We progressive types are working overtime these days marching, rallying, sitting, petitioning.  We place ourselves prominently on Twitter (with our #p2, #OWS, and #CTL hashtags) and on Facebook.  More and more of us have taken to writing political blogs.  Our blogrolls feature other bloggers, other writers who work as hard or harder than we do in trying to sort out the truths behind America’s astonishing decline and the Rightward drift that led us here.  Our job is to route out the bad guys, to expose them and make sure justice take its course.  Some days we actually think we’re winning.

Silly us.

This is not David and Goliath, with the little guy getting a chance at saving the day through luck and pluck.  Not anymore.  This is Goliath stomping David into the ground. There’s David, bleeding and broken–but look!  He’s still breathing!  David’s crowd takes that as a sign of victory and moves on. The next time they’ll try peashooters.

In the 21st century–a century only slightly over a decade old and already the leading contender for “modern century most likely to return to the Dark Ages”–we the people are millions of little Davids and Big Business is one huge Goliath.  We wee Davids actually thought if we worked hard and built up our troops and used truth as a weapon, we might some day be able to take Goliath down.  We thought we might be able to survive and maybe even thrive without too much breakage or damage to our dignity.  We thought we could do it not by might (because we aren’t the mighty ones, they are) but by using corny throwbacks like common sense and good will and solidarity.

Boy, were we wrong!

I’ll give you one small example of Goliath’s power and why we don’t stand a chance:

Ever been in a Books-a-Million store?  I hadn’t either until I came south, and I went in innocently enough, as anyone would.  It’s a bookstore, after all, and I do love bookstores.  But I didn’t have to spend much time there before I began to see a trend:  I am the kind of person they hate.  I am the enemy, fagawdssake!  I realize I’m in the south and the south is hostile to avowed liberals, but come on — let me at least get to the humor section before the attacks begin.

This is what I encountered mere feet inside the door the other day:

At Books-a-Million, Myrtle Beach 1/25/12

This is an end cap in the main aisle.  The titles change periodically, but the lean to the right never goes away.  (I apologize for the poor photos.  I took them with my kindergarten grade cell-phone camera, quickly so nobody would notice, because I was, after all, standing in plain view, because that’s where these hostile books can best be seen.)

There is another Books-A-Million outside a huge mall a few miles from this smaller mall.  They have an all-rightie-all-the-time end cap in their main aisle, too, so this is not just some Bubba manager’s idea of fun, it’s store policy.  (In case you’re wondering, I’ve looked all over for the liberal end caps.  They’re not there.)

So then it came to me that if I buy something in a BAM! store (that’s their nickname), I’m aiding the enemy.  So I don’t.  Now I plan my trips to Books-a-Million as one would a reconnaissance mission, a stealth activity: Let’s see what rotten propaganda they’re pushing now.

Once I get past that ugly end cap, I spend some minutes rearranging books on the shelves so that the few liberal or even moderate books cover some of that junk. (Pathetic, I know, but it’s the best I can do ever since I took that stand against vandalism.)

Then I grab something to read and sit at a table in their Joe Muggs Cafe (My own little sit-in I calls it, since I read their books and magazines and never buy anything, but so far no one seems to notice.)  I should mention that BAM! publishes a monthly Book Page magazine highlighting their latest books.   Mark R. Levin, a Right Wing radio personality and “the #1 bestselling author of Liberty and Tyranny and regular Fox News contributor” is on January’s cover.  (Last month it was Glenn Beck).  Levin has a new book out called, “Ameritopia, The Unmaking of America”.   Before I saw that cover, I confess I had never heard of Mark R. Levin.  (Go ahead and strip me of my Rotten Persons Investigator badge–I know now that his new book, “Ameritopia” is at the top, the very tip-top,  of this week’s New York Times non-fiction bestseller list! )

So I took a look at the new book by this guy who–my god! NYT Best Seller!–I really should have heard of by now.  I turned page after page and, okay, as a new Mark R. Levin reader who is also a liberal, I’m as biased as biased can be.  But even I am shocked at how badly this book stinks!

Let me tell you, he’s no Glenn Beck.

From the Introduction:

In Ameritopia I explain that the heart of the problem is, in fact, utopianism, a term I discuss in great detail throughout the book.  Utopianism is the idealogical and doctrinal foundation for statism. While utopianism or statism or utopian or statist are often used interchangeably, the undertaking here is to probe more dceply into what motivates and animates the tyranny of statism.  Indeed the modern arguments about necessities and virtues of governmental control over the individual are but malign echoes of utopian prescriptions through the ages, which attempted to define subjugation as the most transcendent state of man.

And the first lines of the first chapter, “The Tyranny of Utopia”:

Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature.  Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable and even paradisiacal governing ideology.  There are, of course, unlimited utopian constructs, for the mind is capable of infinite fantasies.  But there are common themes.  The fantasies take the form of grand social plans or experiments, the impracticality and impossibility of which, in small ways and large, leads to the individual’s subjugation.

And it goes on.  This book, I remind you, is NUMBER ONE ON THE NEW YORK TIMES NON-FICTION BEST SELLER LIST.  The book came out on January 17–less than two weeks ago–and already over 1200 people have reviewed it on Amazon, 876 of them giving it Five Stars.

It’s a runaway best seller and from where I’m sitting (In BAM!s Joe Muggs cafe) I’m concluding that something besides this book is stinking to high heaven.

Consider this:

After the closing of Borders Books in 2011, Books-a-Million became the second largest bookseller in the United States, behind Barnes and Noble.   They operate some 200 stores in the south, the northeast and in the midwest.  They’ve now taken over dozens of empty Borders stores and opened Books-A-Millions in their space.

And they sell millions of books on their website.  If you go on their site and click on the “Political Science” category, as I did yesterday,  on the very first page you’ll find a mess of right wing and conservative books, from the current to the moldy old.  Glenn Beck is prominent, as is that guy, Mark R. Levin.  Laura Ingraham is there; so is Sarah Palin.  So is Bill O’Reilly, not for his most recent book about Lincoln, but for his memoir, published way back in 2008.

Bill Clinton and Zbigniew Brzezinski are there, too, but from what I can tell, they’re mere tokens.  (Unless maybe they said something bad about Obama. . .)  But I have to wonder why old books by the Righties, some more than three years old, are at the top of their list when so many other, newer  books might better deserve to be there.

Mark R. Levin’s “Ameritopia” is his second book for Threshold Publishing, a Simon and Schuster imprint that exclusively publishes “conservative” books, many of which rise to the top of the NYT best seller list.  Levin’s book, “Liberty and Tyranny” (There’s that word again) also hit the top of the NYT bestseller list, and now he, along with Glenn Beck, is Threshold’s star.  Mary Matalin is its Editor-in-Chief.  (I looked hard for a liberal arm of Simon and Schuster (a CBS company), or any other publishing company, and–no surprise–there are none.)

In a telling article about Threshold in Politico, July 21, 2009, it’s clear that any liberal expecting to write a best-seller might better stick to fiction:

Adam Bellow, executive editor at HarperCollins, noted that conservative publishing first took off in the 1990s, with the New York houses initially resistant — until the possible payoff became obvious for books taking shots at liberals. (Bellow edited Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” for Doubleday.) Now, going forward, he notes there are challenges ahead for upstart imprints like Threshold.

“If you’re setting up an imprint, you’re taking on a real financial challenge,” Bellow said. “You have to have screaming commercial best-sellers. You have to keep delivering them year after year. The success at Threshold, which took a while to find its legs, has been largely to do with Glenn Beck and Mark Levin. And the success of those books is that these authors have enormous media platforms.”

Bellow, who’s editing Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated memoir, said he expects that at least through Obama’s presidency, publishing houses will stay committed to churning out conservative books for at least one reason sure to keep publishing executives — whether right, left or in between — pleased. “Feeding that market will continue, because it’s going to be profitable,” he said.

So here’s what I’m thinking:  What’s to stop BAM! from manipulating the market?  (They also own a book distribution company.) What’s to stop Threshold?  What’s to stop any of the Right Wing top guns–the Koch Brothers, say– the people with all the money?  What’s to stop them from buying up tens or even hundreds of thousands of these books and sitting on them?  (It’s been done on a smaller scale.  Remember the fuss about Newt Gingrich during the congressional hearings just before they gave him a big, fat noogie?  Seems he got some Big Guys to put up $150,000 to promote and/or buy up his book, Window of Opportunity to make it look like people were actually reading it.)  And what’s to stop 800+ stooges from churning out magnificent reviews for a book that nobody in their right mind would actually read through to the end?

Does anybody really believe that the average reader is clamoring for more of the same from Mark R. Levin?  (That same Mark R. Levin who gushes his thanks to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in his Ameritopia acknowledgements?)  Unless you’re hopelessly in love with the words “utopianism”, “statism” and “tyranny”, there’s nothing juicy in there, no matter how hard you look.  It’s one dry, endless paragraph after another.

Just as radio and TV stations can promote their own and manipulate their viewership into believing that their way is the way it is, the way it should be, and ever will be, so can book stores, simply by advertising and placement.  But this appears to be beyond simply leading a horse to water.  I’m guessing somebody is buying up and pushing those books, and I’m guessing it ain’t the general public.

But to be fair, in that same BAM! store I managed to find a slim volume called “What it means to be a Democrat”,  written by George McGovern and published this past November by Blue Rider Press, a new imprint from Penguin.

Sen. McGovern’s book was one of first on Blue Rider’s list to make it to the bookstores.  It’s a tribute to publisher David Rosenthal (fired by Simon and Schuster after 13 years), who chose a book so important in its own way, but with virtually no chance at bestsellerdom.  That little book, so honest and true, so meaningful to those of us who work to make the Senator proud by living by his ideals, will never reach the top of the NYT best-seller list.  And what a crying shame that is.

Above all, being a Democrat means having compassion for others.  It means putting government to work to help the people who need it.

It means using all available tools to provide good health care and education, job opportunities, safe neighborhoods, a healthy environment, a promising future.

It means standing up for people who have been kept down, whether they are native Americans or African Americans, women, immigrants, or the homeless.

It means taking care of the mentally ill, of seniors, of vulnerable children, of veterans–and making sure all people are treated with respect and dignity.

Introduction to “What it Means to be a Democrat” by George McGovern.

(If you want to join me in purchasing Sen. McGovern’s book, I’ve made it easy for you.  You can click on the Amazon link on my website sidebar.  It’s at the very top of my list.   I thank you and I know George thanks you, too.)

January 20, 2012.  Today marks the beginning of Barack Obama’s fourth year as president.  Three years ago today he stood out in the cold and said, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.”  He promised “an open government” and “a new beginning.”   I’ve been around for many televised inaugurations, starting with JFK’s when I was but a mere child/adult and, for me,  this one equaled or might have even surpassed that one for good, old-fashioned stirring moments.

In most circles this has probably gone unnoticed, but today is my anniversary, too.  Three years ago, on this exact day, because Barack Obama stirred my soul and gave me hope, I began writing this blog.  I didn’t even think about actually doing it until around mid-morning, when it suddenly came to me that this was one of those portentous days that I shouldn’t let go by unnoticed.

I was heady with joy but understandably reluctant to go whole hog predicting the end to all our troubles.  We were not anointing a savior, even though eight years of hell seemed finally to be at an end.  I was trying to remain calm; trying to keep in mind all of the promises made by politicians over the years that had never been kept, either because there had never been any intention or because they didn’t know what the hell they were getting themselves into.

I started it this way:

Today is January 20, 2009. Inauguration day for Barack Obama, and it can’t have come soon enough. It’s true that he’s been de facto president since November, 2008, when George W. Bush unofficially, without fanfare or hesitation, turned the job over to him, but today it became official. What a day it’s been! They’re estimating the crowds at 2 million strong, a sight unseen on any Presidential First Day in modern history.

And ended it like this:

I have no grand illusions about a rapid return to health for this country, just as I have no illusions about the impact my words will make in the overall scheme of things.  I’ll admit that I’m  overwhelmed right now with the events of the day.  I’m feeling more than a little inarticulate and possibly even shy about expressing how it feels to have our country back.   It may not be the best day to start a blog after all.  But start it I have, and now I’ll give this day over to the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama, America’s new president.  The bands are playing, the sun is setting and all’s right with the world.   For now.

On January 20, 2010, in the blog marking our mutual first anniversary, I wrote this about last year’s blog:

Oh, the joy in my heart as I wrote those words.  Take THAT, you lousy, bloated, insufferable faux-Capitalists.  The Sheriff’s saddling up and the posse’s not far behind.  We’re off to save the ranches!  Widows and orphans, help is on the way!

But lest you think I was totally naive, I also wrote:  ‘I have no grand illusions about a rapid return to health for this country.’   No, I had no grand illusions, but I did have dreams…[Ed: About the repetition of those words "grand illusions":  I didn't even notice until now that I had repeated them in two blogs a year apart. I must have seriously meant it.]

…I keep reminding myself that the Good Man took on what amounted to a national nightmare.  There were no easy fixes, and nobody pretended there would be.  But I would have slept better this past year if only I had been able to see the president as a ‘people person’.   Was he ever that?  I don’t know.  We might have made him into our own images, taking much needed comfort in an illusion of our own making.  Maybe he is what he is.  But what is he?  After a full year of hosting him in The People’s House we’re no closer to knowing where he stands, or, more importantly, where he’s going.

Last year, on January 20, 2011, I wrote this:

I knew this anniversary day was coming and that I would want to write about it, but what would I say as I stood beside Obama saying farewell to Year Two, heading into Year Three?  That all of my wishes came true?  That all of my fears were justified?  That nothing much has changed?  That I now know what kind of man my president is?

I can’t say any of those things.   I am at times proud of my president, disappointed in him, enraged by his actions or inaction, fearful of the direction he is taking us.

I’m impatient and feeling increasingly impotent as I’m forced to watch more and more jobless citizens give up, more and more home-owners become homeless, more and more of the sick and dying having to give over their lives to insurance company paper-pushers.  I want the wars to end.  I want the corporate giants to finally understand the consequences and do something about their destructive practices.  I want the GOP and certain members of the Democratic Party to fulfill their obligations to the citizenry–the entire citizenry–in a time of unparalleled crisis, and act like a responsible governing body.  I want our president to be a leader of the people.

Are you sensing a trend here?  Are you thinking that my enthusiasm is taking a downhill slide and that this year should be the one where I finally admit I was wrong about the whole thing?  Well, think again.  After watching the clown shows known at the GOP debates over the past few months, I’m more determined than ever to help make this current president the next president of the United States.

My God, did you see that mess last night?  Have you been watching the remaining Four Horsemen in action?  Is there a serious contender among them?  Would you really, sincerely want any one of them leading this country?  (If you can answer “yes” with a light heart and a straight face, I think you’re in the wrong place.  I would point you to the right place, but I don’t think there is one.)

I’m still disappointed.  I’m still impatient.  The slow pace of change is maddening.  But there is no denying there is change in the air, either because of President Obama, in spite of him, or because of forces having nothing to do with him–take your pick–and I’m hanging in there for the long haul.  Finally, the people are awakening.  Our people.  We’re on the move and we’re not turning back.

I’m with my party and my president and if I have to slap them upside the head once in a while to get their attention, there’s a far better chance at success with them than with that other bunch.  (You know that bunch is trouble when the moderates in their party are ostracized and/or banished for thinking even slightly good thoughts; when the ones that remain feel the need to make it clear they’re only going after the job as leader of this fair land to make it easier for the marauders to take over completely.)

So that’s where I am on this, our third anniversary.  Sure, I was hoping the honeymoon would never end and the gifts would keep on coming, but there it is.  Reality strikes.  It hasn’t been all roses, but it hasn’t been all thorns, either.  Progress has been made.  I’m looking forward to the year ahead, and I’m going to work hard to get Barack Obama re-elected.

That’s where I’m headed. Just so you know.
__________________

In other news: FactCheck looks at the truthiness of the GOP debate last night.  It’s here.

And I found this on their sidebar:

Q: Does Obama plan to deny emergency brain surgery for patients over 70?

A: No. A man claiming on a radio talk show to be a brain surgeon lied about that, and about a meeting of two associations of neurological surgeons, those associations say.

See what we’re up against?

(Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices)

Georgetown, South Carolina is a mill town; one of the few left in the United States where goods are actually produced and not just assembled.  It is the home of International Paper and ArcelorMittal Steel, and the sounds and smells generating from the sites are an actual comfort, not just to the townspeople but to anyone who detests the thought of factory shutdowns and an idle workforce.

Harbor – Georgetown, SC

At first glance, Georgetown looks like almost any other town across the country–a main drag dotted with fast foods and box stores and gas stations, neighborhoods rich and poor and somewhere in between (The happy surprise in Georgetown, if you venture off the highway, is its carefully preserved historic district  and beautiful harbor)–but since Mitt Romney’s run for the presidency and the revelations of the destructive, worker-eating practices of Bain Capital, the company he once headed, you might see Georgetown in a different light.  You might see it as yet another poster child showing the effects of bullying outside influences with voracious appetites fed largely by avarice and greed.

ArcelorMittal Steel Mill, Georgetown, SC

The Georgetown steel mill, it turns out, was one of Bain Capital’s victims.  Who knew?  Not middle managers. Not the union leaders. Not the laid-off workers.  Not even, apparently, anyone who reported the stories of bankruptcies and shutdowns throughout the years, essentially blaming the problems on the Chinese and the tumult of the times.

During the upheaval of American labor over the past few decades, Georgetown’s mill took several direct hits.  China was in fact, producing cheaper (albeit lower quality) steel.  Jobs were, in fact, being sent by ruthless Americans to cheaper markets overseas.  Domestic car sales had declined and so had the need for the particular steel products coming out of Georgetown. No one saw the need to dig further to find a deeper, underlying reason for the failures.  On the surface, there were plenty.

This isn’t the first time the press has descended on Georgetown.  I went to the union headquarters yesterday and met with the Steelworkers local president, James Sanderson. (Who told me just minutes into our introduction, “I’m going to be on Ed Schultz tonight!”  And he was:  http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-ed-show/46018158#46018158)

Sanderson said when the Democrats came to nearby Myrtle Beach for a debate in 2008, the candidates got wind of a shutdown at the mill. They all rushed to Georgetown so they could each stand in front of the forlorn, shuttered factory and make promises to the hundreds of unemployed potential voters there was never a chance in hell they would be able to keep.

Nobody knew then what role Bain Capital had played in the inevitable failure of Georgetown Steel.  They bought it and gutted it and profited from their own piracy and nobody knew it had even happened that way until Mitt Romney decided to run for president and the digging began.

As David Wren reports in the Sun-News article:

Less than a year after taking a controlling interest in the Georgetown plant, Bain Capital cut the employees’ profit-sharing plan twice – lowering the plan’s hourly rate from $5.60 an hour to $1.25 per hour. Most of the workers didn’t learn about the cuts until they received their paychecks. The profit-sharing checks eventually disappeared altogether.

Sanderson, in a September 2000 report in The Sun News, called Bain Capital anti-labor and said “they’ve forced a labor dispute at every location” during contract negotiations.  Sanderson agrees that China’s cheap steel imports on the American marketplace hurt the Georgetown mill’s production and profitability.

“But if they [Bain Capital] had only invested in the mill instead of taking everything from it, we would have been able to sustain that [dumping] like we had in the past,” he said.

John Ethridge, a retired Georgetown Steel worker, said Bain Capital “treated us like dirt.”

“They brought a bunch of people in here who thought they knew how to do our job, but they had no idea what they were doing,” Ethridge said, adding that needed equipment and plant upgrades were often delayed or ignored.

Ethridge, who worked at the Georgetown mill for 35 years, said Bain Capital was more interested in how much money it could take from the plant rather than investing anything into it.

By the time GS Industries filed for bankruptcy protection, the number of employees worldwide had been cut by more than half.

After decades of  uncertainty, of lay-offs and down-sizing, of bankruptcies and shut-downs, of revolving-door ownerships, the American company formerly known as Georgetown Steel, now the foreign owned ArcelorMittal, is up and running again. On a smaller scale, but running nonetheless.

ArcelorMittal scrapyard – Georgetown

The union is still in place and James Sanderson is still union president.  Their four-year contract, equitable by any industry standards, is up in September.  It’s anybody’s guess about where they’ll be heading, in light of the stepped-up efforts by South Carolina’s Governor Nikki Haley to make sure South Carolina remains a Right-to-Work state. (Precipitated by the actions of the National Labor Relations Board when it went after Washington state-based Boeing for moving one of their units to South Carolina, allegedly to get out from under unions. The action was dropped in December, but I’m guessing Gov. Haley isn’t going to forget it.)

In South Carolina the sun shines bright on Romney and Bain Capital these days and I know at least a few people who are basking in it, trying to make the most of it (James Sanderson, for one; his boss Leo Gerard for another,  his activist son Jamie for another; and me).  But from afar comes Robert Reich, also speaking on The Ed Show, not about Georgetown but about the troubles at Steel Dynamics, an Indiana steel mill taken over and victimized by Bain Capital.

He explains in pure Reich-style what Bain Capitalism really is:

Bain Capitalism is not product capitalism, it’s financial capitalism.  It’s moving money.  It’s getting as much money from the public sector as possible.

Financial capitalism is not real capitalism.  It doesn’t create new jobs, it doesn’t put people to work, it actually ends up reducing the number of jobs.  it displaces people, it puts risks on average working people, it lowers wages.  Financial capitalism is what we’ve had in this country for the last two or three decades and it’s all centered on Wall Street.  It’s not about making good jobs with good wages and making things.

Last night during the Republican debate in Myrtle Beach, Gov. Nikki Haley was seen smiling and nodding vigorously when Rick Perry jawed on about “South Carolina’s war with the federal government”, as if it was 1865 all over again.  How does Rick the Wretched think we got to this place?  Wasn’t he the one who coined the term, “vulture capitalism”?  Can you run for president or governor without understanding the necessary symbiosis between the Fed and the states in order to combat and destroy the Bains of the world and save your cities, your states, your country?

Well, yes, you can run but should you win?  In a sane world, you shouldn’t.  In a sane world you couldn’t.  (Quick reminder: Mitt Romney, the founder of Bain Capital, is about to be anointed top nominee for president by the Republicans.)  That’s our national nightmare these days, that total disregard by our leaders of a pervasive evil forced on us via the private sector despite absolute, indisputable proof that Bain Capital is just one among hundreds of companies whose only reason for existing is to destroy the fabric of America for profit .  That malignant neglect is the reason the fight goes on and the bad guys keep getting away.

In a free market economy as defined by this new bunch of “patriots”, the only bad guys are the good guys.  Apparently that’s us and we’re toast.

Shack and water tower in the shadow of the mill – Georgetown, SC

Yesterday morning,  after watching “Up with Chris Hayes” (My never-miss-if-I-can-help-it, hands-down favorite political show on TV maybe ever — except for “The West Wing” and Rachel Maddow), I was aimlessly flipping channels, looking for something equally smart and fun (as IF!) when I got to what I thought should be C-Span but realized it couldn’t be because I thought I saw a wizard.

But I did!  I did see a wizard!  This particular wizard (on C-Span) looked like a bearded Harry Shearer and talked suspiciously like Harry Shearer would talk if he were playing a bearded wizard pretending he was running for president in the foremost state of New Hampshire.

This wizard was wearing a wide-shouldered mustard-colored, oddly flecked jacket and a very very very tall black wizard’s hat with what looked like a boot sticking out of the top of it.  He was seated on a dais along with five other white guys who claimed to be Democrats and who all had managed to get their names on the primary ballot in that all-important-if-you-want-to-be-president state of New Hampshire.

(NOTE:  It doesn’t take much to file for POTUS candidacy in the Granite state.  You have to be 35 years old and have lived in the U.S for 14 years.  You have to be able to put up a $1,000 fee, unless you’re indigent and can prove it, in which case the fee is waived. And you have to be able to convince two other people to serve as your delegate and alternate at the convention.)

This wizard’s name is Vermin Supreme and let me tell you, he’s no Harry Potter.  Not unless you think Randall Terry is Voldemort and he deserved what he got at the end of this vital forum, so important for all those white guys, Republicans and Democrats alike, who can’t get on the debate stage with the Big White Guys in order to tell the country why they should be president.  Of the United States.

But I’ll get to that.

So. What I had caught on C-Span three days before Tuesday’s first primary election in the entire country  was the last few minutes of a re-broadcast of a two-hour program called “Lesser-Known Candidates in New Hampshire Presidential Primaries”.  There are 44 candidates for president on the 2012 ballot in the crucial state of New Hampshire and in order to be fair to all of them, 32 of the least known (those who were not a part of a national debate) were invited to hold forth in the auditorium of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College in Manchester on December 19, 2011.

The Republicans held the first hour and the Democrats the second.  (A smart move on the part of the planners who no doubt remembered Vermin Supreme from when he ran before, in 2008, in the exquisitely positioned state of New Hampshire.   Who wouldn’t want to make sure he was the last thing anyone would see before the cameras turned off, hoping against hope that everyone will have left by then, anyway?)

There were 10 Republican presidential candidates on the stage, pristine in their whitebreadness and raring to go.  The first, Bear Betzler, started things off by announcing that he’s “not that into politics”, but he did believe that the most important thing this country needs to do — the very most important thing — is balance the budget.

Timothy Brewer is running on the “Afterlife is possible, everyone lives forever, you can’t be destroyed” platform.  Mr. Brewer announced that something big is going to happen on December 21, 2012 and if you elect him president he’ll be in a position to fix it.

Dr. Hugh Cort is a famous counter-terrorism researcher and his message to the people is that Iran is planning a nuclear attack in the near future–16 months or less–and if you want to know more about it you can Google “Hugh Cort American Hiroshima”.  The end.

Randy Crow posted over 600 articles on his website before he himself brought it down. . .
. . .planes were flown into the World Trade Center by remote-control bombs. . . something, something.

John Davis told the audience that a couple of years ago God spoke to his heart to run for president.  He (John) wanted to do something nobody had ever done before so he decided to visit every county in the United States.  So far he has visit 1712 of them and the message he’s getting from the people he’s been speaking to is that people aren’t happy.  He’s “pro-God, pro-family and country, pro-second amendment, pro-doing the right thing.”  Oh, and “We can’t have God’s blessing when we kill a million babies and take prayer out of schools.”

Christopher Hill was next and talk about a duck out of water!  He’s working for “people in the middle class that are watching it disappear and homeless people that need our help.”  In a broken voice he said, “We’re called the lesser-known candidates.  Well, tonight we stand for the lesser-known Americans”, and my heart went out to him.  Someone needs to tell this good man that if he wants to be president and a Republican both, he’s going to have to stifle that kind of talk.

Jeff Lawman (aptly named, as he will tell you) says he follows the “traditional Republican platform” which, to him, means “the role of the capable is to assist the needy.”  He’s running a zero-dollar grass roots campaign.  (Oh, Jeff.  Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.  See last sentence in above paragraph.)

Benjamin Linn:  “The reason why I’m running is because America is in a big mess right now.”  He’s pro-life and pro-family and pro-marriage between a man and a woman because “marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is not normal.”

Michael Meehan: “I am not a politician, I’m a real estate broker and there’s no work so, uh, let’s go into politics, right?”  He’s been traveling the country and what he’s finding is that “yes, people are scared but I’ll let you in on a little secret.  People are nervous.”  He asks questions, and, “They don’t answer me stupid.  They think about it before they say it.”

And then there’s Joe Story:  “The 10 Commandments served as the basis of our common law when America was born as a nation.  Christian principals defined our existence.  The supreme court affirmed that we’re a Christian nation with liberty of conscience to all man, yet today America is in trouble.  We’ve failed to hold our elected officials accountable and we’ve become spoiled by the benefits that a government with unlimited funds have provided to us.  We have to take control and pray.”

And that, wrong-headed as it may have been, was the closest anyone on the stage came to remembering why they were on the ballot in the Number One State of New Hampshire.

So then came the second hour and it was the Democrats’ turn.

Ed Cowan (edcowan2012.com) is a writer-thinker who has been published on three continents.  Go to his website to see what he stands for.

Bob Greene:  “I have a Ph.D in Physics.  I have some very good news for you.  I’m here to tell you about thorium, an overlooked energy alternative.  A lifetime supply for a single person is about the size of a golf ball.  Go to greeneforoffice.org to learn all about it.”

John Haywood, Durham, NC, is for replacing for-profit health care with a public plan modeled on the British health care system.  Their system is run on about 42% of our cost and what we would be looking at is a savings of over a trillion dollars a year.  John is totally sincere, and I’m with John, of course.  Really nice meeting you, John.  John??

Edward O’Donnell followed John and I was finally beginning to think there was something real going on here.  Ed said, “We need love, kindness, tolerance, friendliness, forgiveness, second chances, and old-fashioned kindness.”  Ed is so passionate about this he says no guns, ever, anywhere.  Not even for hunting.  And while we’re at it, how about a non-violent foreign policy?   That was sweet and so refreshing.  So long, Ed.

So now we come to Vermin Supreme, the bearded guy with that impossible wizard’s hat. His opening statement started like this:  “Gingivitis has been eroding the gum line of this great nation long enough and must be stopped.  For too long this country has been suffering a moral and oral decay in spirit and incisors.  Our country’s future depends on its ability to bite back.  We can no longer be a nation indentured.  Our very salivation is at stake.  Together we must brace ourselves as we cross over the bridgework to the 23rd century.” (For full Vermin coverage, see video here.)

Vermin happened to be seated next to conservative Right Wing “Democrat”, Randall Terry, who warmed up the audience even more by saying, “I just want to know what did I do wrong, God, that I have to be on after that!” and then went on to attempt to answer his own question:  “Barack Hussein Obama may well go down as the worst president we have ever had.  The worst.  He is at war with life, liberty and justice. . . (something here about an unelected oligarchy). . .We’ve come to the insane place as a nation where we have killed over 52 million of our own children by abortion and that blood, like the blood of the slave, is crying out to God for judgment.  We will nevverrr restore the greatness of this nation while we are killing our own offspring.”

Poor John Wolfe (Chattanooga, TN) came next and I admit I was still dazzled by those other two and didn’t pay much attention.  I did catch that he believes our policies “are favorable to Wall Street and not to Main Street”, and “We need a progressive.”  Well, yes we do, John, and more power to you for getting it.  Too bad about the wizard and the wacko and your placement on the stage.  It’s the luck of the draw.  It’s how it goes.

And so it went.  Until we came to the Grand Finale, where Vermin the Wizard glitter-bombed Randall Terry after singing a campaign song to the tune of The Chicken Dance, thereby proving once and for all (or until 2016, whichever comes first)  just how very important  these First-In-The-Nation New Hampshire primaries really are.

(Oh, by the way, I don’t want to have to watch that two-hour debate again, so if you happen to watch it in its entirety could you count the times anybody mentioned the word “jobs”?  The closest I could come to a count was when the real estate guy said he was out of one.)

(Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices)