — they were one month from graduation and thus should have seen their out here; our middle school squirts have what is thus far a third of their life to go from being out of what is in their mind the K-12 prison complex

Look. This is directed to Miscreant and Disenchanted Troubled Youth. You have nothing to gain from emulating the Columbine Murderers. Even if I grant you some bone in a fascination with mass murderers, they fall far short in this category. Charles Mansion. He had some prescient and very dark philosophical comments to make regarding human nature, and some ability to hold onto people’s imaginations through religious memes. I think there’s probably some troubled loner figure on any number of high school campuses reading “Helter Skelter”. Ted Kaczynski. There’s a certain nobility to dropping completely out of society. And I think everybody has a bit of neo-Ludditism to them. Adolf Hitler. Something about a short, funny-looking misfit who seeks to create a “Master Race” swarming of a type of tall muscular Aaryans nothing like the “Leader”.

Wait. I’m moving a bit too far aswarm. The middle school graffiti in Palo Alto included Swastikas. But even there, they only served to reinforce the “Columbine” myth — 4/20, Hitler’s Birthday, blah blah blah, early news reports connected the two things, whether they were really tied or not is now beside the point.

Columbine… that, within the public imagination, is just a bunch of bad acne cream and a short fuse away from being locked in the gym locker room. There’s no style points with that. I go back to an interview Rick Emerson had on his show with Larry Bagby, promoting the movie “Saints and Soldiers”. Emerson apologized while asking for a short description of the movie, acknowledging that that’s a bit difficult sometimes and mocked the the high-concept mode for simplistic movies and shows — “MTV Cops” for Miami Vice. Bagby joked, “Well… My film is ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ with Guns.” Rick’s response, “No. That movie was called ‘Columbine'”, followed by “Oh. Don’t act like you’re all outraged.”

It’s like that. This just isn’t going to get you anywhere, kiddies. Just… try a different path entirely. And… keep your grades up.

The “Klingon Translator” ad I mentioned a while ago has long been gone, aired a handful of times and faded away. It was never the main point Ted Wheeler wanted to make, and there’s only so much mileage you can make out of an entirely miniscule issue. Dianne Linn has enough baggage elsewhere.

The staple ad of the Ted Wheeler campaign, for radio at least, is of a positive resume quality. Likewise, he pulls a certain trick out of the Job Interview Guidelines, which is you answer the question “What would people say are your negative qualities?” by answering with as innocouous, back-handed item that could dovetail back into “strength.”

So, the ad begins.

“The Willamette Week describes Ted Wheeler as ‘a brainy wonkish man with liberal tendencies. Sounds kind of like a geek to me, but let’s take a closer look.”

“Geek”. Uh huh. What, are we electing a Prom King here? Since the thrust of the ad throws you back to Ted Wheeler being at any number of forums “in your neighborhood”, I guess he wants to throw you into the mindset that he is “personable” and “open” — non-geeky attributes.

But, I have a basic assumption that the majority of our elected officials were somewhat geeky in high school (even elite Prepatory Schools), thrown in the thrust of excelling on the Debate Team, for example. Regionally, Earl Blumenauer and his goddamned bow-tie — he lacks a certain social sophistication. Senator Ron Wyden — how’s that discussion about Nano-Technolgoy rate? Our current President may be an exception to that regard, and we’re lesser for it. As for the phrase that prompted the word “Brainy, wonkish with liberal tendencies”:

“Brainy”: Who does Ted Wheeler think he’s kidding? Back to the job interview. “What would your weaknesses are?” “Well, people say I’m ‘brainy’.” That wouldn’t pass the smell test, and anyone who’d go for that would have a lot of gall to try that one.

“Wonkish.” This is a little trickier, as it could be good or bad depending on the scenario. We need a great deal of “wonks” in government, and everybody in government needs to be wonkier than the average Joe. But you can cut the knife at paying too much attention to detail and losing sight of the bigger picture. Ted Wheeler is skating on thin ice by making sure that the public knows he’s “wonky”and passing it off as a weakness. At any rate, I’m not exactly going to complain about anyone who can rattle some minute details on Urban Boundary.

“With liberal tendencies.” Brillaint, Ted Wheeler, just Brillaint. See, our embattled incumbant, Dianne Linn has pointed to some Republican ties Wheeler has had in the past — why! He was even a Republican until 2001!! (Gasp, if you must, it doesn’t really matter to me.) And in Democratic Multnomah County, what is this phrase going to count against you?

Running back to that list, where the announcer checks off an item about Ted Wheeler and tosses out either “geek” or “not geek” (“Geek” prefigured by an adjective as per “Job Creating Geek” and “Compassionate Geek”)…

In the end, it’s just a product of political consultants, par for the course. What Dianne Linn has going for her is simply less money, and thus no ads, and thus that makes her ad campaigns less annoying.

A ringing endorsement for Dianne Linn! Ah well. I appear to be ready to vote for all the embattled bruised incumbants, including Ted Kulongoski who I’ve sometimes been about the only person who believes is doing a fairly good job. A “Throw the Bums Back In” attitude has gripped me. What can you say?