Howard Dean?? And Rachel says she can't get big names on her show, I'm excited! And Crawford, TX? Really?

Haven't we had enough of these types (Bush, Cheney, Rove)?

Some wonder why Obama is not leading by a landslide. I'd like to suggest two reasons; first, it's early. Wait until after the debates and closer to 11/4. Second, like many (my guess here) I'm part of the "registered" undecided (12% per CNN today). Sure if today was 11/4 I'd place my vote for Obama but today is NOT 11/4 and I reserve the right to hear the whole story; debates, detailed plans and more. That said, McCann would have to come a long way out of Bushdumb (not a misspelling) to earn my vote.

You could never replace the old AAR team, the fabulous Jim Earles! Speaking of the good old days, where is Kris loPresto these days?

...the JibJab boys are at it again.

http://sendables.jibjab.com/

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."--Pete Townsend

I will remember Helms as the source of the nastiest and most morally and intellectually vacuous campaigns I've ever encountered. He never soiled a single one of his campaigns with dignity or decency. He was a deeply mean-spirited man.

Stashed away somewhere, I have a piece of authentic campaign literature from Helms's race against Jim Hunt. When I was handed the thing by a Helms campaign volunteer way back when, I immediately spotted it as a keeper. It's a booklet of childish hand-drawn cartoons illustrating why Jim Hunt was dangerous and unworthy of a Senate seat. One of the cartoons depicted Jim Hunt perched on the trunk of a convertible packed with scantily clad gay men who are waving liquor bottles, kissing each other, displaying limp wrists, and leering lasciviously as the car races out of of control directly at an innocent young child in its path. Jim Hunt is obviously having the time of his life -- grinning wildly, tippling straight from a bottle of hootch, and (if I remember right) clutching a document entitled "Homosexual agenda." Whoever drew the cartoon forgot to add an angry Jesus shooting at the gays, but otherwise it does a really good job of stuffing just about every insane stereotype into one compact image. Not much text to speak of in the booklet -- the demographic at which it was aimed tends to have a few difficulties with the reading thing.

The booklet was famous even in its own time -- ranked right up there with the blatantly racist tv ads that Helms ran in the Senate race against Nick Galifianakus. If anybody's interested in having a copy, let me know and I'll see if I can dig the thing up. But you have to be something of an elections geek to stomach the thing.

Jesse declared war on "the gay" long before HIV/AIDS surfaced in America. The man would say pretty much anything that he thought would throw the "eastern media into apoplexy" (to cadge a phrase from a Chapel Hill writer), whether he believed it or not, simply because he found it amusing to provoke people (in exactly the same way some people derive glee from kicking dogs and watching them howl). But when he went off about "the gay," he meant every vicious crazy thing he ever said. He meant to inflict harm, and he did inflict a great deal of harm.

Finally, for years, I couldn't fathom why Helms was rabid about the Panama Canal. Besides "the gay," the Panama Canal was one of his most heart-felt and most filibuster-inspiring issues. He was incapable of talking about the Panama Canal without pounding a podium and spewing spittle as he ranted. About two months ago, I stumbled across a bunch of huge clues about this, and it's absolutely astounding. It's some of the weirdest racial reasoning I've ever dug up. It hooks up with (a) James II of England and the Jacobites' demands, as perpetuated and expanded two centuries later by (b) the aims of the Confederate States of America for "Phase Two" of the Civil War. (Phase Two of the Civil War, as envisioned by the CSA, never materialized, because Phase One (i.e., kicking the Yankees' butts) didn't quite pan out as planned.)

I think I can make a pretty strong case that Helms saw relinquishment of US ownership of the Panama Canal as an infuriating abandonment of a centuries-old dream of a faction of mid-17th- Century Ulster Scots who wanted to own and settle Cuba, Panama, Mexico, and other points south. Seems conspicuous that the CSA also reportedly had plans to conquer Cuba, Panama, Mexico, and parts of Central America after defeating the Union. So, I think Jesse was trying to keep the US invested in some small part of Jefferson Davis's grand plans. What a great guy, huh?

Bottom line - Jesse Helms was the intellectual and political heir to Josiah Turner in North Carolina. Helms's rants during the 6:00 am hog reports on rural AM radio in the late '60s -- and gobs of his campaign literature -- were obviously ripped directly from the pages of 1868-1871 editions of the Raleigh Sentinel (Turner's newspaper which prominently bore the KKK insignia in its masthead). But nasty old Josiah Turner arguably had an excuse for his behaviour and beliefs -- namely, that he had metal in his head, left over from the Battle of Gettysburg. According to Michael Barone's Almanac of American Politics, Jesse managed to "fail to complete a degree" at no fewer than four colleges and universities in NC, even without the benefit a tragic head injury. IMHO, that means Helms leap frogs over Josiah Turner in the "most shamefully bad man in American politics" pageant.

Just one question:

If the target of the New Yorker magazine cover was the right wing, were was the rabid wing nut writhing on all fours, foaming at the mouth, slathering, and howling at the moon? I missed that part.

Robert Ludwig
Harvard, IL 60033

Bush admin agrees not to a "timetable", but to a - get this - "general time horizon" for reducing troop levels.

You can't make up this stuff.

----- [manage to make some "news" come August, well my partner is planning on leaving the Democratic Party for good (as would I,]By Polly Tics / July 18, 2008 - 7:56pm ---

that is the mental state that the McCain team is hoping for, get real, be a leader not a follower, hard to complain about the dem's and the state of out nation on one candidate or the other or even a party, because with voters out there like you, it is no wonder Bush won the white house twice... because if "if your not the lead dog, the view will always be the same" (...quote by unknown writer)

To get her 4 US (united States)
Caren Turner
Lynn Forester de Rothschild
Amy Siskind

as I posted last month about the difference between suspended and conceded.. even with dict'y cite' that was on the Washington Post blog and became and op-ed piece in the observer ..... It's all a matter of settling for and arranged marriage or got out and eloping for the one who has YOUR interest at the top of there thank you card list

I am on Disability, receiving last than 900.00 a month in benefits, my home payment is 850.00 and I maintain an older car, yes it's a bimmer, but I have to draw the line somewhere, the bimmer, (and prior to the petro increase price, it was a range rover), I earn additional funds by writing on the net.

As I said before... be the leader .. if you have to follow anything in your life, make it your conscience... not the back of somebody else head (or as~*!x )... money does not make a leader, "YOU "make a leader.