The Oregonian’s endorsement of Ron Green:
Congressmen are not required to live in their district, but it’s the general practice, and 3rd District Republicans should take a close look at TriMet bus driver Ron Green, who’s running on a platform of higher tariffs to protect American jobs — what he calls a traditional McKinley Republican position. Green does, at least, know the district.

Ron Green sets the record straight, and my earlier blog characterization based on this Oregonian endorsement stands corrected:
I believe the characterization of myself as a “McKinley” republican is more the writer’s characterization than mine, although I did agree to it when the interviewer suggested it. But, I also added that I considered myself more a Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt Republican, at least as regard tariffs.  […]  The Republican party understood, as did Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and other founding fathers, that the latter three go together. Sound money is another issue, and should be addressed by a close inspection of the machinations of the Federal Reserve.

This raises the question:  Why in the world would the Oregonian interviewer’s mind jump over to William McKinley?
And to this we get this:
Third district pay attention, this kind or republican might have a chance to win it all.
Er… no.

The Willamette Week endorses Delia Lopez, claiming it was a difficult choice to make.:
Republican voters in this district (c’mon, we know there are a few of you out there) have two weak choices. […]  Her opponent, Ronald Green, is a TriMet driver who preaches the need for full employment. If elected, he says, he will go to Washington and form a “shadow Congress.” With marginal candidates, the very narrow margin goes to Lopez.

Ron Green sets that record straight:
I would like to make a comment that the statement describing my beliefs as  “Ronald Green, is a TriMet driver who preaches the need for full employment. If elected, he says, he will go to Washington and form a “shadow Congress.”  Somehow, the statement, taken as a whole, seems to me to suggest, no doubt unintentionally, a rather alarming degree of eccentricity.
A more accurate statement, as watching the tape should reveal, would be “Ronald Green, an average, concerned, working class American, just like most of you readers and unlike Earl Blumenauer, preaches the need, unlike Earl Blumenauer, to end free trade in order to ensure full employment, thereby driving the wages and benefits of middle class, working class and young Americans upward.  He is so committed to this, yet again unlike Earl Blumenauer, he will even form, if elected, a “shadow” Congress of fellow like-minded patriotic Congresspersons to draw public attention to the need to end free trade.”

I need to watch the 30 minute interview session.   Sounds like it’s must see pointless political viewing.

Ronald Green touts his Oregonian endorsement.
Delia Lopez’s campaign site is stuck in 2010.  I have no idea if she touts her Willamette Week endorsement.  I will note to the claim that she’s sounding like a cross between Occupy and Libertarianism — the former isn’t biting; the latter continues where it left off with her 2010 performance — see here, here (What poll was that?)…

ITEM NUMBER ONE:  TROTSKY DEFEATS CHEMINADE BY 2-1 LANDSLIDE
The bottom most rung of the French Presidential Preliminary elections,  9th and 10th place, came down to a race between The Fourth International v Fifth International.  I could go on and on with old Marxist phraseology — Are the Larouchies Left-wing deviationists from the Trotskyite line? — I suppose one also might say “Social Fascist”.
Anyway, the  Vote results

Nathalie Arthaud (Workers' Party)     0.57%
Jacques Cheminade (Weirdo)            0.25%

The Trotskyites best the Larouchies by a better than 2 to 1 margin.  Though, I suppose, Communists have always had troubles bandying about the phrase “The People” — it looks like the People have spoken.

To review.  We have the headline:  Cheminade in Break-out mode!  Meantime, the public was seen writing such items as:  Interesting analysis:  The direction offered by the Sarkozy camp is the only way forward if you would live in the Star Trek utopia proposed by Jacques Cheminade (currently polling less than ½ of one percent) while avoiding the disaster of the shy, teddy-bear-like anticapitalist, Philippe Poutou (currently polling less than 1% of first round voting intentions).

And we have this write-up following the election results:  Jacques Cheminade obtained an official 0.2% of the vote, which is at the very least questionable, given the patterns of significantly greater support in the population, and some reports of irregularities, which his campaign will be looking into.

In the context of strategic voting anti-Sarkozy and political debate surrounding the failed (see the “debates” on the halal and the driver’s license or the ridiculous campaign videos NPA), facing the pack of watchdogs of the media system, which by the grace of Sarkozyism, now occupy most aggressive public service audio-visual speech with the demanding and against the current that is his, I think nobody in the world could have done better that Jacques Cheminade.
Except, perhaps the Trotskyite.
Sure.  Blame the Media.
 “The vicious slanders against Jacques Cheminade are coming directly on orders from London,” LaRouche declared. “The British oligarchy is terrified of what I represent and what my associates and I are capable of doing to wreck their plans for thermonuclear extinction or a post-nation state plunge into a horrific global dark age. The British imperial monetarist system is doomed, and they are scared to death at the alternative that I offer.”

How Cheminade was pegged:
Insignificant candidates like Jacques Cheminade — a sort of French Lyndon LaRouche.  (Hm indeed).   centrist Jacques Cheminade.  (Hm indeed.)  A LaRouche candidate in the French elections? Seriously?  But not here.

Jacques Cheminade:  Its program combines song learning in kindergarten, the creation of a new currency, the “polytechnic eurofranco” comprehensive reform of the financial system, raising taxes on the wealthy, combat tax evasion and speculation. […]  The man, at once energetic and serene, will stop at nothing, even when reading the laughter in his eyes smarting from their partners who listen to show how the fortunes of the royal family comes from drug trafficking. A Jacques Cheminade also hangs on suspicion of being the guru of a sect hidden in his political party, Solidarity and Progress. It likes to make that question. In 2005, a ministerial mission on the sect said to the party, which he defined as follows: “Under the guise of anti-Bush political ideology with an alternative political movements made, the game plays with the fiber committed and idealistic students. ”

Well,  THE CAMPAIGN CONTINUES!  France will still have Cheminade to kick around a little… if they even notice and are motivated enough to.

Jacques Cheminade Vows to Continue Fight. Rally National Resistance – In overall effect, the effort put in to this campaign has consolidated the S&P network throughout France, at a time when the global financial disintegration is upsetting all the political calculations made until now.
candidates in the legislative elections [on June 10], who will show in the storm ahead, that they are as able as I am to defend our ideas.
“I am thinking in particular to the 585 mayors who presented my candidacy, to the activists of Solidarité & Progrès who fought energetically and to all those I met in our interventions in the streets. I am also thinking to the workers of Petroplus, Schindler, the Fonderies du Poitou, Erhel Hydris, the Fournier Laboratories, PSA-Aulnay and Florange-Mittal, whose jobs are immediately threatened by the looting of the financial system in which we live.
“My determination will go to support our 100 candidates, who will be the reference points in the approaching storm and will show the way out to safety.”

The cover for the latest National Review caught my eye.

I’m a little curious to read it, but have a gut feeling it would make hugely disappointing reading.  I see a review which PROBABLY would match my reaction.

In polemical writing, we see the equivalent of this approach in Jonah Goldberg’s current National Review cover story on Vice President Joe Biden. The headline: “Big &#%!ing Joker.”
The approach is to take one unfortunate aspect of the Biden persona—his tendency to blurt out unfortunate pronouncements—and hammer away at it over and over until he is reduced to a caricature. Then we can all laugh at him endlessly while ignoring whatever attributes kept him in the U.S. Senate for 36 years, elected by his state six times.
The Buzz does not carry water for Vice President Biden or any other politician. And Goldberg isn’t wrong to suggest that “Biden-speak” is characterized by the use of “the utmost superlative and the exaggeratedly hyperbolic.” But Biden’s Senate career included much more than that, and any serious profile of the man would at least nod in that direction.

Hm.  Biden, I guess, got away with some scrutiny — in the area of late night joke telling — by dent of McCain’s choice for a running mate — the indefensible Sarah Palin.  (Sorry Palin fans.)  I half imagine we can get something somewhere if we make a moral equivalence and he argues about media treatment of Quayle, or something.  BUT… the thing is… here is what is available online right now:

The word “literally” has taken a beating in the Age of Biden. The vice president’s speeches are “literally” festooned with “literally”s, like hundreds of tethers to the hot-air balloon that is his head. But let’s give the poor word some smelling salts and ask it to get back in the ring for a moment.

There was an Age of Cheney.  There is no Age of Biden.  Maybe he sits somewhere just past Hubert Humphrey in influence under his role of Vice President, and his record there may be substantial enough to warrant a critical examination, but there is a reason that public barely remembers he is there.  It’s a little hard to imagine how one can get worked up about the man, but kudos to the National Review and Jonah Goldberg, I suppose.

The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant by Daniel Pinkwater

Once there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now, the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and the rabbit is a very fast animal.
Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something.
People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy. The race was started, and there was a lot of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight.
The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would wind up winning the race.
Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line and the eggplant hadn’t moved an inch.
The spectators ate the eggplant.
Moral: Never bet on an eggplant.

VERSUS:

The Hare and the Pineapple
by Daniel Pinkwater  Alan Smithee

In olden times, the animals of the forest could speak English just like you and me. One day, a pineapple challenged a hare to a race.
(I forgot to mention, fruits and vegetables were able to speak too.)
A hare is like a rabbit, only skinnier and faster. This particular hare was known to be the fastest animal in the forest.
“You, a pineapple have the nerve to challenge me, a hare, to a race,” the hare asked the pineapple. “This must be some sort of joke.”
“No,” said the pineapple. “I want to race you. Twenty-six miles, and may the best animal win.”
“You aren’t even an animal!” the hare said. “You’re a tropical fruit!”
“Well, you know what I mean,” the pineapple said.
The animals of the forest thought it was very strange that tropical fruit should want to race a very fast animal.
“The pineapple has some trick up its sleeve,” a moose said.
Pineapples don’t have sleeves, an owl said.
“Well, you know what I mean,” the moose said. “If a pineapple challenges a hare to a race, it must be that the pineapple knows some secret trick that will allow it to win.”
“The pineapple probably expects us to root for the hare and then look like fools when it loses,” said a crow. “Then the pineapple will win the race because the hare is overconfident and takes a nap, or gets lost, or something.”
The animals agreed that this made sense. There was no reason a pineapple should challenge a hare unless it had a clever plan of some sort. So the animals, wanting to back a winner, all cheered for the pineapple.
When the race began, the hare sprinted forward and was out of sight in less than a minute. The pineapple just sat there, never moving an inch.
The animals crowded around watching to see how the pineapple was going to cleverly beat the hare. Two hours later when the hare cross the finish line, the pineapple was still sitting still and hadn’t moved an inch.
The animals ate the pineapple.
MORAL: Pineapples don’t have sleeves

Beginning with paragraph 4, in what order are the events in the story told?
A switching back and forth between places
B In the order in which the events happen
C Switching back and forth between the past and the present
D In the order in which the hare tells the events to another animal

The animals ate the pineapple most likely because they were
A Hungry
B Excited
C Annoyed
D Amused

Which animal spoke the wisest words?
A The hare
B The moose
C The crow
D The owl

Before the race, how did the animals feel toward the pineapple?
A Suspicious
B Kindly
C Sympathetic
D Envious
What would have happened if the animals had decided to cheer for the hare?
A The pineapple would have won the race.
B They would have been mad at the hare for winning.
C The hare would have just sat there and not moved.
D They would have been happy to have cheered for a winner.

When the moose said that the pineapple has some trick up its sleeve, he means that the pineapple
A is wearing a disguise
B wants to show the animals a trick
C has a plan to fool the animals
D is going to put something out of its sleeve

………………………………………

Hm.  I say throw out the multiple choice questions and make the students compose an essay comparing and contrasting the two versions of this fable.

This is just like Pinkwater’s middle school classmate, fictionalized as Alan Mendelsohn, who caused an uproar by proclaiming to everyone that he is a Martian.

Students across the state are still scratching their heads over an absurd state test question about a talking pineapple.

… Where kids are asked questions about the Pinkwater fable “The Hare and the Pineapple”. (a re-editing of the Pinkwater fable “The Rabbit and the Eggplant”.  Apparently the test-masters didn’t want the kids to get confused in not knowing what eggplant is.)

Daniel Pinkwater: “Nonsense topped upon Nonsense“.

Responding to 8th Grade complaint that he is a sell-out.

Boing Boing: Absurdist kids’ literature hero Daniel Pinkwater is at the center of an appropriately absurd kerfuffle.

Pinkwater Controversy erupts on Standardized Test Question about Borgel.

“Flunks the test of Common Sense”

When Pineapple Races Hare, Students Lose.:
A reading passage included this week in one of New York’s standardized English tests has become the talk of the eighth grade, with students walking around saying, “Pineapples don’t have sleeves,” as if it were the code for admission to a secret society. […]

While the furor over the test passage seems to have achieved phenomenal proportions in New York — one boy has already posted a picture on his Facebook page of a T-shirt with the motto “Pineapples Don’t Have Sleeves” — it has caused similar ripples across the country.

Sheesh.
But students and educators were divided over whether the passage, which is a parody of the “Tortoise and Hare” fable, is amusing or disturbing.
“It was kind of funny and a little weird,” said one student.
“That article about the pineapple and the hare was stupid and absurd,” said another.

NPR story.

More commentary.

If ever there was a reason to pull a stop on standardized testing mania, it’s this story.

From the mouth of babes: “What the heck,” my kids wanted to know “was Daniel Pinkwater doing writing about a hare and a pineapple? Everybody knows the story is supposed to be about an eggplant.”

Ken Jennings: ) In fact, it reads like one of those random, fill-in-the-blank “Mad Libs” stories that seven-year-olds annoy everyone with on family vacations. A ninja and toothpaste? What does that even mean?

Sigh.

Laughing My @$$ off.

C Hartley Grattan, “Red Opinion in the United States”, Scribner’s Magazine Novemeber 1934

How far Left can one go without ceasing to be a member of His Capitalist Majesty’s Opposition?  That is a hard question to answer, for the gradations around the point where the final step is made outside the capitalist pale are infinite.  […]
Assuming that the fatal steps of which we speak is made somewhere in the socialist ideology we may line up the parties of the Left as follows: (minor additional examples will be cited later):

SP – AWP – CP (Opposition) – CLA – SLP.  What do these mystic letters mean?  They mean Socialist Party, American Workers Party (familiarly known as the Musterites), the Communist Party of the Right Opposition (familiarly, the Lovestoneites), the Communist Party USA (Section of the Third International), the Communist League of America the Left opposition of the CP (familiarly known as the Trotskyites), and the Socialist Labor Party (familiarly known as the De Leonites).  The Right and Left oppositions of the CP are not recognized as such by the CP.  They are built around expelled members of the CP and have connections in other countries with groups ideologically closely similar and standing in the same relation to the CP.  The Socialist Party also has international affiliations.  It is a member of the Labor and Socialist International (familiarly known as the 2 1/2 International) with headquarters at Zurich.  The AWP and the SLP are not affiliated with international bodies nor are any of the minor groups to be mentioned incidentally. […]

Any ardent communist controversialist can give a bourgeois writers lessons in invective.  Nothing like it has been seen in America since the decline of personal journalism in the nineteenth century.  The abuse exchanged by the communist groups far surpasses in violence anything leveled against them individually or collectively by the bourgeois press.  Arnold Peterson of the Socialist Labor Party denies the right of the Communist Party to the designation “Communist” and unifromly refers to the group as the “Anarcho-Communists”, arguing that they are corrupted by the ideas of the Russian anarchist Bukunin against whom Marx fought tooth and nail, and describes them thus:  “They represent a hopeless mixture of pure lunacy, almost unbelievable imbecility, unscrupulous crookedness, brazen insolence and total contempt for the intelligence of those whom (presumably) they desire to reach.”  (Virus of Anarchy p 24).  Not content with repeating this, the SLP again through Peterson, its chief ideologist at present, puts out a pamphlet entitled WZ Foster — Renegade or Spy? recounting Foster’s career, quoting from his testimony before the Senate Committee which investigated the steel strike of 1919 (which is pretty damaging) and developing in general Daniel De Leon’s characterization of him as “a preambulating lump of erratic contradictory foot-in-the-mouthedness.”  Let us look at some Communist Party characterizations of opponents.  In New Masses, February 20, 1934, an anonymous editorialist, writing under the title “Disguised as Marxists,” tried to dispose of a group of Left parties […]

Of course these blasts are returned in kind by the men and parties attacked.  The vigor of the attacks is almost in direct ratio to the power and influence of the men and parties being attacked and they are also tempered or intensified by political necessity.  The Socialist Labor Party, being abjudged unimportant, is rarely mentioned in the Left press, but that only intensified the SLP’s attacks.  The Lovestoneites (Communist Oppositon) temper their criticisms because “The Communist Opposition fights for its readmission into the official party . . . ” (BD Wolfe, What Is the Communist Opposition? p 5), but Wolfe in the same pamphlet can say “Foster writes a book — Toward an American Communism — which might as well have been written on Mars for all the reflection of American realities.”  (17)  This group is also in favor of the readmission to the official party of the Communist League of America (the Trotskyites) but only if they give up a substantial portion of their ideas and in any case it is a pretty empty gesture since the Communist Party and the Trotskyites are worse folks still, “counter-revolutionaries”.  […]

Social-fascism is, then, a term used to denigrate any thing, tactic, or argument which deflects the attention of the working class from the revolution which is alleged to be in the keeping of the official Communist Party.  In America the Communist Party contends that this is true of the AWP, the Socialist Party, and many other groups and individuals.
The proof of the contention is difficult to prove short of an actual stifling of an actual revolution but the Socialist Party certainly does play down the class struggle or tries to, rejects the dictatorship of the proleteriat, and hopes and argues for a peaceful transition to socialism.  Indeed the Socialist Party is jockeyed by argumentation into the position of the “third party of capitalism”.  Under the drum fire played upon it from all sides, for the Communist Party is not alone in attacking the Socialists as we have seen [–]

There seems to be some confusion on the post I did about Shopping for Pop Tarts.    So, to expound on the whole “Pop Tart issue”… and now that  I think about it The Pop Tart issue dove-tails right back to Cosmopolitan.  Let’s compare the two most recent Pop Tart box designs.

I would say the Pop Tart on this box is reasonable in dimensions.  There is no great bending of spatial relations going on here.  The perspective is not surreal.

But now let’s look at this most recent box design.

Forced perspective, I would say.  Watch how the pop tart quickly slides into nothingness as it approaches the “Disappearing” line.

What’s the Cosmopolitan relation here?  Well… we see models getting photoshopped into similarly surrealistic proportions.

Glad I can clear this matter up!

Time to look through the Multnomah County Voters’ pamphlet and sees whats we gots:

Secretary of State.  Paul Damian Wells, the challenger who will not come close to knocking off Kate Brown.  His voters pamphlet statement has him a single-issue candidate: he likes the Top 2 Primary Election system in place in neighboring Washington and California — top 2 primary vote getters move on to general election regardless of party affiliation.  I’m neutral on this.  But you do have to wonder about his argument — he cites the Libertarian Party losing a lawsuit once — this should get the Democratic Party vote, how?

State Representatives.  Go to the 50th District and Greg Matthews lists his community service background.  Cited in a list: emcee for The Teddy Bear Parade and emcee for a sock hop.  I don’t know that I want that in a state legislator, quite frankly.

The County Commisioner race: surely Wes Sederback could have found a better photograph?
District #3:  Interesting that Patty Burback cites prior governmental experience going clear back to her middle school class veep victory.

The big race, of course, is the mayoral race.  Normally we have it set that the race is decided to a final 2 “real” candidates of viability.  The task in the primary becomes deciding amongst the also runs in wait for a real decision in the general election.  This year, we have 3 “viable real” candidates decided for us.  I suppose one’s vote could go to deciding who to thrust forward and who to sideline in the three, but unfortunately I have to grit my teeth at all of them, and can’t stomach this game.  So it is we go to the list of others and what do we find?  Steve Sung announces himself the “People’s Mayor”; Loren Charles Brown calls himself the “People’s Mayor”.  Michael B Largley draws a laugh with his pledge to “revitalize downtown with more diversified businesses — not just food carts, non profits, and coffeeshops.”  (Hm.  In the new economy, it’s this or non profits and Wal-Marts).  Scott Rose and Howie Rubin make no pretense of their governing approach ala pandering:  the former will “Continue to root my belief in what you say to me”, the latter wants “to enable you to do the things you do.”  Max Brumm makes the funny on the question of his viability ala inexperience (he’s a teenager):  “it’s a knee jerk response, but what do you expect from jerks who’ve brought Portland to its knees?”

Finally, there’s Tre Arrow and Cameron Whitten.  I lump them together for this reason and this reason only: Tre Arrow cites his 2000 nomination for Congress by the Pacific Green Party.  I remember hearing from radio host Rick Emerson about the Green Party Convention in 2000: you get Ralph Nader making a speech, than another veteran of public power causes for a statewide office, and then… you just kind of wince and look away when Tre Arrow comes to the podium.  Anyway, 12 years and I guess the party has come to the same conflusion.  Written in Cameron Whitten’s profile is an endorsement by the Pacific Green Party, as well as the Portland Chapter of the Oregon Progressive Party.  (A Party which formed in 2008 for the transparent purpose of getting Nader on the ballot.  Now that that’s over, I don’t really understand why it doesn’t just merge with the Green Party — but they can do what they must.)

I endorse Cameron Whitten.  Why?  Only because he’s the only candidate who I’ve happened to see and spoken with.  I asked him how his campaign was going — he said he had some trouble at the Lloyd Center Mall regarding his bullhorn.  Sorry everyone else — you just didn’t pound the flesh.