What's in a name?

Lovely candidates for Miss
Outdoors skin muskrats
to demonstrate talents.

Until recently I hadn’t realized that names could be so important in politics. It seems there are people who somehow believe that someone named Hussein must be (a) a Muslim, (b) a Muslim spy, (c) an evil person, and (d) all of the above. Wow! With a name like Hussein you’ve just got to be all bad. I confess I wouldn’t be bothered about voting for someone named Hussein (I guess this makes me a communist or at least a fellow traveler). I would, however, have to pause before I would vote for someone named, say, Algernon. Percival, too, would cause me to think twice (would you want a President called Percy). And of course nowadays no one would vote for an Adolf, Bumsted, Rasputin, or Dick (who would want a Dick for President). In my blog of September 11, 2004, I expressed my feelings about names and why I thought we should adopt more American Indian-like names. Thus, for me, Hussein would become “Skinny half-black guy with ears and audacity.” Rodham would be “Nice lady who takes bad advice.” John Sidney McCain III would convert to “Snobbish military person who believes in eternal war.” But enough of names.

I gather the Frank Church Banquet was a resounding success. For the first time ever they actually sold all the tickets. I guess Markos of the Daily Kos gave a good speech, as did others. My wife who is “political” attended this annual event and came home happy to have met so many nice people and learned so much about Idaho politics. Personally, I regard banquets or meetings of any kind as the functional equivalent of having a root canal. But, as we say, busy girls are happy girls. Oops, sorry, busy women are happy women. Many of the Idaho bloggers met each other for the first time. I guess they took turns wearing a funny coat, taking pictures, and vowing to do battle with, ugh, Republicans. There is, undeniably, a Democratic renaissance in the making here in the reddest of red states. Democrats are fired up. Hooray! Of course the majority of voters here in the Gem state will probably vote for the war and torture party as usual. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if they didn’t for a change.

It is pretty clear that our Republicans (some of them now in democratic clothing) are continuing to pursue their “southern strategy.” Unlike the national Republican southern strategy this local version doesn’t depend entirely upon subliminal racism and code words. It is a far simpler version that can best be described as Ada-centric. That is, as most of the voting public resides in Ada country or thereabouts, all you have to worry about is getting the votes in that part of the state. What happens in the hinterlands of Central and North Idaho just doesn’t matter. It has long been so. The Boys of Boise know best what is good for all of us in the state. That is why we have poorly paid teachers, falling apart and underfunded schools, high drop-out rates, low wages, taxes on food, polluted lakes and rivers, low IQ’s, and medieval laws about marriage, abortion, and drugs, to say nothing of right-to-work. Candidates for office rarely deign to visit the north and when they do it is mostly token appearances. Larry Grant has been an exception. If you want a Congressman who will represent all of Idaho, vote for Grant. Why should Boise be allowed to continue running our fine state into the bottomlands of irrelevance. Vote Grant, vote LaRocco, vote Obama, and vote for change (actually you have to vote for change as that’s all any of us have left after seven long years of stupidity, greed, and incompetence).

I am sad to know there are people in Idaho who just can’t wait to shoot wolves and grizzly bears. Clement LeRoy (Butch) Otter, our Governor, boasts that he would like to be the first to shoot a wolf. Why, I wonder. I can’t believe he’s going to eat it. I guess he is afraid it might attack him (there is no record of wolves attacking people in the United States as far as I know). I don’t believe people want to shoot grizzly bears in order to eat them either, although, unlike wolves, you might actually eat one. I guess these folks think shooting wolves and bears is a “sport.” Shooting ducks, geese, and pheasants might well be a sport as they are moving and you have to have a certain amount of skill. What sport is there in shooting a wolf or a bear or a cougar with a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight from a distance? The only problem in these cases is simply finding one to shoot. What sport! You get your dogs to chase a bear or cougar up a tree and then when it is helpless you shoot it. Or you plant some bait and wait for an animal to come for it and then kill them. You might as well be shooting a cow. And trophy hunting in a fenced enclosure is so pathetic and despicable as to be beneath contempt. I don’t have any trouble with people shooting game for food. We have lots of people here in Idaho that do just that. But I do have a lot of trouble with trophy hunting or hunting merely for sport. If there are too many wolves or cougars (competing for the same animals people want to kill), let Fish and Game take care of it in the most humane way possible. Let’s not pretend it’s still the wild west and we’re all mighty hunters protecting our loved ones. You want to kill a trophy animal? Get a life.

LKBIQ:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.”
George Carlin