A lot of people don’t know this, but upon leaving office, President Harry Truman took off on a cross-country road trip  with his wife–

— and then settled in a lodge at Spirit Late at Mt St Helens with sixteen cats.  Which is weird because he never had a connection with the state of Washington or the Mountain before.

“Although I did not serve in Vietnam….” —

That is, roughly, Richard Blumenthal’s rebuttal to the revelation on his career of Vietnam War Resume Enhancing — or, Lying.  Surely he had his chances to clear up the media reports that followed his Vietnam Service line but chose not to.  I gather this video demonstrates his awareness of the Looming Cloud — it may be a case of seeing things, but I detect this certain halting manner in his speech — he would go ahead and correct the record he allowed to fester in self-service.

Personally, this story strikes me as a Tempest in a Teapot.  If at first blush my thought was, “Shouldn’t derail his political career, but should force him into a penance” — ie: the Democratic Party has until Friday to line up a new candidate before the Filing Day closes.  Blumenthal can run for something else in another election cycle, “Regain the Public Trust”.  Now I’m staring at it, and am generally unable to see why this deserves much of a fuss.  But if it receives its fuss — Fuss it shall have.  Filing Deadline ticks on in; throw this in as one item in your pile of assessments, but my gut tells me this story will likely fade even if John Cornyn hopes it can sustain itself to November.
A little ironically, the Washington Monthly blog berated the Republican Class of ’94 with a notation of Wes Cooley, whose political career brings us a more acute and severe case of that “Wannabe Veterans Disease” that inflicts Blumenthal.

Myself, I ignore a lot of political biography that politicians paint for us, and thus probably would have let his “Lessons I learned in Vietnam Service” fly right past me.  I tend to detect a lot of bull-shitting in the words office-seekers throw out, so suggest that the record of political office-holding and campaign contributors (you know — who has bought the man?) be combed throw before learning about when you found Jesus or whatever.  Sorting the meaning of people seeking high office with a mix of self-interested aggradizement and Public Service, whose lives are thrown out for Public consumption, with people in the public that demand to believe in certain peculiar things is sometimes a strange matter.   This morning, I heard the last quarter of an hour of the Bill Press Show.  He was hob-nobbing and wringing his hands with Larry Sabato.   This is a man, Bill Press, who stood full-square in the Democratic Presidential Primary behind a  Hillary Clinton who pulled out of whole cloth this bit about getting struck by Bosnian Snipers.  This matter may or may not have shown qualities not welcome in the role of President — a bad “fly by the seat of her pants” tendenc, but surely she is qualified for, say, “Secretary of State”.  Meantime, there was this politically potent part of the electorate who came to believe rather bizarre things about the service of John Kerry after a campaign from the dishonest “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”, significantly throwing up that post-modern nature of politics where political attachments dictate what you want to believe.

For the record, I hadn’t much concern for George W Bush’s spotty war record — seemed worth a day of entertaining political theater and not much else– tells a story of Class, I suppose.

PENNSYLVANIA.

  God danged if I couldn’t find a single image of the Balls chasing Specter.

Mark Ambinder:  Does the White House believe that the money it spent to help elect Arlen Specter was worth it, even if he loses?  Yes. Joe Biden’s orchestrated party switch helped get health care done. And the DSCC made sure that the money they spent on Specter was raised by Specter for the campaign committee.

This is almost a fair enough political calculation.  But in this guise, I suspect more value would come in the Senatorial process out of an Arlen Specter providing the two Maine Republicans and those bi-partisan Democrats down toward Ben Nelson the bi-partisan cover.  But then the man would have been toast in a Republican Primary — his only possible escape with the Democratic Party.

Given the polling, the trend-lines more than the numbers, his fate will more likely than not be sealed tomorrow.  I almost have to admire the retail politics message of his campaign, though.

But Mr. Specter stayed on message at the pub. As he was departing, an aide called out to the crowd of 70 people: “Senator Specter just bought the next round, so hit the bar.”

Once upon a time, I suggested that Joe Sestak should just re-run Specter’s 2004 Republican Primary ad — “3 For Pennsylvania” where he stands next to Senator Santorum with effusive praise coming out of President Bush’s mouth.  Just replace the “I’m Arlen Specter and I approve this message” with “I’m Joe Sestak and I approve this message”.  Perhaps that is just simply not possible — too clever by half — what we have instead is parts of that ad chopped and set alongside Specter voicing his party switch as “wanting to be re-elected”.  A good contrast with Specter’s campaign ad, the Obama Endorsement ad in the same genre as the 2004 Bush Endorsement ad.

Last night, I briefly turned in the re-cap of Ed Schultz and caught his interview with Specter.  He laid out his case — “Michael J Fox endorses me!”  The most bizarre moment, perhaps telling, came at the end.  Ed Schultz asked, “Do you consider yourself a Liberal?”  Specter answered, “When I hear a Label I think of bikinis.  It conceals more than it reveals.”
Arlen Specter is full of incoherencies such as that.  I don’t know what this metaphor means.  Certainly a bikini reveals — but… it conceals the most important parts?  Is that what the 80 year old 30 year Senate Veteran fighting for the right for a seat in the “Most Exculsive Club” at the age of 86 is telling us?  In the world of an anti-incumbent electorate, I suggest that against the Republican nominee — I think his name is Grover Norquist — Joe Sestak has the upper hand.  Indeed, I will go ahead and state my belief that Sestack will win where Specter will lose in November.

ARKANSAS

The interesting candidate in Arkansas is that third wheel, DC Morrison.  He is largely ignorable — when Blanche Lincoln posits herself as the “Center” who is “Getting it from both sides”, it is against the Republicans to her right and against Bill Halter and his supporters to her left.  But this candidate is supposed to be poised to keep Blanche Lincoln below an all-important 50 percent thresh-hold, forcing an election run-off between Lincoln and Halter.  The New York Times gives us this note.:

It may be a measure of the electorate’s angry mood that the Democratic Senate candidate who got the biggest cheer from the steak lovers assembled amid a charcoal haze to worship charred red meat was D. C. Morrison, a former cotton farmer who wants to repeal the new health care law, seal the southern border and abolish income taxes in favor of a consumption tax. “I think there’s just a general distrust of Washington,” Mr. Morrison explained with a touch of down-home understatement.

I don’t know if this can really be called a “sign of the times”, angry or otherwise.  Arkansas is the last redoubt of the old “Solid South”.  Whenever I hear that some state legislator said something insane, I tend to think it’s a Republican unless I hear it came from Arkansas.  Consult the map for more explanations.  Arkansas is the biggest source for the intersecting point of the PUMA – Birther axis (and yes, the two items are related — incoherent definitions of “left” and “right” notwithstanding).  I guess this is worth a ten point Tea Party Right-Wing Populist dump.  Orval Faubus (the early favorite of the early Godwater for President backers) once mounted a primary campaign against Governor Bill Clinton — picking up 33.5 percent of the vote.

I have no illusions with Arkansas.  John Boozman is the next Senator from Arkansas, this Democratic Primary becomes a strange battle to see who will lose to the Republican.  If you can make the case that either candidate has the better shot — go for it.  In that game, I really don’t know.

KENTUCKY
Like Ron Paul with everything I like about Ron Paul chopped off, we have Rand Paul and the Fifth Circle of Hell.

The political genius of Paul is his ability to cultivate a narrative that speaks to all strains of the Tea Party movement at once. After all, the libertarian purists who loved Ron Paul’s dissident truth-telling are not natural allies of the Limbaugh Dittoheads who dismissed him as an eccentric. He sings his libertarianism in the key of Glenn Beck

It is a testamanet to the star power of Ron Paul and the story this election provides with the stirrings in the Republican Party that I can’t quite give you the probable Democratic nominee.  Jack Conway and Daniel Mongiardo.

The conventional wisdom runs along the lines of: This is Kentucky, it’s an anti-incumbent year, Rand Paul is nothing if not an anti-incumbent, he has a committed activist core, it’s a Republican Year, Rand Paul will win in November.  One need only look at the Nate Silver 538 chart in the top left corner for this argument at work.  I see the sentence peppered in all media write-ups of this election, equivalent ot how I assessed Arkansas.  I have to say — I don’t know.  I suspect this is a wrong calculus.  I can’t claim to have the pulse of Kentucky with me, and we’re all swirling around in the nuts, but read Rand Paul’s prediction of the US going the way of Greece, with its attendant street violence, and I just have to wonder if a swarth of Kentucky voters are going to end up seeing Rand Paul a bridge too far.

HAWAII

Has there ever been a Congressional Special Election whose outcome was more meaningless?  Divided between two main candidates, the Democratic Candidate is poised to lose to a more united Republican candidate.  Who will all but surely go on to lose the general election in Novmeber to whoever emerges as the Democratic favorite.  Nothing is revealed in this election, and “Vote Anyway” — for “clues” and “hints” you have to turn to the Pennsylvania Special Election to replace John Murtha.

I wonder if I think of American History in a faulty manner, taking a historical perspective that ends up with a excuse crutches for various currents strains of politics — the “worse instance in the past” valve.

Head back to the frightening mid-point of the last century, and an effort raged — probably emenating from out of Orange County — to stick a marker on every book in every book in the libraries suspected of Communist influence, to alert the public naturally.  It was as wide a net as you would imagine for such a Grass-roots Cold War Citizens’ Project.

A few months ago and percolating for months, from out of neglected elections came Texas Board of Education guidelines that met Thomas Jefferson with suspicion.  It was several years ago that a great big Hub Ub occured wherein conservative media outlets went on an uproar over a school administration “banning of the Declaration of Independence”.  That story was a farce: a school teacher had battled her district as she forced forward a Christianist lesson plan — a heavy focus on George Washington’s rather unimportant religious writings, for instance — the “Declaration of Independence ban” was a propaganda hook to focus cultural war enmity on the “Secular”ist Enemy.

The “Tea Party” reportedly took over the Republican Convention in the state of Maine and adopted a peculiar platform.  It was another of those interesting cases of what happens when committed acitivists overwhelm a spot nobody cares much about.  More telling than even that, the Modern Day equivalent of Bircher Resolutions against One World Governments and the UN (oh, wait) and the Impeachment of Earl Warren, was the ranshacking of the Middle School premises they met in.

When he went home for the weekend on Friday, one of Clifford’s most prized teaching tools – a collage-type poster depicting the history of the U.S. labor movement – was affixed to his classroom door. Clifford uses it each year to teach his students how to incorporate collages into their annual project on Norman Rockwell’s historic “Four Freedoms” illustrations.
The poster includes this quote from the labor organizer and one-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs: “Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.”
“It’s one of my favorite posters,” said Clifford. “I’ve had it sitting there for seven years.”
Enter the Knox County Republicans, whose weekend convention coup has attracted national attention as a harbinger of a movement that knows a thing or two about agitation.
Details are sketchy – as they often can be when political passion gives way to apparent criminal activity. But this much we know: When Clifford returned to school Monday morning, his cherished labor poster was gone.
In its place, taped to the same door, was a red-white-and-blue bumper sticker that read, “Working People Vote Republican.”
“So I start laughing at first, thinking, ‘All right, that’s funny,”‘ said Clifford. “But then I go inside my room thinking the poster will be on my desk – and it isn’t. And so now I’m like, ‘You know what? This is baloney!”‘ […]
While Clifford used his break time Monday to bang out a few pointed e-mails to GOP leaders asking for help in getting his poster back, King Middle School Principal Mike McCarthy started getting phone calls from rank-and-file Republicans who were upset by what they said they had seen in Clifford’s classroom.
They objected to other “freedom” posters produced by kids from past years – one depicts former President George W. Bush with no eyes over the caption “I feel like I can see evil.”
They objected to a sticker attached to a filing cabinet in the corner that reads, “People for the American Way – Fight the Right.” (Clifford says he didn’t put the sticker there – it was on the cabinet when he salvaged it from another classroom.)
They also objected to the contents of a closed cardboard box they found near Clifford’s desk. Upon opening it for a look-see, they found copies of the U.S. Constitution printed and donated to the school by (gasp) the American Civil Liberties Union.
McCarthy, who happens to be this year’s Maine Middle Level Principal of the Year (for the second time), tried to reason with the one of the anonymous callers.
“What you saw was a snapshot after school of what was up in the room on that day,” he noted. “You haven’t been privy to all of the different ideas that have been talked about in that classroom.”
The caller’s reaction?
“She just got more and more agitated,” McCarthy said.
That’s when McCarthy reminded the caller that a teacher’s poster actually had been stolen. Her response, he recalled, was, “Well, it should have been because it shouldn’t be in that classroom!”
“Well, that’s not how we do business around here,” replied McCarthy, by now somewhere between simmer and full boil. “We’re more than willing to discuss ideas, but we don’t steal.”
Contacted on Tuesday at his home in Rockport, Knox County Republican Chairman Bill Chapman said he has no idea who took Clifford’s poster.
As for the classroom’s decor, Chapman said, “We were wondering just what kind of picture he was painting to the students. (The posters) all, as I saw them, had the same theme behind them, which was very anti-American, anti-free enterprise, anti-religious.”

I will state that these things sometimes have opposite effects.
I begin to understand the problem with a convention as means of nominating a political party’s candidates — see Bob Bennett in Utah, who by all accounts would have won a more broadly participated in primary contest against either of those opponents who punted him.  I wonder if his apparent toyed run off of the Republican line might not be a good idea, and not just that but a mildly moderating effect with him defining himself against his ideological opponents as a “Problem Solver with Conservative Values” or whatever.
The case appears that if Maine followed Utah in their selection process pattern, they just might actually have that same “nominate to the right, to the right, always to the right” effect.  The difference is that Utah is a one-party state and their lunatics are reasonably and roughly representative, whereas Maine’s Lunatics would just go on to lose the general election.

Nevada brought us that candidacy of Sue Lowden, and the “Chicken Barter as Health Care Policy” quip is weirdly telling and curiously aligned with your Texas Board of Education moves and the Maine Republican Convention Middle School treatment.  What Lowden presented was a a conception of American history that idealized some bucolic Pre-Progressive Era Rural America.  Then again, some parts of this set-up I associate Norman Rockwell with, and the Maine incident shows they’ve a problem with him.  Sue Lowden is suddenly in a bit of political trouble, her primary opponent has risen markedly in the polls off the strength of an endorsement from Joe the Plumber.  I don’t quite know where the peg Party remorse — if her Health Care quip had any effect, it wouldn’t have been against it so much as against the general election poll tightening it engendered against Harry Reid.

But really, the Flash-points in Education just come fast and furiously.  Ideally, your “Ethnic Studies” would be fully integrated into a more broad tapestry of a curriculum, but there seem to be these stubborn forces — a Texas Board of Education here and there — that aren’t much allowing for such a thing.
We can take refuge in the Science curriculum, then?

A mysterious ad that accuses a candidate for governor in Alabama of supporting the theory of evolution and questioning the Bible has triggered a dizzying and nasty shouting match in the state’s hotly contested Republican primary race. 
The ad — part of a campaign against Republican candidate Bradley Byrne by a group called the True Republican PAC — questions Byrne’s faith and accuses him of being a “liberal.” 
Referencing Byrne’s time on the state school board, where he was first elected as a Democrat in the 1990s before switching parties, the ad’s narrator says in a quizzical voice:
“On the school board, Byrne supported teaching evolution, said evolution best explains the origin of life — even recently said the Bible is only partially true.” Another voice closes the ad by saying Byrne is “trying to look conservative.”   
That and other ads triggered an all-hands-on-deck response from the Byrne campaign, which launched a “truth team” website, issued a series of statements denying the group’s charges, accused a GOP opponent and Democratic operatives of being in cahoots against him, and launched an ad of its own. The campaign also released a lengthy statement calling the faith ad “despicable.”
In the statement, Byrne said he believes “every single word” in the Bible is true and that, to the contrary, he fought to get creationism taught in Alabama’s schools. 

This country is doomed.

Perhaps everyone should meet this with a giant “yawn”, but it’s worth a gander.  And here I thought we could just discard Patrick Leahy’s reference to “Moses the Law-Giver“.
First he starts by framing the problem of Elena Kagan by rhetorically putting black Americans into sympathy with his argument.  In terms of identity politics, ironic — as I’ll get back to his arguments from the Nixon Adminstration.  Then he brings in who he sees as over-represented and under-represented.

Indeed, of the last seven justices nominated by Democrats JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, one was black, Marshall; one was Puerto Rican, Sonia Sotomayor. The other five were Jews: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.

Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?

But while leaders in the black community may be upset, the folks who look more like the real targets of liberal bias are white Protestants and Catholics, who still constitute well over half of the U.S. population.

This is a good time to back-track and say one thing more about the issue of Kagan’s supposed homosexuality.  I think I tripped in the meager fact that David Souter did indeed get some of that “wait.  He’s gay!” treatment.  I guess it wasn’t as bad or as much, and I also suppose that the sexism remains prevalent despite the fact that, strictly speaking the answer to the question “Would a man get this?” is — historically — possibly.  The next question comes up, tangeantlly, “Would the American Family Association and Focus on the Family” have called for a man disqualified because he’s gay?”   In the case of David Souter, they would have if they had known what his voting record would be, chiefly but not limited around Roe v Wade.  But I guess they didn’t.

Relevant for Pat Buchanan’s brief during the Sotomayer hearings, relevant now.

Here is a 1971 document* from the Nixon Archives, written by Pat Buchanan, showing Buchanan proposing a strategy for Nixon’s outreach to Catholics.

In it, he suggested that Nixon “instead of sending the orders out to all our other agencies– hire blacks and women– the order should go out– hire ethnic Catholics preferable [sic] women, for visible posts. One example: Italian Americans, unlike blacks, have never had a Supreme Court member– they are deeply concerned with their ‘criminal’ image; they do not dislike the President. Give those fellows the ‘Jewish seat’ or the ‘black seat’ on the Court when it becomes available.”

The odd arrangements of how the Supreme Court have been diversified have changed during the years, sometimes arbitrary categories redefined and redefined.  I guess Buchanan wants a single token “Jewish” seat, and a single token “black” seat — kudos, I guess, for George H W Bush in his hat-trick of trading a Thurgood Marshall for a Clarence Thomas, and thus finding a black man Pat Buchanan can approve.  In the beginning, or toward it, we sort of established a geographic assignment for seats.  It evolved from there to various ethnic placements.  And of course, the male to female quota is completely unbalanced through our history.

The thing that becomes really convenient in Pat Buchanan’s formulation is the lumping together of Catholics and Protestants.
The folks who look more like the real targets of liberal bias are white Protestants and Catholics, who still constitute well over half of the U.S. population.
No fooling — when Kagan gets confirmed, the Supreme Court will be made up of SIX Catholics and THREE Jews, and… zero Protestants.  Pat Buchanan, it should be noted, is Catholic — thus his “kind” is over-represented.  (Then again, he’s disinclined to accept Sotomayor as one of him.)  From a gander at wikipedia, I’ll roughly approximate HALF of Americans as Protestant, and A QUARTER of Americans as Catholic.  In that respect, there should be — what?  4 or 5 Protestants, and 2 or 3 Catholics?  This needs some shoring up!
A proposal for Pat Buchanan, therefore, to rebalance the Court: Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, and Justice Kennedy will retire — and Obama will replace all three with Protestants, bringing us back to a form of balance.
OR:

Richard A. Posner, a conservative appeals court judge in Chicago, and William M. Landes, his colleague from the University of Chicago law school, ranked all 43 justices from 1937 to 2006 by ideology and found that four of the five most conservative ones are on the current court. Even the moderate swing vote, Justice Kennedy, was the 10th most conservative over that period. By contrast, none of the current justices ranks among the five most liberal members, and only Justice Ginsburg is in the top 10.

One of those rare “Coalition of the Lunatic Fringe” Moments resulted in a 96 to 0 Senate vote.

Bipartisanship is a rare thing in Washington, but the Senate just 96-0 to pass a bill to “Audit the Fed,” a version of legislation championed by Ron Paul for decades and supported by Michelle Bachmann and other Republicans, but also backed this time by Democrats led by Rep. Alan Grayson and Senator Bernie Sanders.

The latest push started in last year, with a push from labor leaders Andy Stern and Rich Trumka and a coalition of groups on left and right organized by liberal blogger Jane Hamsher and Michael Ostrolenk of the Liberty Coalition. Its members ranged from progressive fixtures like Robert Borosage and Dean Baker to old-line conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Grover Norquist.

Hamsher’s view just now on why the legislation passed: “It didn’t leave any room for someone to play the Joe Lieberman role. Nobody could say they were being ‘principled’ in opposition and take refuge in partisan politics — it was clear that they would just be covering for the banks.”

Naturally Ron Paul is not much happy with the compromise made by his erstwhile Socialist ally.  As expressed by wonkette:

It is a much weaker audit bill than the Ron Paul-Alan Grayson audit bill that’s already passed the House, which would allow Ron Paul to wander around the Federal Reserve on a scavenger hunt for seven secret vials of Dragon Blood that the Internet says are there.

It does not go far enough in the fore of his long-term plan, as expressed by the title of his well-selling book “End the Fed”, as opposed to the wide-spread desire to figure this clunker out.

Four of the largest U.S. banks, including Citigroup Inc., racked up perfect quarters in their trading businesses between January and March, underscoring how government support and less competition is fueling Wall Street’s revival.

Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the first, second and fifth-biggest U.S. banks by assets, all said in regulatory filings that they had zero days of trading losses in the first quarter. Citigroup Inc., the third-largest, doesn’t break out its daily trading revenue by quarter. It recorded a profit on each trading day, two people with knowledge of the results said.

So it was, 96 to 0.  We’ve a few curious conundrums in the realm of desiring more coalitions of the screwballs against the Tedious Center.  Right now the son of Ron Paul, Rand Paul, is running away with the Republican Senate nomination.  Having taken a look at him, I have to say:  I hate Rand Paul — it’s as if every endearing position partaken by Ron Paul has been lobbed off and we’re left with everything spiteful about Ron Paul.  But, sure his nomination is welcome — it’ll present that awkward presenation of a more than likely Democratic victory, off-setting the Republican November.
Meantime, Tom Coburn was seen voting on the right end of the Bank Break up bill — putting an answer to the question “Which of the two Oklahoma screw-balls is most useful?” — James Inhofe remains completely irredeemable.

We’re stuck in a zero zone with the Interlocking Blame Games of the Trans-Atlantic, British Petroleum, and Halliburton — and the governmental agency Minerals Management Service.  Obama’s angry words suggest a bit of the old “Buck Stops There”, even if the bulk of the problem comes out of a lax regulatory guidelines through the Bush Administration — it’s not as if Ken Salazar’s appointment was cause for celebration, as Obama offers more Continuity than anyone would want.  On the front of the politicians batting this around, I keep hearing Mary Landrieu — Democratic Senator from Louisiana — speak, and I hear nothing but the cash register ringing up from her campaign donors.  And to quote Haley Barbour —
“We don’t wash our face in it, but it doesn’t stop us from jumping off the boat to ski,” Barbour said.

Certainly the Bi-Partisan jig is getting us roughly nowhere on the environment on many fronts.

So, back to the Coaltion of the Fringes, surfing about for an answer on where Paul and Sanders can take another swipe at something, against a tedious Center.  How about Hemp?  Which, you know, always seems to intertwine itself with the matter of the War On Drugs. 

Fascinating topic.  The way Hemp Activists tell it, Hemp is the Miracle Product that will solve just about everything.  And we’d be using it if it weren’t for the power of the Oil Barons in the early part of the last century and a following Propaganda Offensive.  If not for that, why –!!  Which ends with a sort of “If you say so” on my part.
The deal with the leaves, on the other hand… well — once upon a time, sometime in my Freshman year of high school — always was an amusing undercurrent of vague political activism of rather self-motivated political opinion.  Art class.  A couple of students  are batting around their cause, possibly for an oh so provacative school assignment — plastering out arguments.  The Art Teacher walks up as the conversation continues, intervenes, and sternly throws out the case of the multitiduous new fangled chemicals spouting in today’s cannibus not there in his generation, and asks the students to quit swallowing up NORML propaganda.
So it is with that that only Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich can save us from the Military Industrial Drug Enforcement Complex.  Well, they succeeded in opening up the Fed for a brief spell.