Vote total:
1930 Write-In Campaign for Governor of Kansas
Harry Woodring 217,171
Frank Huacke  216,914
JR Brinkley 183,278 — by a strict count of properly filling in the bubble and writing in name “J R Brinkley”.  From the “Intent of the voter” measure, he would have had 50,000 more votes — and won the election.

1932
Alfred Landon 278,581
Harry Woodring 272,944
JR Brinkley 244,607
(And with Brinkley taking more votes from the Democrat to allow one of the few Republican wins in the anti-Hoover landslide, Landon became “Presidential Timber” enough for the Republican nomination in 1936.)

After settling in tiny Milford, Kansas, in 1917, Brinkley devloped the operation that earned him the title “the goat gland doctor.”  As Brinkley told it, a farmer came to the doctor complaining of impotency.  Looking at several goats mounting each other, Brinkley joked that the patient would have no trouble with sex with those goat sex glands in him.  The patient insisted that Brinkley perform the transplant.  He did, and within a year the farmer’s wife gave birth to a boy, Billy.  For years afterword, Brinkley offered his goat gland transplant for nearly any problem that could be classified as “failing manhood.”  In the mid 1930s Brinkley abondoned transplantation for other, equally questionable procedures, but the goat gland reputation stuck with him.
— Bruce Lenthal Radio’s America, 122

Quacks and Crsuaders, Eric S Juhnke, page 18-19, 22
Brinkley also catered to religious voters.  As a committed Methodist and outspoken antievolutionist, he had earned a reputation as a fundamentalist.  His KFKB broadcasts had often combined medicine and religion.  And he took his Bible with him on the campaign trail.  With his Van Dyke beard, totoise shell spectacles, white suit, and diamond rings, he seemed the precursor of some of today’s televangelists.  His words helped complete the costume.  “I don’t talk politics on Sunday,” he announced to a crowd of twenty thousand Kansans convened in a pasture outside Wichita.  Instead, he preached a Sermon.  “”The men in power wanted to do away with Jesus before the common people woke up.  Are you awake here?” he asked.  “I too have walked up the path Jesus walked to calvary, … I know how Jesus felt.”
………………………
Brinkley embraced such criticism as further evidence of his martyrdom.  In a campaign flyer, he suggested that his enemies had become “desparate” in their attempt to derail his campaign.  He revealed that he had discovered a conspiracy to kidnap and kill Johnny Boy in order to “break [his] morale and cause [him] to give up in despair.”  Others, Brinkley reported, had “decided that [the doctor] himself must be disposed of at all costs.”  He claimed that Governor Woodring had “extended executive clemency to certain inmates of the Lansing Prison” if they killed him before the 8 November election.  Although the rumors had no basis, Brinkley was frightened enough to order a bulletproof vest for his protection.

Gerald Carson, The Roguish World of Dr. Brinkley, 1960
With his radio slogan: “Let’s pasture the goats on the statehouse lawn,” Dr. Brinkley became a powerful focus for underground sentiment.  If he wasn’t a political pro, he certainly was a gifted amateur and he promised plenty — free schoolbooks, free auto tags, lower taxes, a good housecleaning at the statehouse, better times for the working people, an open door to the governor’s office, and a lake in every county.  The water evaporated from the lakes would be precipitated on Kansas and the state would become Canaan.  It was a program of uplift, happiness, clean-up, good health, lower taxes, higher property values and more migratory game birds.
156-7

A startling hodgepodge of a newspaper, Publicity, with a strong political bent, plunked for Brinkley.  It was frequently asserted, and always denied by Doctor, that he had bought the publication to advance his political, and indeed, medical activities.  To Publicity Doc was the “Lincoln of Kansas.”  It serialized The Life of a Man, and also sold the hard covered book.  Publicity also approved of naturopaths, electrotherapy, chiros, Pernuna, and W.W. Cooper, the Altoona, Pennsylvania Cancer Man.  Later in the decade, the sheet became violenty isolationist, and supported Hitlerian race theories. — 169

(At which time, Dr. Brinkley formed a working relationship with Gerald Winrod, and was credited with inspiring a revival of the KKK in Kansas.)
(I assume the broadcasts at this time are available in this fine assemblage.)

Dr. Brinkley’s appeal at the ballot box, viewed now in historical perspective, thrived on the Depression.  His popularity was an expression of radical discontent with the two major parties.  Some citizens — as a kind of Rabelasian outburst — voted for Doctor without fully swallowing his panaceas.  His exploitation of his “persecution” won him the sympathy vote.  His counter-attack on the medical profession rallied all the popular prejudices against Scientific Medicine as opposed to the appeal of Brinkley’s own surgical mysteries and patent medicines.  Brinkley used the language of the Lodge, appealed to the same gullibles who supported Huey Long, Cole Blease, and “Big Bill” Thompson. […]
William Allen White had a theory to explain the support of the Brinkley, Longs, and Thompsons.  About 20 percent of the population is permanently gullible, any time, in any place, White said.  “In  every civilization there is a moronic underworld which cannot be civilized.  It can be taught to read and write, but not to think, and it lives upon the level of its emotions and prejudices.”
–175

—————
(Undoubtedly This book has more on the “Brinkley Act“.  Always good when your actions inspire a law.)

I’m watching the book that the naked man threw at Obama, which pops in at the 23-24 second mark on this video.  It happens so quickly, I swear that it’s not a book, but one of those “orb” things.
The book is encircled in this picture.

Spokesman Ed Donovan said the man had written the book and hoped the president would read it. Donovan said agents concluded the man posed no danger.

The author of the book “thought Obama would enjoy the book”.  I suppose throwing it at him is more likely than mailing it to him to get him reading the book, but not by much.

I’m sure somewhere the title and author of the book is out there, but the media has the usual “don’t want to encourage anyone” attitude toward these things.

As per usual, everyone sees the incident in their own prism:

MSM Indifference Over Obama Book Incident Explained: Thrower is an Obamaniac, Not a Teabagger

Which explains why every media outlet everywhere has a report on it?

The other guy — the guy who streaked in front of Obama, as per million dollar reward for exposing websitecurrentlygettinghitsbythescore.com?

A naked man attempting to claim Internet entrepreneur Alki David’s $1 million prize for the first person to streak at an Obama event was later taken away in handcuffs.

David says he’ll send the man, who had the name of video-sharing site Battlecam written on his chest, cash as soon as he sees video of the incident. The president appeared unruffled by the disruptions. “Our job is not yet done, and the success of our mission is at stake right now,” he told the enthusiastic crowd.

Too clever by half, reports are that he has a one point five million dollar fine.  I assume that’s a joke.

In other news…
Okay.  Everyone interested in this story has heard it by now:

Byron Williams, the heavily armed man who allegedly opened fire at police in Oakland, Calif., in July while on his way to attack the ACLU and the liberal Tides Foundation in San Francisco, has now given interviews to a pair of California journalists describing his motivations and his media consumption habits.

The main takeaway from the interviews, detailed by Media Matters, is that Williams is a conspiracy theory enthusiast who has picked up segments of his worldview from both Glenn Beck and more fringe figures like the “New World Order”-obsessed radio host Alex Jones.

I recognize the general thrust of the BP conspiracy story from Jones, Beck, and laroach, though have never bothered on the specifics.

I was expecting something about this to be stomped at the top of Alex Jones’s “prisonplanet” website — you know “New World Order trying to Shut Us Down”.  It isn’t there.  Glen Beck is focused in the top rotating stories list — Diet Coke will kill him. 

And here’s the per course “Beck stealing My Stuff” mixed in with “Beck plant for NWO” — Beck stealing his stuff more and more because… he’s starting his post-Fox career.
That’s the line, anyway.  Jones has to account for Beck.  After all, media matters and the Examiner on the Byron Williams story just sort of skip past Jones.
Interesting to note: I see them give a “yay” to the Rachel Maddow interview with Oregon Congressional Candidate Art Robinson — trying to take the seat held by Peter DeFazio.  I am stuck at the first sentence and headline:
Watch Dad of Six Art Robinson Spar With Rachel Maddow, Call Global Warming A Hoax (Video)
Father of six Art Robinson appeared on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” last night to discuss his campaign for Congress in Oregon,
Is the most important fact about Art Robinson that he is the “Father of six”?

Question #1:  Does this help or hurt his campaign?

An election year already notable for its menagerie of extreme and unusual candidates can add another one: Rich Iott, the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio’s 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, who for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments.
Iott, whose district lies in Northwest Ohio, was involved with a group that calls itself Wiking, whose members are devoted to re-enacting the exploits of an actual Nazi division, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which fought mainly on the Eastern Front during World War II. Iott’s participation in the Wiking group is not mentioned on his campaign’s website, and his name and photographs were removed from the Wiking website.

When contacted by The Atlantic, Iott confirmed his involvement with the group over a number of years, but said his interest in Nazi Germany was historical and he does not subscribe to the tenets of Nazism. “No, absolutely not,” he said. “In fact, there’s a disclaimer on the [Wiking] website. And you’ll find that on almost any reenactment website. It’s purely historical interest in World War II.” […]

Iott says he does not recall exactly when he joined the Wiking group (his name appears on a unit roster as far back as 2003), but did so with his son “as a father-son bonding thing.” He says his name and pictures were removed from the Wiking website not out of concern that they would harm his political career, but because he quit the group three years ago, after his son lost interest.
Father-Son relationships.  Encourage your son to cultivate his interests.  Avoid the “Cat’s in the Cradle” song from becoming a reality.

Iott participated in the group under his own name, and also under the alias “Reinhard Pferdmann,” which has also been removed, and which Iott described as being his German alter ego. “Part of the reenactor’s [experience],” Iott said, “is the living-history part, of really trying to get into the persona of the time period. In many, not just in our unit, but in many units what individuals do is create this person largely based on a Germanized version of their name, and a history kind of based around your own real experiences. ‘Reinhard’ of course is ‘Richard’ in German. And ‘Pferdmann,’ ‘pferd’ is a horse. So it’s literally ‘horse man.'”

Huh.
Horse man.  Is that another of those “Human Animal Hybrids“  about which everyone’s in a panic?
Otherwise, we’re getting into “fury” territory, where everyone is dressing up and acting out as their Animal Ideal.  Except, in fury-land, they’re dressing up for characterisics of animals.  Substitute Nazis for Animals, and you get the idea.

Civil War Re-Enactments are problematic, and I suppose there probably is a bigger percentage of Civil War Re-Enactors in the “Tea Party” than in the general population.  Nazi Re-enactments are a bit more problematic.

As the Wiking site goes on to explain, “It is our aim to bring you a bit of actual history behind the men who fought against the “Bolshevik scourge”; volunteers who came from the various Northern European countries allied with Hitler’s Germany who only had a desire to see an end to Soviet Communism.”

It is at that point, the Tea Party ideology that paints Liberalism as Socialist as Communist as Bolshevik becomes relevant to this peculiar hobby.

Iott explains his former hobby by likening it to Civil War re-enacters, noting that “you couldn’t do Civil War re-enacting if somebody didn’t play the role of the Confederates.”

“I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that here was a relatively small country that from a strictly military point of view accomplished incredible things,” Iott told Green. “I mean, they took over most of Europe and Russia, and it really took the combined effort of the free world to defeat them. From a purely historical military point of view, that’s incredible.”

Iott’s explanation, strained as it is, might be slightly more convincing if he and his friends had chosen to emulate a standard unit of the German Army, or Wehrmacht. The moral culpability of draftees conscripted into the German military is at least arguable.

Hm.  CBS News reported that the NRCC reportedly remove Mr. Iott’s photo from its collection of Young Guns.

In other news … do you take this comment seriously?

A cool little punk rock song.  It’s the “War Against Terror” singing  what the kids will surely be tuning in for next week when Dick Clarke spotlights it on his “American Bandstand” show — “La La LaRouche“, a song inspired by the Alaskan Activist Sidney Hill.  Good news for Amanda Vin Zant — perhaps the Media has lost interest, but a lone rock band with 30 youtube page hits hasn’t.

Rick Potvin, the leader of the Larouche Cryonics Movement, and the pre-eminent teacher of Larouchian techniques in Piano Playing, can go ahead and pass over the song.  Then again, Larouche has yet to discard the music, so maybe he can pick up on it while he discards Stravinsky — as per Larouche’s instructions.

Wikipedia Update.  There are some quite funny, and quite familiar, things said by the Outer Zeta Group of Larouche, Inc.

No mention of Glass-Steagall, for example, even though there are references about it cited on this page. Reading over this page, I see some totally twisted stuff. You reject TIME magazine as a source? That is just totally bizarre. And yet the article is full of unknown lunatic fringe commentators spouting goofy theories about LaRouche.

I believe to present much room for “Glass Steagal” would be to violate a rule against undue weight toward the present, ie: Larouche will move onto some other popular issue, or idea, in a week.  Funny, for instance, that today I see this headline:
LaRouche: Use 25th Amendment To Remove Obama Now
Really?  The 25th Amendment?  I don’t have that on the top of my mind, but sure — that is the Amendment for Removal of President.  But this is the first I’ve seen the Larouchies reference.

Sure enough, it percolates.  See Kesha Rogers respond with the 25th Amendment here — though, only after learning how Kesha Rogers spends her “Me” time.   

Will BeBack:    And who are you? This page has seen so many sock puppets that new editors who appear out of nowhere yet are familiar with Wikipedia procedures are suspicious. What previous account names or IPs have you used?  
Larouche Wikipedia Team:  You first. You seem to be dominating this article — who are you? There should be some accountability here. I don’t know squat about Wikipedia procedures except to say that they don’t seem to work, judging by the amount of BS in this article. There seem to be no quality control measures in place.

Funny.  By “Quality Control Measures”, he means lack of restrictions on the constant barrage of Larouchians wanting to stomp their feet about mentions on “Russia Today”.

“Lack of Research and Insight” ? OMG, BeBack, you make my day? Everyone knows that you are virtually OBSESSED with LaRouche and LaRouche-related Articles. This is a new level of hypocrisy.

The “obsession” tic is always an interesting one, coming from these people, because their point of view — the reason for surfacing about protests with Obama Hitler Mustache signs — is to argure that Larouche is an important person deserving of your attention.

I’m here to expose hypocrites and chew bubblegum. And you, Will Beback, cannot deny the FACT that your name appears in every discussion of articles about LaRouche

A Roddy Piper fan, huh?

Will Beback, your attempt to divert the discussion of your inappropriate behaviour (lying about your involvement with LaRouche – related articles) to project rules and to my editing has: FAILED.I take it then that you do not deny that you are a hypocrite and rest my case

Well, that settles it, doesn’t it? 
Your rants, and run on babble, reads like your pontificated quotes contained in Sierra Club articles.
And Everybody knows about his infamous Sierra Club article discussions.

But I guess they “win” with the frequent “Neutrality Dispute” headline.  Keep it up, and maybe next time… next time

When the interview was over I can remember Dave Didio turning to me in the car and saying “I hope you realize we just got played.” And naturally he was right. LaRouche had just wasted our time, not his. He knew full well that no responsible newspaper publisher would give space to his insane ranting. Was The Stars and Stripes supposed to print an interview with a crazed man who apparently didn’t like America, but was running for President? Our publisher back then was too smart to be played by LaRouche. As for me, I guess I wasn’t quite ready for the majors.

As against.

Note to this person:  I saw some sign posts to a local long term incumbent Congress-critter, who has never faced an opponent that has escaped a percentage in the 20s.  The answer is no.

But, Don’t forget to vote.  We were… this close… to a massive Rachel Brown Landslide.

Schneider tried to take a photo of the volunteers but said they shied away from the camera. She wanted to circulate the photo via e-mail as a way of reminding people how important it is to vote. People like the volunteers, who are “on the lunatic fringe,” shouldn’t be allowed into a position of power to dictate to other people, she said. […]

Why the PAC volunteers chose Salem for their outreach last week remains a mystery. The Gazette’s calls to a phone number listed on the PAC pamphlet went unanswered, and there was no option to leave a message. According to the LaRouche PAC website, the number is for a local volunteer.

Also, they’re not John Birchers.

But they didn’t say anything outrageous, nothing I could disagree with as someone who voted against Bush*. But I was warned by those who knew more than I did that they’re also John Birchers.
Though, individual “supporters” might be.   I wouldn’t be surprised if the Alaska fellow was…

Also, if you watch that Donald Duck cartoon — Glenn Beck mash-up, you’ll know Mickey Mouse is… one of those Communists.  They’re Everywhere, I says, EVERYWHERE.

And Conan O’brien isn’t comprable in any way.  I don’t know… is this a reference to an idea of a “cult following”, or… perpetual candidacy?

In International News, CEC members jammed a showing of a Global Warming denial film back in 2007, or at least sprinked themselves into the audience.

The CEC was originally an electoral front for the Australian League of Rights (increasingly elderly “patriots” largely concerned with Holocaust denial and Jewish conspiracies), until it was stacked by local followers of Lyndon Larouche and disagreements over the status of the Queen (ALOR loved her, the Larouchites reckon she runs an international drug empire) forced a split.
Since then, the CEC has spent most of their time losing elections (badly) and raising money (and lots of it). […]
The ABC told Crikey that viewers who contacted the station to congratulate or complain in the lead-up to the airing of the documentary were invited to apply to participate in the studio audience. A balanced mix of believers and sceptics were then selected. The ABC estimates there were around five members of the CEC in the audience of 80.
According to the Larouchites, there were 18 — three of whom were kicked out prior to the show for being “potentially disruptive”. Four of the remaining members asked questions.

It’s all about the Club for Rome!  (Why a 2007 article popped up.)

In spite of doing quite a lot of searching, I couldn’t find anything substantial – whenever I compared what the “Limits” book says to what the critics claimed it said, I found myself concluding they either hadn’t read the book or were deliberately misrepresenting it. I bounced a few thoughts from time to time off my favourite tinfoil sounding board and got nothing credible back – in the end most of the theories seem to lead back to the Executive Intelligence Review (ie. the LaRouche organisation).

Monterery County Post Office Tour Stop!  Monterey County REPRESENT!!!!!

Jobe Cowen and Stewart Battle stand near Obama posters adorned with Hitler mustaches in front of the Monterey post office.
“Are you ready to help dump Obama?!” one of them says to a couple walking by.
The two young men were campaigning for Summer Shields who is running for congress in San Fransisco and supported by Lyndon LaRouche. The pair had been out since 10am handing out papers and taking donations for Shields’ campaign. […]
People on both sides of their campaign spoke out in support of Cowen and Battle, or shouted negative remarks, but Cowen was not bothered by them.
“The Obama supports have weak arguements,” he says. “Things like, “Just give him more time,” but I just say we don’t have any more time.
Or maybe they have other arguments:

“You guys must have the brains of a frog,” said one woman. Another Monterey resident agreed.
“I would tell them to throw out their own trash, meaning the stuff they’re preaching.”

Don’t have a vote for Summer Shields.  Do have a contact!
They are saying that BO is on depression medication. I had also read this on a blog. According to them, this is grounds to get him removed from office. It comes under Section 4 of the 25th amendment. I guess it comes under mental incompetentency ……like we didnt already know that. Anyway the rumor is, is BO is sinking fast and they want him out of power.
The LaRouchePAC.com is in charge of this. I have no idea if this is a reputable organization or not……….but I signed the petition.

He’ll find out soon enough if they’re a reputable organization.  Or not.  Well, he could check out wikipedia!

Kesha Rogers, meanwhile:  Interesting. She just might get my vote… Will WIN!!!

If Cowen and Battle get sick a cold one day, they could hire a sub.  I subbed to Larouche Youth a while ago, then ditched it.. I don’t really remember, he was a big fan of FDR or something, no? I got the vibe he didn’t know what freemason scum was walking around.

>….<

Yesterday, Thursday, I reported that the U.S. Congress, in a crucial vote, had failed to match my warning and had thus lost its battle to save the United States; it is now a likely, although not yet fully certain prospect, that that moral failure of the Congress, although allowed only by a scant majority in the U.S. Congress, has condemned our nation to an almost inevitable, early arrival in Hell. […]
It is now probable, although not yet inevitable, that the United States (and also all trans-Atlantic civilization) is about to be destroyed in a breakdown-crisis comparable to that of Europe’s Fourteenth Century. You can now thank both President Barack Obama and any political authority who supports the continuation of his visibly lunatic reign for that.

Dark Ages Coming.  Make the best of it.
But first, Summer Shields invites everyone to…:

Technically, Jim DeMint is in an election campaign.  So, I guess all his utterances have to been seen through the prism of electioneering.  Though, it is all a matter of establishing himself a national reputation, to become the Dean of an incoming “Tea Party Caucus”.  Where Economic issues merge with Social issues.

the senator went further and “said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.”[…] “(When I said those things,) no one came to my defense,” DeMint said on Friday in Spartanburg. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”

I saw this book a while ago — The Politically Incorrect Guide to the 1960s.  It’s a series of books that began with the “Lost Cause anti-Lincoln” take on the Civil War.  The conservative cause version of the “For Dummies” / “Idiot’s Guide” series of bullet-points and condensed references.  I do not know why you would want to celebrate the “Cultural Conservatism” of the 1960s, but that is their business.  History pulls tricks on us.  Nixon, caring not at all about domestic policies, positioned himself just so that McGovern would be the Left of him, all the while buttering up the darker angels of Americans, and the effect is a sort of “Damned the Hippies, and we’ve got you an Earth Day!”.  But history is full of surprises.

On gay high school teachers, it’s worth remembering that Ronald Reagan as long ago as 1978 aligned with Harvey Milk in opposing discrimination in the Brigg’s Initiative. His op-ed before the initiative was regarded as a turning point against the anti-gay teacher crusade:
The timing is significant because he was then preparing to run for president, a race in which he would need the support of conservatives and moderates very uncomfortable with homosexual teachers. As Cannon puts it, Reagan was “well aware that there were those who wanted him to duck the issue” but nevertheless “chose to state his convictions.”
Reagan penned an op-ed against the so-called Briggs Initiative in which he wrote, “Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.” This was a remarkably progressive thing for a politician, especially a conservative one about to run for president, to say in 1978. The Briggs Initiative was overwhelmingly defeated. Its sponsors blamed Reagan for the defeat.

It is interesting to see that Harry Reid has plopped out Jim DeMint for an advertisement — though, one that’s a “web” ad for the base.

Though, I guess Sharron Angle asked for that reference.  You go to the Third Party spoiler candidate and ask him to step away, and what do you have to offer?  JIM DEMINT!!! Who wouldn’t want to see Jim DeMint?

Earlier this week, Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian released a secret tape of himself meeting last week with Angle. As she had told Ashjian: “That’s really all I can offer to you (Ashjian) is whatever juice I have, you have as well…You want to see DeMint, I have juice with him…I go to Washington, DC, and want to see Jim DeMint, he’s right there for me. I want to see Tom Coburn, he’s right there for me. I want to see Mitch McConnell, he’s there.”

But that wasn’t improper at all, Angle told conservative talk radio host Heidi Harris: “Well, of course, I offered him meetings with people that are friends of mine. Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn are friends of mine, and I would offer that to any constituent in Nevada.”

In a sense, Sharron Angle came out Independent of McConnell, though maybe the way to buttress Ashijan is to hold forth against the economic malfeasance of the Republican Party — and show that you have ins with — Jim Demint… Maybe Ashijan is Holding off for Sarah Palin?

“Joe, please explain how this endorsement stuff works, is it to be completely one sided,” Todd Palin wrote to Miller, family attorney Tom Van Flein, and SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford after he had become upset when Miller did not offer a full-throated endorsement of the former Alaska governor’s still speculative presidential campaign. […]

Sarah Palin later tweeted a link to her husband’s statement and added, “There’s no ‘there, there’ but the lamestream media will keep on tryin’.”

There’s a lot of “there” there.  Take, this, for instance:
“Sarah spent all morning working on a Facebook post for Joe, she won’t use it, not now.”
Read that sentence several times, and marvel at the state of of our politics.

Years ago, 1996, as I was looking at the Clinton — Dole campaign, I couldn’t quite help but feel depressed.  Clinton, you understand, began his presidential campaign, more or less, by signing a Welfare Bill that seemed to politically calculatedly buck a principle he, Democrat, should stand for.  Bob Dole began his presidential campaign by endorsing a 15 percent tax cut, undermining political principles of a Fiscal Conservatism he had stood for through his career (butted heads against Reagan, for instance.)  So, with these principle-less realizations in mind in mind, I was looking about ways one could rationally vote for politicians, and coming up with different schemes.  One was to look at the advertisements and see who put up the fewest number of ads, and vote for that candidate.  I understood just how false political advertisements were:

In an effort to relate to West Virginia voters, the National Republican Senatorial Committee hired an outside company that put out a call for actors with “a ‘Hicky’ Blue Collar look” who could appear in an ad as “coal miner/trucker” types, Mike Allen reports for Politico.

Allen says clothing suggestions for the commercial “included jeans, work boots, flannel shirt, denim shirt, ‘Dickie’s type jacket with t-shirt underneath,’ down-filled vest, ‘John Deer [sic] hats (not brand new, preferably beat up),’ ‘trucker hats (not brand new, preferably beat up).'”

Once the actors and scripts were picked, the commercial was shot … in Philadelphia.

That’s one way of deferring your image cultivated by announcing that your fortune came “the old fashioned way” — inheritance.

Christine O’Donnell.

“I’m not a witch.”
Way to address the issue head on!
I propose the Crucible.  Throw her over into the river and test her on that one. 

“I’m you.”
This is something worth testing.  I once heard a description from a left of center peron about the Bush — Gore 2000 contest that they were “90 percent the same.”  I don’t know what that figure meant.  The scales of measurement are hard to calibrate.  Seen from one light, we are 90 percent the same as our homo-erectus ancestors.  Seen from another, that 10 percent makes 90 percent of the difference, and so we’re only 10 percent alike.

“None of us are perfect.”
Agreed.  But I’ve been hearing that expressed a bit too often by politicians lately.  Sarah Palin said it in her 2008 Convention speech, for instance.  There is something here worth exploring further — it’s a faltering of Identity Politics.

“I’ll go to Washington and do what you’d do.”
No you won’t.  I have seen where her ilk goes in the terms of the Health Care debate — and it is going in this direction.

The final tag line, and I guess the new theme of her campaign as it is a reiteration – “I’m you.”  “Yes we can” is taken.

It does feel that focusing on her candidacy at all is over-empahsizing her campaign.  Even in superficial horse-race terms, it’s about like her candidacy against Joseph Biden two years ago — a typical Culture Warrior Campaign against an establishment professional politician.

The other big news that came up with Christine O’Donnell:

She said China had a “carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over America” and accused one opponent of appeasement for suggesting that the two countries were economically dependent and should find a way to be allies.

There’s something noxious about the Democratic approval of the final message in this Scott McAdams advertisement.  Understand what McAdams does at the end here, by showcasing the “Incredible Hulk” tie, and “we used to have a Senator like that.”  He joins Lisa Murkowski in this race in running off of the mantle of Ted Stevens, and here off of the strong principle of earmarks for Alaska.
Response from Democratic bloggers: Yah!
Hmmph.  Well, at least Alaska voters are getting past the fluffier and down to the red meat of that which really is stake in the cynical game.

Regarding Russ Feingold — who I’ve referred to here being “Feingold and 99 Other Senators” — and the ad that the NFL had him scrub — I get the feeling you sometimes run these things just to get some media attention.
… And for Joe Manchin in West Virginia… my thought that he might lose this race (Obama lost to Clinton by 40 percent, for gawd’s sake) … ebbed around the time he said, “I made my money the old fashioned way.  I inherited it.”  But any other election cycle and John Raese wouldn’t win… who knows what the poor West Virginian voters are thinking  with this one — at least Raese isn’t selling “I’m you.”

Rutgers.
Tyler Clementi.
I feel I need to push through some somber commentary on a depressing happenstance before I get to my “WTF?” moment.

Dan Savage has a good series going on right now, the “It Gets Better” youtube feed of words of encouragement for tortured gay teenagers.  I wonder about “Bullying” becoming an issue defined to the issue of homosexual, but then look over and see that arguments against enacting any such laws in our schools fixate come from a Relgious Right that it infringes on their religiously defined bigotry, and “normalizes” homosexuals. 

So, I haven’t followed the story all that closely.  I don’t know what was in the hearts of the stupid roommate here, though we do see a callousness of the “Punked” ethos, and if I wanted to I could find from a  long line of chain email which broke dorm-mate’s privacy in the same way.

(ahem)

So, I heard an ABC News radio “top of the hour” news-cast yesterday evening.  Rutgers had a “Moment of Silence” before their football game yesterday.  With that, there was a soundbyte from a student in attendance, banal enough, even if I didn’t quite like the way she voiced it, as though she just thought it was neat to get on the air — “I think it’s great and totally appropriate to have a Moment of Silence.  This suicide has gripped us all here.”

And behind this soundbyte?
Someone let out a “WOOOO!!!!”

I don’t know if she was with her friends, out to enjoy the football game, and her friend was standing there, jacked up a bit by the radio interview.  But that is what it sounded like.