return to MASH
I was thinking about something I saw at the National Journal rankings of who’s up, who’s down, who’s sideways for the Democratic party candidates. (It, along with Dailykos’s, is an embarrassing guilty pleasure I seem to have decided to return to over and over again.) Their description for Dennis Kucinich. Regretfully they have updated their page, as per their 14 page cycle, which means I have to dig it out of google’s cache. But here it is:
He’s been on an Iraq-oil kick, and it must frustrate him that no one is listening all that much. And it’s safe to say that Rep. Obey is endorsing someone else.
Coming a day after the fact — May 24 posting, This was in reference, in part, to what I guess I will call a stunt that Dennis Kucinich pulled, where on May 23 he… well, let his press release speak for itself:
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will invoke a rarely used House procedure today to discuss the privatization of Iraqi oil on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Kucinich plans to invoke a point of personal privilege under House Rule IX to respond to published remarks regarding efforts he has made to inform the House Democratic Caucus of the details of the Iraqi Hydrocarbon Act.
Kucinich will have one hour of time on the House floor in which he plans to explain why Congress’ insistence on benchmarks in the supplemental, which includes passage of the Iraqi hydrocarbon act, demands that Iraqis privatize their oil.
An important matter, that. I half wonder if the Iraqi Parliament’s famed Vacation was in part to avoid being stuffed with the matter of tossing their oil forever and a day to the multinationals. But nobody bothered to notice Dennis Kucinich. Not least of which MSNBC, which is the host website for that National Journal rankings which reported on how nobody was paying much attention.
What came out of the debate yesterday? Well, Mike Gravel said some things about the hidden price of gas that I sort of internalized back in high school which I used to get a couple of my teachers to roll their eyes in current event discussions on rising gas prices, back when the price of gas was rolling all the way up to a buck and a half a gallon.(*) Ergo, on that basis alone, Mike Gravel won the debate. With all of those five and a half minutes he received to speak.
Actually I probably ought not comment on these matters. I haven’t had a chance to do my usual reading of the debate transcript. I suppose I may better yet catch the redux CNN has scheduled for today, wherein they invite Clinton, Obama, and Edwards to do it the way they want it to be done: without those pesky others to placate.
Back to Kucinich and this strange situation where he is mostly ignored. Another interesting matter are those there Iraqi Military Bases. We have had a strange couple of weeks in terms of the sort of nauseating official discussion on the future of the Iraq War and future American plans therein. Read back through the White House to news outlet stenography (ie: the slightly rewritten press releases that make up a type of news story that CNN, Fox News, and the rest always have their full share of), and you will see announcements that we may be pulling out right in the forseeable future. They are Stepping up; We are stepping down.
And we are leaving humongous already irretractable military bases. For…
We are going to treat Iraq as we do Korea. The exact same situation is extent in both Korea and Iraq, apparently. Entrance Strategy, remember, not Exit Strategy.
I mention Kucinich here because I am just going to have to hold my breath for Clinton, Obama, and Edwards — the proscribed Only Candidates that Matter — to mention such things. Kucinich, I believe has and will.
(*) Actually my favorite game, and really I was treating it as a sort of cynically apathetic game, was two-fold: pointing out the price of gasoline in most European countries, And the costs of gasoline emissions which land into our health care system. The military costs did not enter into my equation.