The 1912 Republican Convention, the 1924 Democratic Convention, the 1968 Democratic Convention.  Three conventions which tore a political party apart.  The 1924 convention spurred on the burgeoning medium of radio, and sooner or later I think I’ll post on the history of the intra-mural fighting with the Democratic Party in the 1920s, but tellingly the 1924 convention was considered a disaster as it went on to an absurd number of ballots — interesting because the 1880 Republican Convention went on and on and on, but the Republican won.  And then was James Garfield was shot months later by a man who desperately wanted Chester Arthur to be president.  Times change between 1880 and 1924.

In 1992 Pat Buchanan gave a fire-burner of a speech.  And that marked the last time the script of a major party’s convention would ever not be carefully calibrated.  In 1988 someone remarked to the head of the Democratic Convention that there was no news to report here, and the head man smiled and said, “Good.”  So, dredgling into the theaters, the Republicans whooped the Democrats in 2004 by having Zell Miller shout “Spit-balls!”, and we’re waiting to see if the Democrats in 2008 have learned the art of the body slam.  The Great Muddle through worked well in 1996, but times have changed.

But there does not really seem to be any reason to pay attention to the Grand Infomercial.  I guess you just kind of have to look around and see if there is something elsewhere.  The AT&T goody bag of stuff, including the commemorative Kraft Macaroni and Cheese “Donkey” box — which is in stark contrast to the commemorative Kraft Macaroni and Cheese “Elephant” box given in Minnesota next week.  I think these Cynical Unintentional Metaphors things have been around since 1996, but for all I know they flashed into existence with Stevenson and Eisenhower.  More alarming is the bash AT&T is throwing for the Democrats who voted the right way on the Telecom Immunity deal.  If you are in Denver, I think I would get bored listening to the Oregon State Beavers coach*, scoff at the media narrative of the Hillary Clinton disaffectees, and poke about here and there — to be blunted by security and turned scornfully away– to take note of these behind the scene money-lubrications.

Or, I would take in some fresh air outside, the grand sociological experience of observing the Portesters — sympathetic here, indifferent there.  Hopefully not get trapped in the Protest – Cage, but it is worthwhile to note the ineffectual bunch — and a collection of discordant causes.  The “Re-Create 68″ers — not so much re-creating ’68 as re-creating … well, ’04, which if you don’t remember what happened at those protests, that’s sort of my point.  But there aren’t too many ways of getting past the media.

* Craig Robinson looks to me and all the world what you call a “Stunt Hire”, I gather.  Brother-in-law of Barack Obama, hire him and maybe you have a good hook for recruiting.  The University is allowed such a thing, though, as they just came off a season where they finished, in conference, with a grand total of ZERO wins — a record.  It was debated as to whether this is the worst PAC – Ten College basketball team in history, the consensus answer appears to be “No” — one or two of the teams that managed a victory or two were deemed worse.  So good for Oregon State University for hiring him!

I saw that Joseph Biden is, apparently, #99 out of 100 in the Senate in Income.  I find this sort of astounding, considering how long he has been in the Senate and how he is second only to John McCain in forging the Washington media train face time — turn on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows and his face will most surely be somewhere.  But I guess he hasn’t cashed out.  He worships his face and image in the mirror moreso and voice than he worships the Benjamins.  (Incidentally, without even looking it up, I am pretty sure who #100 would be.  Jon Tester of Montana, who looks as though he fell out of a worm-hole and into the Senate.)

It is with anecdotes such as that that Joseph Biden is sort of claimed to be an “asset” to getting that “blue collar” “hard working white folk” “Industrial Heartland” “Rust Belt” vote.  Never mind the most immediate vote that comes to mind when I think Joseph Biden, and the role he played in shepherding it through, and here the Delaware Connection comes into focus, the credit card industry being to Delaware what Oil is to Alaska and Texas, the “Bankruptcy Reform Act” — an act which Paul Wellstone basically single-handedly killed in the late 1990s.  I will need to fish around to find this, but when asked about (or “called out”) by a citizen about the bill, Biden’s response was, basically, to paraphrase, “Quit Being A Dead-beat.”  Sensitive to the plight of the anguished, that Joseph Biden.  I guess this is that “straight talk” I hear Biden is supposed to be famous for, whatever the heck that person’s situation may or may not have been, we can just assume.

Well, I guess Biden saved us from Bork, if not Thomas.  But even here we get a rather depressing devolution in the way these nominating processes and the general “Consensus” framework skews us toward the acceptance of these Attila the Huns.  Okay.  He coined the epithet to Rudy Giuliani’s career: “a noun, a verb, and 9/11.” — that is worth something.

But a cynic is a person who sees the cost of everything and the value of nothing.  Biden is poised to be the second most powerful vice president in American history, behind — whatshisname?  I think it rhymes with “Baney”? — and the bottom is that great “meh” which greets much of this process.  A denotation that I’m a Democrat as a matter of a shrug. 

It occurs to me that this grouping of people who were complaining about a double standard in the “Monkey Department” — which is that when Obama is portrayed as a monkey it’s deemed racist, but but but…  Liberals have been portraying George W Bush as a monkey for the past eight years (there’s even a web-page devoted to comparisons between Bush and monkeys), now have a good out.  Now they get to photoshop Joseph Biden as a monkey.  So, go at it folks!

Of course, this would have worked for any vice presidential selection, and it’s still doubtful that Biden will be portrayed as a monkey, even as it is certain that the Obama – monkey shirt will remain selling in Confederate states.

Item #1:  Jeffry Steinberg came back from Florida with a tan.  It’s the talk of Leesburg.  I guess.  What I really want to know, though, is who keeps stealing the Tab from the bottom of the frigerator?  That’s Papert’s property!

Item #2:  Mr. Ossifur continues his advocacy on behalf of merging Larouchianism with the field of Cryonics.  He asserts that he is “the only person in cryonics who is looking at cryonics from a larouche perspective.“  This strikes me as quite the booby prize — CONGRATULATIONS.  A real Rebel Without a Cause, he.  On the Run, Under the Gun.  Further proof of the British control of the Vast Cryonics community can be found, as pointed out here, by a post at “Cryonics Chat” from Alvin praising British funding for some Scientific research.  The British Empire is on the way out, though, to be replaced by FDR / Larouche.  Which is great, because he watched some webcast of Larouche and thinks he saw him reference some life-extension, meaning his leader may just be slowly Cyronically freezing himself while he’s still alive.

Item #3:  A neo-nazi posting under the banner of David Duke at the web’s pre-eminent neo-nazi website agrees with Dennis King’s “code words”.  Go to the amazon.com reviews on Dennis King’s book for a bemusing Larouchie mocking this grand concept.  Anyway, I guess I’ll file that away into a mental folder if revenire shows up and mentions it.

Item #4:  For the Kremlinologist:  Helga Zepp is featured prominently on the sidebar of the larouche pages, demanding that “Ibero-America” sign a petition for food.  Or… we sign a petition to get “Ibero-America” food.  Or food will be transported to “Ibero-America” thanks to a petition.  At any rate, her huge face dons the side of these web-pages, and that’s what’s important.  No word on whether she is well tanned.

Item #5:  Also flogged, Steinberg appears on Russian Television.  We have seen the future. Russian Authoratarian Government Coddling.  They are now publishing their emittions in Russian, apparently.  Weee!  (Also the future for Steinberg: George Soros conspiratorial bashing. (Feeding into a niche in the political spectrum for the moment.)

Item #6:  So.  Webster Tarpley.  What can one say?  He gets around a bit.  Recently bumped into nooks and crannies of the blogosphers due to interjecting himself in that whole “PUMA” thing.  The upshot is that everyone refers to him as a “Larouche associate”, or — at best, and I suppose more accurately, “one stepped removed”, by way of dismissing the largely easily dismissable “PUMA” movement.  It is kind of amusing, though I wish I had a clearer idea of what is the modern day connection.  Skip to wikipedia, where Chip Berlet argured about the proper place for the Larouche connection on that page.   Out of curiosity, I wondered how this meets a far more sympathetic figure in Robert Zubrin — who, I don’t know, doesn’t carry as much of that into his later career.  In between these two (sounds like he’s still in versus would never know) would be Robert Dreyfss (explains some things), whose wikipedia entry seems to have a “feel justified” mentioning because “The “about author” section includes photos of Dreyfuss and his biography from this period.”  (The discussion page reveals no controversy on the matter, though.)  As for Tarpley — flag him.  The Democratic Convention is this week, and he’s sure to show up somewhere, flogging his anti-Obama book and perhaps tying himself into the “birth certificate” nonsense.

Danged.  I was holding out for Chet Edwards.  The absuridty of these proceedings was shown in the fact that as names shuffled around in this empty Zeitgist, some names being the “Flavor of the Moment” and then lapsing, before landing on Joseph Biden, the name “Chet Edwards” popped up not once, but twice.  It might be interesting, but probably not terribly satisfying to diagram the manner names popped into being and hovered around and out, and back in — ala Chet Edwards.  For McCain, the diagram strikes me as fairly simple — this great triangle with Mitt Romney at top and “Attractive Controversial Unnamed” categories below it (“Pro-Choice”, “Woman”), and then the governor of Alaska and Joseph Lieberman.

I suspect that the significance of Chet Edwards’s return onto this list was that Barack Obama really really really wanted to nominate Evan Bayh, but found the Facebook Opposition fist too much to overcome, and thought Chet Edwards would fool this Mighty Facebook Fist.  There is just no other explanation.

Anyway, congratulations to everyone who signed up to be “the first to know”.  Not only does Obama now know where he can spam you, but I knew who Obama’s pick was before you received the call — hearing the top and middle of the hour ABC News items on Rachel Maddow on KPOJ report that “Secret Service” has descended on Joseph Biden.  Reporting the smoke, if not the fire.  But Obama is a Movement, I hear, and a Movement requires Spam Lists.

So Biden’s presidential prospects are more alive than they have been since his failed run in 1988.  History shows that there is a greater chance that vice presidents will not become president than become one, but history also shows that vice presidents have a better chance of becoming president than non-vice-presidents.  So it is Joseph Biden.  Barack Obama has picked the man who take over after his assassination.  The “Martin Van Buren” principle is at work — the “Charismatic” president and the “Grounded, Unassuming” vice-president.  Biden is Obama’s Van Buren.  Or is Biden Obama’s Nixon?

Policy and record wise, Biden is problematic, as is everyone else.  But no one really cares about policy in this game of theatrics that is electoral politics.  So the question is: Does Biden’s reference to Obama as “clean” and his reference to Delaware as a “Slave State” (in wooing Southerners) signal to the voting block made up of a sort of dolty mildly racist American that it is okay to vote for Barack Obama?  If that’s an absurd question, I ask if it’s any less valid than what FOXNEWSMSNBCCNN is bloviating at this moment.

One of the more annoying trends in business are those “sexpresso” places, coffee houses with female baristas dressed up (down?) in bikinis.  They sort of seeped along onto our cultural radar like a mildly annoying fungus.  I do not quite know what the meaning of these places are, and what they say about where we are at this precise moment in our culture.

I do know that I am glad I do not watch local news, as I understand that there has been some protesters at the newly opened place in this city, and by not watching the local news I am ensured of missing out on the rather easy ratings-grabbing “Up Next” spots, and the fill-in-the-blank formulaic standard on the coverage, which you just have to close your eyes and the story rolls right through a television screen in your mind.  I am forced to the issue and know that some protesters have set up shot via the Willamette Week, though.

There was a story in the news from one of those “sexpresso” places which passed by me — apparently there’s this pervert who has been harrassing some workers at one of the stores, and…

The first time he came to the window Feddock said he was wearing a white bra and white panties and touching himself inappropriately.

Then he came back a second time.

“He has underwear over his face, he’s wearing hot pink panties now and the underwear that he was wearing is over his face and there’s a little peephole so he can see,” Feddock said.

Feddock and another barista were working around 5 a.m. last Thursday when the incident happened. They tried to get a look at the man’s license plate, but that too was covered up with women’s underwear.

When the man came back a third time one of the baristas took a cup of scolding hot water and doused him with it.

“Kylie opened the door and threw boiling hot water and doused him with it.

Charge him and Prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law and publically shame this man, yes.  But I suspect that incidents like this are, kind of, Occupational Hazards, and there is probably something just a little sad about much of the clientele coming (reportedly older-middle-aged-men who are prone to handing out “stripper tips” to the baristas.)  Sex stores have largely cleaned themselves up, shuffling a bit away from the “Man in the Overcoat with nothing underneath it” demographic and to respectable corners of society and couples and women.  The creepy guy in the overcoat, with nowhere else to turn to, will gravitate toward a place like this.

I am a little puzzled why someone would so demand to be the “first” to hear who Obama would pick to be his running mate by signing up to get his campaign text-message.  That is an item of instant gratification that sort of fizzles.  I think I can wait.  I suppose there might be some sort of instant blogging commentary that’s supposed to occur as with…  hold on a minute… Cell phone ringing.

OMG!  He picked Sebelius!  Must be trying to shore up the remaining Clinton detractors.

Or… like that.  Which, I suppose would beat out my landmark 4:34 in the morning revelation that John Kerry picked John Edwards.  Pre-Drudge, as so happened.  I am happy to say such a feat is not going to happen this time out.

Though if it is Sebelius I will claim to have had fore-knowledge and use this post as my reference guide to yell “See?  See?”