Does anyone know anything about this website? I stumbled upon it during a websearch and they seem to be following up closely but are waaaay less popular. I doubt there are more than a hundred people on the entire site.

My thinking is that some of the conserva-trolls here run over there to high five each other under the table.

And I have to say this is mostly just based on my own observations so I could be reading too much into things.

I have noted a huge increase in the number of people here that have a hundred posts or less. Does this mean that even backlash has a backlash? Is there a possibility of some kind of victory in the face of this defeat? Is it possible to come back from what happened?

How much longer are we going to be plauged by industry hacks and their supporters. I would like to see President Obama fire this guy and replace him with someone concerned about the American people and the environment.

The reason that Michele Bachmann is throwing such a histerical tirade against the census is because it will destroy her. She does not give a tinkers damn about damaging other GOP congressional districts. Her district is the most Gerrymandered district in Minnesota and she knows it. Any rational redisttricting body (whether the legislature or a bipartisan commision) is going to take one look at it and rearrange it to make sense which will result in Bachman going down permanently.

Either a combined district will attract more Rational GOP candidates to primary her and/or she will be demolished by the Democrats later.

She probably figures if she makes a big enough stink about this mess people will rise up and champion her for being a 'victim of the census.' She will speak out and her stupid supporters will claim that 'Bachmann is being punished for having the courage to speak out' or some such nonsense.

I can't believe it took me so long to figure it out.


(edited-thanks)

If this isn’t the most egocentric beginning to this little note give me a few minutes. I am certain that I will eventually reveal the depths of my egotism for all to see.

Alright now, in the past couple of months the numbers of republican congressmen announcing their intention to sit it out and retire has grown by leaps and bounds. In my own Minnesota (though not my congressional district) Jim Ramstad is retiring and leaving the third congressional district in play.

Every week I seem to read about another Republican retiring and opening up another district to vulnerability. Of course many of these Republicans end up coming from districts that do swing now and again, so with Bush and Rove poisoning the political well so much it is going to seriously compromise republican chances for doing much of anything and it is highly likely that Democrat gains will widen.

Of course this is all up in the air and a lot of it is contingent on what kind of Democrat that is put forward on the national stage. But let us forget this for a moment. Let us pretend that it doesn’t matter who is put forth for president and that it will have little to no impact on the upcoming congressional elections. Of course I strongly believe it will, but I will try to put aside my own preferences.

I suspect in the next six months each and every district will be visited by two or three different groups of people representing ‘Party Interests.’ I urge you all to ignore them. Ignore them like you would try to ignore a screaming child not getting a happy meal on a long bus ride to whatever corner of America you live farthest from. The sense of entitlement and self interest will be all that is beneath their pleading and goading and cajoling.

One group will be some of the party old guard (of course there are good old guards too-but trust me these guys won’t be them.) Many of them are going to be unelected or rarely opposed party figures that may hold down part time jobs as pundits. These are the guys who in days of yore would have picked candidates in smoked filled rooms and you know what? They still think that they do.

To those of you with the temerity and idealism to run they will approach you and bag you down with bullshit about what they think they know about your district. They will boggle you with juggled numbers in their power meetings, complete with food and power-point. These unshakable curmudgeon-cynics are immune to passion and vision and many just exist to get people they know in places of power. In deciding that they are modern day king makers that inflate their own importance at the expense of actual democracy.

The next group will be “The Professionals.” These guys are useless and clueless. When they aren’t throwing elections to the other side for no reason they are often giving useless advice on media presentation that eventually serves no purpose and is about as exciting as plain oatmeal or maybe the paste you ate when you were in kindergarten.

Their best skill is to underestimate and misjudge the electorate at every turn. The most effective of these pricks manage a negative campaign and little else. They specialize at sanding all the rough edges off of perfectly viable candidates until all that is left is sawdust that can be glued back together and lacquered into whatever shape they think to be most electable.

You will almost never encounter these jackal-mercenaries alone. Since they are ‘for hire’ they have no reason to be faithful to party or platform or issue. Some of them might have started out doing work for whatever issue that they embraced at whatever private undergraduate college they got through. If we are all lucky they still give a shit but usually they have long since sold out. So you will either encounter them with the former “old Guard” or the next group of fabulous scum.

The DLC has been around since the 80’s and has been a perfect foil to the Democratic Party since then. It has been a dagger aimed at the heart of reform and progressives since that time, though it has only become obvious to some of us when things like Free trade and Joseph Lieberman popped up.

This is the group you would next have to work your way through. Though seemingly powerless and with very little actual people-support they still manage to cow politicians into accepting their guidance. The DLC will have their own person picked out (who may or may not be the ‘old guards’ choice) and it will not be you.

They will have some switch-hitting ex republican chosen who has seen the light and is ready to be limitedly socially moderate and economically conservative and will play well with the suburban or NASCAR crowd or whatever other line of Bull they seek to sell you this week. Or they will scrape the chamber of commerce for a businessman they can trust. Either way you will not have a real Democrat running for office. You will have a corporate stooge or a puppet.

I write this semi-rant/semi-comedy (I hope) to illustrate what has happened in many congressional districts in the last couple of years. I call upon you to ignore the old guard and the DLC and their professional friends. Ignore them and run. Ignore them and support the guy you like.

It was John Garner the 32nd Vice President of the United States that suggested that the office of the vice president wasn’t worth "a warm bucket of spit." One can hardly deny that a VP might have reasons to believe this considering the majority of his duties seem largely ceremonial, at least historically speaking. Until someone dies or the Senate can’t quite make up its mind the VP is pretty useless. There of course have been historical Vice Presidents that have gone a little further, exceeding their duties and the law. Richard Nixon, who could not wait to campaign for president it seems, and Dick Cheney who seems to have expanded his authority beyond the constitution to the point where he seems to be creating his own "fourth branch" of government.

It is in concern to these matters and a spirit of pragmatism as well as an eye on the specific problems of the current body inhabiting that bucket of spit (however worthy he might be of it) that I suggest a solution to this problem.

We should cryogenically freeze all vice presidents upon assumption of office. I’m serious. Five minutes after taking their oath of office they should kiss their loved ones goodnight and drop into a chute and be frozen in carbonite or whatever the hell they used to put Disney on ice.

And think of the advantages to the consumer. A VP can be kept fresh as the day they were frozen with all opinions and concerns crispy and ready to put to use should he need to be wheeled out to vote with the Senate. No fuss no muss. Of course the VP would also be preserved in whatever health he was when he was turned into a Popsicle resulting in less wear and tear or need for replacement.

This would also be a tremendous advantage in terms of national security. Imagine a terrorist crashes a plane with a stolen icelandian neutron bomb (those crazy Viking would never use a weapon that would deprive them of possible loot and booty) on capitol mall MEANWHILE a hijacked jumbo jet parachutes 200,000 rabid weasels all over LA and somehow Jack Ryan and Jack Bauer are both on a honeymoon vacation together on some remote Grecian island. Whatever would we do?

Well with the frozen VP the answer would be easy. His cryo- tube could be stored in a vault 2 miles underground in the most secure imaginable facility, thus guaranteeing the line of succession beyond any doubt.

The chaos of succession seems neat and orderly compared to the dizzying activities that occur between the various staff of the President and VP. One office plays around with responsibility in funneling intelligence or pushing forward lists of prosecutors assuming duties that are not officially delegated in a neat and orderly fashion. The executive becomes less an individual with actual accountability and more a shifting morass of ideologies and competing interests. Even seemingly benign programs such as Al Gore’s involvement in‘Reinventing Government’ created a bit of confusion. Having a VP on ice saves us all of this potential trouble.

And think of the savings. Right now the senate is trying to defund the VP’s office because of his unwillingness to share information in regards to innumerable scandals. I say go for it! If we freeze him he does not need staff, offices, rent for a DC townhouse, access to Air force One, or the massive amount of money that goes into securing his every move by the secret service.

Of course there will be those nay-sayers that suggest this can’t be done, that we don’t have the technology, or that attempting to cryo-freeze a VP before we can properly thaw them might be an unneeded risk. Well in the case of the current VP I think we should certainly be willing to take that risk.