So.  Lincoln Chafee out in the hustlings in New Hampshire…

Chafee told the group he wants to bring National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden home, dropping all charges against him. Paula Trombi of Meredith said she liked some of what he said but was taken aback and disappointed by his position on Snowden. She also can’t understand why he keeps talking about the metric system, of all things.

Because he’s UNAFRAID!

This next one is … telling.

Dave Pollak, chairman of Belknap County Democrats, said he agreed with Chafee that Snowden is a whistleblower and should not be prosecuted. With Chafee’s background in different parties, Pollak sees him as someone who could bridge the ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans. He even likes the metric system idea.
But Pollak finds other aspects of Chafee’s campaign peculiar.
“Clinton’s campaign is in contact with the group every week inviting its members to events, has multiple campaign offices open and created specialty groups for supporters such as “High Schoolers for Hillary.” The Sanders campaign sends regular “rousing” emails on issues, Pollak said. The campaign for another rival, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, also has staff in the state.
Chafee, on the other hand, has no campaign staff in New Hampshire yet and appears to be running on a shoestring. Although Chafee has a vacation home further north in Franconia, he said he hasn’t been staying there during the campaign. Instead, he drives to his New Hampshire events from Rhode Island, a five-hour round trip this evening. He was back in Somersworth, New Hampshire, the following day.
It makes Pollak wonder how serious he is.

Theater Review.  And “I need my neighbor with me”.  Then again.  Given that the act of being president is… an act… maybe such is a good measurement of this.  As opposed to where they stand on the metric system.

“What’s the organization?” he asks. “What gives you confidence that he can get the voters out?”
Chafee gets testy when asked about matters like that. He says it’s an “evolutionary process.”
“You guys never ask anything about the substance,” he told a reporter. “It’s always about how many people, how much money have you raised. Ugh.”

Or…

As he spoke, Chafee aide Jonathan Stevens handed out stickers saying “Trust Chafee.” The design and motto are identical to the one from his 2010 campaign for governor. Asked if they’re 2010 leftovers, Stevens replied, “We recycle everything.”
Stickers bearing this year’s motto, “Fresh Ideas for America,” were nowhere in sight.

Hey!  It’s the Kucinich campaign for congress, after he left the presidential bid because he had a tough primary.

From Rebel America, The Story of Social Revolt in the United States, Lillian Symes and Travers Clement. page 206-207, 1934

The Road not traveled?

Meanwhile, from all the confused activities of socialistically inclined individuals outside the Socialist Labor Party Left- Wing Populists and Nationalists, Fabians, Christian Social- ists, even many pure Utopians with out-and-out colonizing schemes, a new socialistic movement was springing up. Its moving spirits at the outset were J. A. Way land, editor of the Coming Nation, and Colonel R. J. Hinton, who had a pet scheme to inaugurate socialism by capturing a western state through colonizing the nation’s socialists within its borders.  They brought into existence the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth which attracted the attention of Debs.

Debs, while in Woodstock Prison as an outcome of his activities during the Pullman strike, had received a visit from the Milwaukee socialist leader, Victor Berger. Deeply impressed by Berger, he read the socialist literature which Berger sent him back from Milwaukee. While he did not become an enthusiastic convert overnight he supported Bryan in 1896 the more humanitarian aspects of the socialist philosophy made a strong appeal to his warm-hearted, emotional nature. The Pullman strike had practically smashed his American Railway Union, but now he decided to pull the  remnants of it together into some sort of political organization. Once out of jail, he welcomed the opportunity to join hands with the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth. At Chicago, in June, 1897, the two organizations were welded together into a new party, the Social Democracy of America.

Colonizers, anarchists, trade unionists, a few clear-cut socialists, radicals of every description were represented at the Chicago convention. The colonizers were perhaps the dominant group and a committee was appointed which later endorsed a scheme to acquire 560 acres of land in the Cripple Creek region of Colorado. This was to be the site of a model cooperative commonwealth. But by the time the 1898 convention rolled around the more clear-headed socialists had gained in influence and numbers. They descended upon this second convention determined to capture it and to rule out all colonizing schemes. After a vigorous fight, in which they were
defeated, they bolted and established still another new party the Social Democratic Party of America. Its national executive board included Debs and Victor Berger.

I think all good socialists in this country (whatever that may be) who … I don’t know… see through the facade of politicos like Bernie Sanders? … ought brush up this colonizing a state idea, and try their hand at… New Hampshire.

For no other reason than to see if we can have a Socialist Versus Libertarian brush-fight with the libertarians of the  “Free Staters“.

A question for the query, search question, that gets to this page…

is bernie sanders skull and bones …

The answer is no.  If you have some other method of attaching bernie sanders to the illuminati, and thus being propped up at the bilderberg meetings feel free, but he is not so out of skull of bones.

I thought about Jim Webb a week back, as Republican after Republican presidential candidate were forced to contend with the issue of the Confederate flag in the wake of the black church shooting…

… my sympathies to the candidates whose answer is “it won’t be an issue a president is grappling with”… even as at the strictest narrowest level the answer is… er… the state of South Carolina ought remove it as an official emblem hanging over the capitol…

In sum of his latest presidential hustlings from Reason magazine’s blog… that ends with the answer to the question…

Oh, he didn’t vanish entirely. Last month BuzzFeed spotted him at the annual Scottish Games in South Carolina, where he gave the haggis-and-kilt crowd what was “arguably the briefest stump speech in presidential history—a six-minute-and-five-seconds contemplation of the role of the Scotch-Irish in American history.” Last week he published a piece of fiction in Politico called “To Kill a Man,” which may be a first in presidential politics. And after the other Democratic candidates reacted to the Charleston church massacre with full-throated condemnations of the Confederate battle flag, Webb released a more subdued statement asking us to “remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War.”

He’s a few days from offering up a running or not.

And what’s interesting here is that Jim Webb, should he throw his hat in the ring (a ring that, quite bluntly, is going to end up going to Hillary Clinton with nary much problem) …

… would be the contradictory opinion to an iron-clad view against the Confederate flag.  Whether this dissent from a Democratic candidate is anything any Republican candidate would want to proffer in their defense of an issue they’d just as soon have go away (and I suppose will more or less), well…