It’s been a joke for a while that if you want to get everyone in Congress together to vote, you have to schedule the vote Wednesday Dead noon, as Congress whittled away the start of the week and whittled away the end of the week.  The next House of Representatives has announced the introduction of a five day work week.  It is reminscent of the “Energy” and supposed Revolutionary fury of Newt Gingrich walking in.  Everything is different now, by God.  It is a sign of the Democrats’ fairly mild agenda that the revolution they are leading, the changes in House procedure, is to destroy the creative Four and a half day weekened.  It is also an interesting to compare how the last Democratic Majority became encumbered and how this last Republican Majority became encumbered, which is to say as far as I remember, the Democrats worked real work weeks.

Gibson: Don’t you think that maybe part of the reason the Republicans were fired is the public heard about this?
Kingston: I think its because we didn’t perform. When we were up here we were naming bridges and post offices. We were not having quality time again…—We drifted, we got off our agenda. We came up here and some weeks we just twiddled our thumbs and that’s what killed us…

“Twiddle our thumbs”, I believe, is a euphemism for “Debate Flag Burning Amendment”.

I am going to create a list of politicians who are or appear to be scheming to run for president who WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT.
Here goes.

Evan Bayh will never be president.

Rudolph Giuliani will never be president.

Newt Gingrich will never be president.

Christopher Dodd will never be president.

John Kerry will never be president.

Sam Brownback will never be president.

Mike Huckabee will never be president.

George Pataki will never be president.

Tom Toncredo will never be president.

Just to be thorough, three prospective presidents who thought they were running, but realized Novemberish that they are not. Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and George Allen will never be president.

I will continue to hone this list as we all gear up for Election 2008… obsessed with horse races and never terribly concerned with all but the superficial that we all are.

There’s been this common refrain after most recent elections, particularly mid-term elections where the focus is not obscured by the Presidential race at the top of the ticket, unfavorably comparing the turnover rate in the House of Representative to the Soviet Politboro.  I used to stand behind this statistic as a sign of our non-democratic government, what the gerry-madering and incumbency fundraising advantages have made this a joke, so I thought.  This even as I understood that in the seeminly optimal state of being, 85 percent of incumbents will pass on through — you elect a Congress critter, that means you must have liked him and seemingly nothing is going to change that means you won’t like him the next time out, right?

The 2006 elections have altered my thinking.  I now have two major electoral upheavals in my civil memory:  1994 and 2006.  Behind this, there are glacial movements that only broke through in those years.  That Clinton lost a few House seats for the Democrats in 1992 was a precursor for 1994.  That Bush only managed a few House pick-ups for the Republicans in 2004, under the number that gerry-mandering Texas mid-stream awarded the party, was a precursor for 2006.  We have 1998 and 2002 when subtle shifts marked significant enough political meaning.

I find it difficult to imagine either party picking up more than maybe five House seats in 2008.  Both have a fairly obvious list of seats to try to pry loose from the other party, and both parties will only dislodge a couple of those opportunities.  It is the figure tossed out that is similar to the Soviet Politboro I mentioned in the first sentence.  We now revert to the norm and wait for the next “1994 / 2006” big wave, in the meantime seeing the small “breezes” of 2002 and 1998 admist the “stillness inert sinkholes” of the other years.

I recall somewhere the figure 10 percent of Republican incumbents losing in 2006.  I imagine 1994 had a similar number for Democrats.  That means, with 0 percent of Democratic incumbents losing, roughly five percent changed in what was a “sea-change” election.  The shifts in the electorate are measures on the margins of the margins of voting habits — glacially changing since most voters vote as they always have — which is registered in those normal elections where nothing changes.

That is the Democratic System we have.  That is the Democratic System we must tolerate.  That is the 2-party system of Inert Action that is what it is..

The Keith Ellison Can’t Swear on the Quaran Train Rolls on through
By the way the… please the declaration of Independence, i dont think it was writen by a athiest or muslim.

Presumably he meant “please read the declaration”, but I won’t dwell on that. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson — the author of the Declaration of Independence — was a deist. He was hurled with the insult “Atheist” and “Infidel” during his political career and the elections of 1796 and 1800, though — mostly from what amounted to the nation’s early Bible Belt — the New England states. Actually, Jefferson created his own Bible, actually, by stripping the New Testament of all of Jesus’s Miracles. He avoided making this public — what with the charge of “Atheist” all around. I wonder if a huge fuss would erupt if somebody chose to swear in (in the post – swear in purely ceremonial photo ops that this amounts to) on a Thomas Jefferson Bible. Should any member of Congress do so, they will have my full and undying support.

I have listened to enough right wing talk radio, and have read the Weekly Standard article a few months back, to know one bullet-point item to be tossed out. He had a youthful fling with Louis Farrakhan, you say? After that, it drops to him simply being a Muslim and a typical Democrat. Glen Beck asks the provocative question, “How can we be sure you’re not working with the enemy?” I see that snuck into this statement:
Maybe he is a plant from radical Muslims who have been looking for a way to invade our political system and start undermining it from that arena.

Presumably al Qaeda just financed, through some secretive channels, the election of Keith Ellison. To serve as one of 435 Congress critters. Because al Qaeda is a great fan of Nancy Pelosi’s “Six for Six” Agenda. They love raising the minimum wage and altering Bush’s Medicare Reform Program — closing the doughnut hole. This strikes me as an incredible waste of terrorist finances.

It occurs to me that Keith Ellison was going to meet the ire of these people eventually. Sooner or later, he would be photographed, whether he wants it or not, genuflecting in the direction of Mecca. This would be the same Muslims are pushing so hard they ‘rights’ in this country, how about a 2 way street?? demand… whatever that other direction on that street is supposed to mean. How dare they shove their Islamic Faith, don’t they realize that this is a CHRISTIAN NATION THAT LOVES JESUS???

So far we have Mein Kampf and Playboys new issue as the end point that Keith Ellison is taking us in. Or maybe Orrin Hatch’s Book of Mormon and Joseph Lieberman’s Torah? I suggest we continue this list of stupid items a member of Congress may end up “swearing in” on. How about Dean Koontz’s latest novel, an old issue of Spiderman, a can of spam, and… what did Rick Santorum suggest in a past life of his (ie: elected official) as the next step beyond gay marriage — into a Dog’s Anus!

On the matter of  organizing a large and sustained picket of as non-controversial a business as there is, just for dada-esque amusement, and specifically what this “non-controversial business” would be.

My first thought had actually been to look up Dentists (one of the three businesses bo jack mentioned) in the phone book and find one more or less at random, except I suppose for location.  Just yesterday I came up with the perfect slogan to throw out for such a protest, perfect because it makes no sense.

“US OUT OF MY FILLINGS!”

If confronted as to what this is all about, answer defiantly “We refuse to discuss this with the PIGS until our unstated demands are followed.”

Other than that, I have long been somewhat bemused by the sort of truck restaurants that are located on what amounts to parking lots — “long since” being going back to when a mass of “Taco Trucks” suddenly started to hit the small town I grew up in a decade and a half ago.  Willamette Week has for the past two years pursued them and rated the Burger Trucks (or is hot dog trucks?) and Burrito trucks.  There are two tacts one can take here:  protest one that is fairly isolated — there is an Indian place a couple blocks from the Library, for instance… or protest one that is in a giant cluster which will make it puzzling as to why that one restuarant truck is being singled out in this large group.

Have you heard about these new airport security x-ray machines which produce images stripped of your clothing?  It’s like those creepy novelty devices you find in those Smith, Johnson and Company catalouges, more commonly those Smith, Johnson and Company ads in the back of old comic books.

I am getting conflicting information about the nature of the x-rays.  For example,

The Transportation Security Administration said it has found a way to refine the machine’s images so that the normally graphic pictures can be blurred in certain areas while still being effective in detecting bombs and other threats., which is to say the images are now of generic bathroom-sign pictures.

My conflicting accounts come with the items available by the news sources.

Stomache flattened, curves gone, private area placed behind black bar — something, incidentally, I imagine can easily be removed… should… somebody… desire it… be… removed.

Every minor curve of the body is shown, not placed on the equivalent of a generic bathroom sign image.  Useful for medical purposes, I suppose, and not exactly a Playboy stance, but I would be uncomfortable with its existence nonetheless.

Fret not.  There is some great news to alleviate your concerns of privacy.  For, you see:

At first, the new technology will only be used for passengers who need extra screening or are randomly selected. Those people will be allowed to choose either a pat-down from a TSA official or a scan from the machine, which will photograph them from the front and the back. 

You can either be frisked and groped at or have your naked image available for somebody’s personal collection, or if hard copies are sealed off simple momentary bliss.

Nay.  The images are to be destroyed.  There is no possibility that they will be smuggled out of work by any creep-azoid.  Just like the OJ Books that had been freighted off to book-stores’s warehouses and cannot and may never be available to be sold for inflated prices on ebay.

I wonder if in the future supposed bodily defects revealed via x-ray will be used as part of the security risk calculations used in a security risk database.  Start with the assumption of fighting the War on Terror.  Weed out the undesirables.

Actually that is implausible.  I have always wondered what the matrices are supposed to be for a Security Database of this type.  Listening to right-wing talk-radio and even permeating into the voices of various elected officials, it has always been simply a collection of Middle East surnames and/or membership in any anti-war or otherwise anti-administration organization, fringe-ish or otherwise.  I have a better grasp on the matrices involved in calculating credit scores, which I suppose would be useful to airlines in stopping people who may not be purchasing anything on the airplane, which as airlines continue to declare bankruptcy may increase in priority as a revenue stream, from getting on the plane.

A chilling look at a paranoid future, and I will leave it at that.

I heard that Jimmy Carter has been annoying Al Gore by nagging him to run for president, and did so before the 2004 election.  Which I suppose means that should Al Gore choose to run, he will hae the full muscle of the Jimmy Carter electoral machine behind him — which I suspect is worth slightly more than whatever Evan Bayh will have.

Indications are that Al Gore is not running.  But there are more indications that he is running than that Condolezza Rice is running, and a race involving Condoleeza Rice was the subject of a book, the subject of a book because Dick Morris is the type of man who falls in love with notions, the book falling into the category of something that may bemuse a person if they find themselves with an hour to kill — much the same as any of Hal Lindsey’s books of prophecy.  I am thinking of writing a book on the upcoming Al Gore — Mike Huckabee race.  It is sure to sell like hot cakes!

Jimmy Carter and Al Gore share a few things in popular.  For one thing, they are more popular out of office than they were in office and during their national campaigns.  Al Gore’s 1988 presidential bid was as something of the uber-Southerner — positioning himself for Super Tuesday’s batch of southern primary states; Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign essentially had us electing the Beverly Hillbillies as a family unit (oh, that kooky mother!).  And they are also distinctively more liberal in their post-election stages than they were during their presidency or vice-presidency or political campaigns.  I suppose those things happen when one is unencumbered of cautious calculations in navigating shifting electoral winds and the combination of corporate and public interests that define it.  Bill Clinton probably can’t shift in any direction, as any shift would be a modest attack on his governing legacy.

Carter is out and about on the media circuits pushing his book on the Palestine — Israel conflict.  He is a prolific author, though somehow I visualize most of his books as books to have in hand for autograph purposes (much as the spate of quasi-campaign books that always come out just as a presidential aspirant tests the waters — I just can’t wait for Evan Bayh’s new book!).  A while ago, I noticed a quickie-book from Carter and a child with Muscular dystrophy on the shelves, with a strangely Hallmark card or Kitchen Soup for the Soul twinge.  Maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on it.  You slide that in Carter’s authorship somewhere between that Palestine — Israel book and the “Our Endangered Values” thing, or forget it, or consider it a public service, or something.