I don’t understand this. This is not the first time I’ve seen something like this with the wiki feed into bloglines but…

First I’d like to congratulate the folks at wikipedia.org for providing us with an encyclopedic entry on this fascinating topic.

Next I’d like to show you this. Note this attempted revision:

The original image is sufficiently widely known that “killing kittens” has become a fairly common [[euphemism]] for [[masturbation]] in many internet communities and in [[geek]] circles. As exposed recently by America’s top economist and political scientist, Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., he fact that the slogan is popular among “geek” circles, and is called a “meme” by these same geeky twits, speaks volumes about the vapidity of the modern twit culture of kiddies raised on cell phones, cable TV, rave culture, the internet, and hip hop music. Note also that the slogan says “Every time you masturbate…God kills a kitten” rather than “REMEMBER: Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten.” The omission of “Remember” (as in Smokey The Bear’s famous slogan) is very telling about the psychology of modern kiddies and their fast food junk culture. Sound bites, indeed. Only the LaRouche Youth Movement can save our youngsters from the ravages of popular culture in which garbage like this “kitten” slogan are considered funny while kids know nothing about Gauss’ theory of squaring the circle or why the Romantic composers were a British plot to stamp out the Classical culture of Bach and Mozart and usher in the modern rock-sex-drug counterculture.

What does this mean? Why are Lyndon LaRouche supporters roaming in the background of wikipedia, offering commentary about various topics. (In this case, they look down on the lowbrow nature of the “Every time you masturbate, God Kills a Kitten” image, and snivel about the Youth of America’s ignorance of classic mathematical problems.)

I know that wikipedia is having trouble with LaRouchites, brought on I suppose by Lyndon LaRouche claiming to have invented wikipedia.org. Still, I can’t wrap my head around this

A thought came to me as I was reading a book on Ronald Reagan’s 1976 primary challenge to Gerald Ford. (I’ll stop with these campaign treatsies for a while, I promise.)

The famed “Fairness Doctrine”, which disappeared during the Reagan administration, in effect in 1976 had television stations pulling old Ronald Reagan movies from their late-night line-up. Otherwise, they would have to give “equal time” to Gerald Ford.

Why didn’t some station dredge up old footage of Gerald Ford’s days playing football at the University of Michigan? (It’d have to be footage and not repeats of games, that being the freaking 1930s). I’m guessing the political ramnifications of Ronald Reagan’s old movies are about equal to the political ramnifications of Gerald Ford’s football days.

(from New Orleans, on Fox News)

SHEPARD SMITH: You’re live on FOX News Channel, what are you doing?

MAN: Walking my dogs.

SMITH: Why are you still here? I’m just curious.

MAN: None of your fucking business.

SMITH: Oh that was a good answer, wasn’t it? That was live on international television. Thanks so much for that. You know we apologize.
………………………..

IA professor in the field of Criminal Justice asked my class “You’re walking outside at 2 in the morning. (or it might have been ‘in a bad neighborhood’ or some suggestion of suspicion with you.) The police pull over and ask you what you’re doing. What are you obligated to do, and what should you do?” The answer, as he gave it, “Tell the police to bug off. You owe them nothing.”

As a statement of principle, it is correct. In reality, you really can’t do it… and it’s not particularly worth whatever point you’re making to tell a police officer to get away from you.

A conversation I once had with a stranger:

Him: You’re driving along, and see the police turn their lights on. It doesn’t matter that you’ve done nothing wrong, you still get nervous. That’s programming.

Me: Well, it’s … you see… you just don’t know what little item from the past, long forgotten, may be back on their record.

Him: That’s right! That’s right!

Actually that’s not quite it. I’m nervous if a police officer approaches me anywhere because of the nature of policing: literally nothing good can from this transaction. Generally speaking, what comes out a police officer approaching me is innocuous — perhaps a quick exchange of pleasantries — but if anything happens, it’ll be a bit of a bummer. Thus, there’s the source of my nervousness. (Things are turned around when I’m in a situation where I seek the police officer, mind you. I’m not an anarchist.)

I was sitting at a park bench at about 7:30 in the morning with a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and yogurt, purhcased from the grocery store that morning. Fred Meyers had in their coupon section bread for 25 cents a loaf and peanut butter for $1 (yogurt is typically on sale for either 40 cents or 50 cents). I was whipping through a batch of peanut butter sandwiches, and throwing pieces of bread at pigeons. I notice a police car coming by and stopping. I’m vaguely nervous, and considered for a second leaving for a different bench before deciding toward a “deprograming that itch” resolve.

The police officer (who had an assistant with him that I can easily imagine was “in training”) and I exchanged pleasantries, before he pointed me to the beer can — in a paper bag– and asked why I was drinking it in public. This was the first time I was aware that I was sitting next to an empty beer can.

I told him that it wasn’t mine. He gave me an incredulous look, and asked why it was there then. I answered that I see beer and soda cans all the time in public spaces, garbage left by other people. He shook the head, and gave a bizarre answer of “I don’t.”, a statement that defies me. He swooped up and spilled the drops of beer that remained in the can out onto the grass.

“Why is it still cold if it’s not yours?” I could think of no answer that he would believe, since he already decided to believe I was lying. But the answer to that question is one of two things: (1) whoever was drinking from it was here very recently (2) It’s been cold outside since last night, and won’t be warm for another couple of hours. Welcome to Autumn.

“We can play games all you’d like…” I’m thinking that this expression should be banned out of existance.

He asks for my i.d., and had his assistant write down my name — I suppose for future reference in case I ever sit in a park next to an empty beer can. I ask “Can I get a breathilizer test?”, to which the police officer gives a stern response of “No.” (Does peanut butter squelch alcohol?) I’m resentful of his presumption of guilt, and don’t even want the trifle of punishment that I’m being doled out… I once had a roommate who for a couple weeks thought I was Mormon because of my lack of drinking. (and other indulgences, actually.) He was a blockhead, but there you go.

Two things pop in my mind: if I’m ever at jury duty again, I’m mentally popping up the 50.1% preponderance of guilt rule to 60%. And… there oughta be a law that a person accused of alcohol-related anything can ask for a breathilizer test.

“Now, I should exclude you from this place, but I’ll just ask you to move to another location.”

Pleasant dichotemy I’m being given. How lucky of me. For the crime of sitting next to an empty beer can, I’ve been given amnesty from being banned from the area.

It was minor to say the least, but it left me in a bad mood. I don’t know what this is instructive of.

Wow. It almost looks like he’s going to march right with them, and dressed like that I imagine as the fire-fighters go about their rescue mission in the swamps of hurricane and flood-ravaged New Orleans, Bush will climb a tree and save a kitten!

It’s a bit difficult to “reading a book about every presidential election”, as I have scattershot been doing.

Tends to be limiting in picking up whatever it is I’m looking for.

Example: I picked up a sense of the election of 1928 from the vantage point of the Democratic nominee, Alfred Smith, through this biography, read sometime last year. Touched upon as well are traces of 1924, 1932 (running to FDR’s right, although FDR was a little wavering on how he was running) and especially the bitterness that he had in 1936, an act I compare to Zell Miller (except that Zell Miller was on the winning side.)

Where does that leave Herbert Hoover? There was an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition with the author of a book on the Mississippi River Flood Disaster of 1927. Herbert Hoover’s management of the situation earned him the acclaim that catupulted him to the White House. I did know that (and it is in the High School History Books nobody bothers to read — and, I may as well add, my Junior Year High School teacher skipped the 1920s completely with a cursory “that was a decade of fakery”), but there was something said that I’ve never thought about…

“This started to change the public’s attitude about the role of government.”

That makes sense. Herbert Hoover wasn’t as laissez-fare as his predecessor, Calvin “the business of America is business” Coolidge — who it’s difficult to ascertain how he would have dealt with the onslaught of the Great Depression within his narrow ideology.

This book on Wendell Willkie’s 1940 run for presidency was ultimately a disappointment. Given the evidence the author presents me, I reached conclusions counter to what he believes. If Wendell Willkie’s nomination was enough to give Roosevelt enough rope to help Great Britain withstand the German advance, it’s threading the needle very thinly. Public support was with Roosevelt — even if the strongest opinions were held by the isolationists — and I’m guessing Roosevelt would have judged the political winds with him taking the “responsible” stance.

Further, Willkie was pretty much an elite institution — he was thrown at the Republicans from on high from a relatively small number of influential publishers. (And thus, public debate is thrown into that weird “Skull and Bones” realm that I allude to from time to time.)

In the end, I ponder something: the Republicans in 1940 nominated a Democrat for the presidency — (and not just a Internationalist Republican amongst a party of isolationists). I’m not comfortable with a party rallying around someone they don’t really like. (The party wasn’t in totally bad shape — they did stop the bleeding and battered Roosevelt around in the 1938 midterm elections.) This is why Zell Miller referenced Wendell Willkie in his RNC speech — though I don’t know who the Democrats were supposed to nominate in 2004 to placate Zell. (perhaps Zell?)

Regarding the 1796 election, and the partisanship that was thrown around between the Republican Party and the Federalist Party…:

Some Federalists turned upside down Jefferson’s commitment to religious liberty, asserting that he was irreligious and hoped for the liberty not to worship. Furthermore, many Federalist bloggers suggested that Jefferson’s admiration of the French Revolution was proof that he was an “infidel” and hence a danger to Christianity in America.

— Adams Vs. Jefferson, page 90. John Ferling.

A google serach shows that I am not the first person to notice this utterly bizarre slip. Where does it come from?

Curious, I decided to try to see if, somewhere in the backlog of the Internet, from way back in 1796 I found one of the blogs he’s referring to!

Here it is!

“They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted — that while they didn’t protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won’t have to pay any money on the money they inherit,” Paul Begala said. “That is bullshit national defense, and we should say that.”

That was an odd piece of demogaugery said by Paul Begala that Michelle Malkin and others pounced on over a month ago. Bush Administration wants to kill us all? Bush Administration isn’t protecting us while they cut taxes (and note the Estate Tax is alluded to.) This is just insane rhetoric, with no kernal of truth down in it!

There are strange synchonicities with this Bush administration. He takes a vacation during August of 2001, the first year of his first term. At the time and after some early successes in enacting his policies, his presidency is starting to fall apart and it’s easy to imagine him stumbling to an inglorious one-term presidency. He comes back from vacation, and is greeted with September 11. He’s a bit slow on the uptake… My Pet Goat, an uneasy flight to Nebraska. Americans want to believe in him, though, and thus when he comes to he is transformed to a president with a 90% approval rating.

He takes a vacation during August of 2005, the first year of his second term. His presidency is seen falling apart on a number of fronts. The vacation is not easy — Cindy Sheehan is upstaging the man. Right at the end of his vacation, Hurricane Katrina hits the Gulf Course. He is slow on the uptake. He takes 90 seconds to address the situation within a much larger speech designed to tie the War In Iraq into the Glories of World War Two. He… well…

This was Bush slicing up a piece of cake in celebration of John McCain’s birthday. The line “Let them eat cake” doesn’t quite fit here, because… I think the victims of the post-hurricane flooding wouldn’t mind eating cake right about now.

Something about Nero, Rome, fiddling, and burning.

I notice patterns here. Bush was also painfully slow in comprehending the Asian Tsunami. He eventually came to, and let flow the much needed aid, but it appears to me … he cannot comprehend.

MS. MORNIN: That’s good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)

This may explain why he couldn’t get into gear solving the first rule of occupation: the electricity, the water, the norms of life must flow. It didn’t occur to Bush Administration.

Analogious to the lack of comprehension with New Orleans and up the Gulf Coast, and the failure to deliver aid. To a group some right-wing punditry has falsely called “those who chose to stay”. (Note to any extra-fundamentalist Christian who cites New Orleans’ sinful ways as the cause of God’s Wrath upon the city: the “Sin” tourists left and who remained… Black Baptists… poor, mostly Christian Evangelical people living outside of the city. And what about the people in rural Mississippi? The Sin-drenched got away!)

Consider Scott McClellan saying in his press gaggle that the Bush Administration has a no tolerance pledge for looting. Consider his answer when someone pointed out that by and large, they’re looting for necessities, out of desperation: food, diapers, shoes… the answer complete tripe that they’ll get the necessary supplies. (This was at a time when Bush hadn’t yet retrained the official line from “This is a successful relief effort” to “Totally unacceptable.)

The answer is tantamont to the Paul Begala line I threw out at the start. They don’t care. They just told them to “Go home and die.” A bit unbelievable?

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” Thus saideth the president on September 1, 2005. And I experience dejavu… except this time, I myself wasn’t anticipating the breach of the levees — because unlike circumstances relating to Iraq or even an understanding I had pre-9/11 that terrorists would strike the United States, news of New Orleans disaster preparedness was not something I was cognicent of. But the experts knew it!

Anyone watched Bill Moyers on September 20, 2002?

National Geographic Magazine, October 2004:
.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn’t—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

AND… a listing from early 2001 of the biggest threats to face the United States:

New Orleans is sinking.
And its main buffer from a hurricane, the protective Mississippi River delta, is quickly eroding away, leaving the historic city perilously close to disaster.
So vulnerable, in fact, that earlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country.
The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.

Who is Bush talking about? I don’t know. It’s … uncomfortable details. Cut FEMA, cut the breeching of the levees… we have a war to fight in Iraq for some reason or other… we have taxes to cut.

Did I mention that Estate Tax which is at the top of the priority list of Congress (where do these guys get the galls?)… which Paul Begala demagauged that Bush wanted to kill us all for?