Mike Gravel: Kicking ass and taking names.  Prove me wrong that that’s not what he’s doing right now.

Dennis Kucinich: slid through an Impeachment bill for Cheney that the Democratic party wanted to table, was passed through to Conyers’s judicial committee through Republican snarky votes.

This, of course, means that the only two candidates for either party currently in Congress running for office that are actually doing anything are Dennis Kucinich and Chris Dodd.  With that in mind, I wonder if I should even bother mentioning Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, Joseph Biden… did Tom Tancredo attempt some immigration quarantine bill or something, which would keep him off the list?… Duncan Hunter.

Okay.  Fine.  Hillary Clinton is all the rage.  Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa — asked Hillary Clinton a question presented to her by her campaign.  A bit of a tempest in a teapot, but wearily I suggest it’s good enough of a mark against candidate Clinton, as her stagecraft is reminding me of the tedium of the current occupant.

A John McCain supporter asked McCain how we might “Beat that Bitch?”   Shades of Newt Gingrich’s mother, on everyone’s mind I suppose.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has come out in favor of an overhaul of the nation’s patent system , opening the system up to public transparency, saying that “Giving the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) the resources to improve patent quality and opening up the patent process to citizen review will reduce the uncertainty and wasteful litigation that is currently a significant drag on innovation.”

I do not believe Joseph Biden has commented as of yet.

A pro-life organization endorsed Fred Thompson, for some reason.

I think I heard a good word from a random liberal 20 something year old for something Mike Huckabee said on BBC America the other day, but it’s hard to pin-point who she was hearing.

Mitt Romney’s chances have gone down ever since it was revealed that his first name is “Mitt.”

John Edwards has snagged the endorsement of Bob Kressig.   His presidential campaign should now surge to new heights as this seeps into the American conciousness.

Rudy Giuliani.  Bernie Kerick.  Judith Regan.  All very interesting.

The Ron Paulites had created their own coinage, stamped with the image of Ron Paul, and called them “Liberty Dollars”.  The Fed is apparently not amused.   All of which should feed the Ron Paulites more grief against the evil Government.

In an effort to tap the Hisapanic vote, Bill Richardson has unveiled a “Mi Familia Con Bill Richardson” fund raiser.  When asked for comment, Mi familia was unaware of such a thing, opting not to sin Bill Richardson.

John Cox has dropped out of the race?   Can I get some clearer confirmation of this shocking news.

Sigh.  Wearily, I point out that a blog entry I wrote in September of 2006 has gotten the attention of someone.   Now, I added a few comments for Nathan’s commentary a few weeks’ ago in another blog entry, which makes it a little odd that Bob Walters responded to the old post.

I could have sworn, and I would if I were a little more vain, that the Halloween strip was a response to my comments, my reply being a bit of confusion with the question “What Elementary school in the Portland area is not celebrating Halloween?”   (I passed a couple on Halloween, and saw kids in costume.)  But I suppose the theme of the practices of the culture at large versus those of various sub-cultures will be explored and answered by the teacher / cartoonist as he sees fit, and if I see him annoyed by an interchanging of “Holidays” for “Christmas”, I will just have to groan.  We will shortly see another episode of “Parent calls the Principal because the Child relayed a cute misinterpretation of what the Teacher said” sooner or later — and hopefully the next time it will make sense.

Overall the most interesting aspect of this comic strip is the apostrophe in the title.   In my education I learned two manners of handling the apostrophe at the end of a singular name that ends in “s”, one being how this title works — the other being that you have the customary ” ‘s “, as you would have with any other name, for instance: Bob’s.  I know my Junior year high school English teacher was a stickler for the latter.  I suspect that she is correct, and the former is the rule that has come about due to popular usage, an evolution I am not necessarily opposed to, but one that has come along because of the awkwardness of seeing ” s’s”.  In the end, the most valuable lesson of how to handle those English rules was taught by my sixth grade teacher: what you do is learn what your teacher wants, and then consistently apply those rules for the rest of the year.  Practical man with practical advice, he.

Now let’s never talk about this comic strip again.

In 1978, Gerald Pechenuk won .78 percent of the vote in a Missouri Congressional race. In 1987, one year following the triumph in Illinois, Pechenuk won 1.2 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary vote for Chicago ward-healer. (Or whatever the position is and is supposed to be.)  I see one more reference to him as having served as someone else’s campaign manager, which in Larouchian politics I am not entirely sure what that job is supposed to entail — the road to that fraction of a percentage point.  (Aren’t you just still deployed for the 85 year old?)  I assume there are other electoral battles he has fouht, but all I can say is that he is apparently occasionally prominently featured in Larouchian literature for his effective deployment, a successful end to a long career in Larouchian politics and that which everyone should aspire to, I suppose.

It looks like he is otherwise doing a job of juanting around the Internet, spreading the word.  I gathered this when I happened upon this, which is a gem.

In response to a posting with one of the quotes Avi Klein’s article seems to have pushed into the popular culture — or at least a segement of the Internet, “if anyone was made for blogging” — as well the idea that Internet killed the Cult Leader, Gerald Pechenuk responds with:

Did it ever occur to you that maybe, perhaps, just maybe, LaRocuhe is right, and that all the lying and denying of what he has said and continues to say about the causes of and solution to the ongoing crash of the global financial system are nothing more than smokescreens by people who are purveyors or dupes of people who just plain out oppose Larouche’s FDR-Lincoln Foudning Fathers American System solutions. THE CRASH IS undeniable. Attack and LIE about LaRouche as much as you care to, then when you are finished blowing smoke, tell me what YOUR SOLUTIONS are to the crash that he correctly and uniquely forecast.. And have fun when you do it…

Hee hee. Anyway, someone who seems to have had a first name basis with Gerald Pechenuk at one time or other responded, and all I could do was see if “Gerald Pechenuk” has ever, in posting things on the Internet, expressed an independent thought of his own, not initiated from the boiler room in Loudon.  Witness…

Dick Cheney… and a rebut.

That keen grip on national politics.

The Youth Vote in 2006, brought to you by L-PAC

Alito = Carl Schmitt = Hitler #1

Alito = Car; Schmitt = Hitler #2

Felix Rohatyn as the Man Behind the Democratic Party.

For updates on these new collaborative relationships building between and among the nations of the world that represent the largest part of humanity…

Children of Satan IV?

That old Blood / Gore canard.

Architecture.

… Worse than 1929…

Anytime you want to debate Abraham Lincoln…

Plato.

Now, what is interesting, and what I probably should look at with a closer eye, is the difference between when Gerald references his LarouchePac address for further information and inquiries, and when he does not — is there a chronological diliniation or a categorical one?  I suspect that when he is on friendly terms with an issue,  — within a sea of comments advocating Impeachment, for instance, or the flailing of the “End is Near” of our economic site, there is an impetus to try for that next step… to Larouche.  The “History News Network” item, on the other hand, he apparently does not feel like he could pull that off, for whatever reason.

Surfing the web regarding the news of the passing away of Earl Dodge, six time presidenital candidate for the Prohibition Party — albeit the sixth time you have to consider him a candidate for the weaker schism for the banner of “Prohibition Party” — and a man ready to lead the fight for a seventh time, and I will ask the simple question:

What is the one-liner that comes up almost automatically in the comments section?

Don’t think too hard.  It will come to you.  I know it came to me before seeing any comment, that obvious a response it is.

In the memorials to Norman Mailer and the “40 books” he has written, I keep seeing mention of Miami and the Siege of Chicago, the book on the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions.

A very simple question: Does anybody really remember anything from the “Miami” part?  Can we just go ahead and say that he wrote “The Siege of Chicago“?

What can one say about Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani that everyone else hasn’t and isn’t saying?

Except to wonder about Giuliani’s words.  Without having easy ability to the transcript of the endorsement conference, I am stuck at this:

“His confidence in me means a lot. His experience and advice will be a great asset to me and my campaign.”

Advising him on Pat Roberton’s main reason in supporting him:

To me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the blood lust of Islamic terrorist.

His viewpoint of which, as expressed in September of 2001, was “I concur” to Jerry Falwell’s

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.'” 

… meaning the two issues were at one point tied together, and goshbedarned the double-standard Pat Robertson is placing on the two parties.  But, really, Robertson is just protecting his piece of the power pie.  The thing is, in a political marriage such as this one, I don’t really know who I am supposed to yell “Foul” at… except we knew Robertson was a charltain already.

… When will Giuliani be able to bench-press a TON?  Is that one of the things Robertson will be advising Giuliani on?

Voters didn’t understand

Measure 49 has passed. And it passed by a wide margin, with mainly urban Oregonian voting on a measure that they did not understand. How do I know that they did not know what they were voting on? Because the measure was unreadable.

A highly trained lawyer would spend many hours attempting to understand the requirements dictated by the rambling switchbacks in the language of the bill.  The sweet-sounding ballot title in no way represented the ballot language.

The manner in which this measure was created and presented to the voters is another sad chapter in the destruction of this state. It seems that as a valid philosophy, “The end justifies the means” should be stamped on the liberal establishment in Oregon.

MICHAEL HARTFIELD Dundee

Without saying a single word about Measure 49 pro or con, I need to say what a stupid argument this is, something that boils down to:  Measure 49 was written in legalese.  Indeed it was.  And it is now situated in the lodgers of Oregon law, replacing large swarths of similar legalese, and placed before and after similar legalese — actually, about where Measure 37’s language lay.

If Oregon had voted to turn down Measure 49, it would have been a vote for rambling switchbacks readable only by highly trained lawyers.  Just as it is with Oregon voting for the measure.  I do not understand this man, Michael Hartfield of Dundee.  Rant and rave, applying new standards for that which you are for and that for which you are against.  I assume he was all for Measure 37 — maybe he read it and understood every word of it and the permetations that lawyers would argure with it for the next century, but he would have been the exception.  Likewise his case against Measure 49… that which the peons should not discuss amongst themselves because they’re not literate enough.

In the interregnum between the end of David Letterman’s NBC show and the start of his CBS show, that wacky “Late Night Wars” jumbling over Johnny Carson’s successor, NBC ran reruns, somewhat skewed from what what I now believe came out of the 1988 Writers’ strike.  It wasn’t something I was particularly cognicient of this idea at the time, but it popped into my mind when reading Peter Ames Carlin on this:

Recall how “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson and then-“Late Night” host David Letterman reached unforeseen heights of weirdness, and often hilarity, by facing their audiences night after night with almost no prepared material. Letterman, famously, got a shave on the air. Carson was just his charming, bone-dry self.

I think that NBC was running through a catalouge of non-repeated episodes spanning the previous four years that summer– Mondays were repeats, and add the regular vacations, and the episodes that “demanded” to be repeated, such as the one where he received a shave, surely were already done.  So what I ended up watching, at that summer vacation where I had no reason to wake up early the next morning, having found myself a Letterman fan, was a random phone conversation with a woman from an office building across the street.  And that was the concept for the “sketch” portion of the show for the entire week.  Those non-scripted programs tended to be a bit… dull.  I am not sure what Peter Carlin is talking about, but Maybe I really should have just gone to bed.

Today, I don’t know that Letterman has something in it.  Besides which, the politics of the situation seems to require the late night denziens stand in solidarity with the writers, and the way the strike was set up it seems as though there is a bit of a … dare I say, script to it, where the writers have offered up as congenial an end-game for the Production companies to come to the proper terms as is possible with a Strike.  (And, from my vantage point, the writers seem to deserve what they’re demanding, a nod to the changing realities of how their product is disseminated, ergo DVD sales and the Internet).