Judith Miller has just announced that she has discovered more notebooks with more startling revelations concerning the Vallerie Plame matter.

Not only did someone (though her notes are too sloppy to tell us who) tip her off about Valerie Flame and a Victoria Wilson, but five different White House officials tipped her off about:

Valerie Plume
Valerie Plumb
Valerie Flume
Valerie Boob
and
Cedric the Entertainer

I refuse to go into irresponsible speculation.

OH Looky here! Another example from the “America just can’t lose” department, (which I first began to notice as a trend when I read the back cover of A Patriot’s History of the United States. I hope each and every person in each and every nation America has chosen to bomb is grateful for what we’ve done for them… if they’re not, well… I guess we can just bomb them.:

The history of American involvement in foreign wars has all been positive in the long run. Although many on the left [opposed] the Vietnam War, the situation in that country is much better for the people now than before the war. Look at Japan after World War II; it now is a friendly democracy. Russia is now changing its form of government, also to a democracy, after the Cold War. Germany is a free country with a well-organized government.

Mike P. Brink Gresham

May I just interject that I am not sure what “Russia is now changing its form of government, also to a democracy, after the Cold War.” is supposed to mean some decade and a half after the fall of Communism.

In case you haven’t noticed, I added this quotation to my the quotes on my sidebar:

“The Beatles had no genuine musical talent, but were a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division specifications.” Lyndon LaRouche, from the pamphlet “Why Your Child Became a Drug Addict”.

There’s a terrible problem with Lyndon LaRouche that does not exist with, say, Jack T. Chick. You can compile a book of the doctrine according to Jack T Chick tracts, or a history of the tracts, and it will be most fascinating. You can not do so with Lyndon LaRouche… his pamphlets, as promising as the titles can be, tend to be terribly uninteresting. As for the Beatles — this attitude has to be at the root of the LaRouche Youth Movement’s tendencies to sing bel canto. It’s an affected elitism that puts the cult members on a higher level than ordinary mortals, you see.

At the same time, this puts LaRouche into the ultra-right wing camp where everything fell apart in the 1960s. AND, curiously enough, it shows LaRouche’s anti-British government bias, who I guess he sees as (still) controlling the world… my first LaRouchite question on this blog, if you go back far enough, was “What does Lyndon LaRouche have against the British Royal Family?”

Still… what can you say? It was The “British INVASION”, was it not?

I can’t quite tell whether the New York Times Magazine piece connecting the Whig Party with today’s Conservative Republican Party (“Bush’s Ancestors”, Sean Wilentz) is insightful or not, but what I do know is this: The following is an asinine statement…

The party’s (Whig Party) sorry demise helps explain why today’s Republican conservatives who study history resist any comparison with the Whigs.

You don’t say? (Another reason, at least publically — and perhaps this is elitist in my mind: the public has no conception of what the Whig Party was.)

Curious to see what anyone out in blog-o-land has said about a relatively minor figure in the current Republican melt-down, Representative Doc Hastings of the fourth Congressional District of Washington, I scanned down the Washington listings at leftyblogs.com, the fifty state localized politics index, found herehere.

I have to be honest here. I have no idea what $5,930 adds up to in the scale of the House of Representatives. I really don’t.

From “Blue Washington”:

To describe Hastings career up until now as “low profile” would be charitable. During his decade in the House, Hastings has earned a well-deserved reputation as the quietest member of our state’s congressional delegation… a do-nothing attitude that probably plays well with some of his “small government” supporters in WA’s largely rural 4th District. But as Ethics Chair, the chronic torpor that rendered him relatively harmless as just another congressman, totally undermines what little institutional integrity and effectiveness the committee has left. Which of course, is exactly why DeLay gave him the job in the first place: what better way to assure that ethics investigations grind to a halt than to mire the committee with a chair who is not only reliably partisan, but who favors a parliamentary style that borders on the inert?

The Ethics Committee’s year-long dormancy under Hastings’ putative leadership, combined with his ill-considered public statements in defense of DeLay, is not only an embarrassment to Congress, but to the voters of WA’s 4th District. The Yakima Herald-Republic also chimes in with an editorial today, and while I don’t quite understand their assertion that Hastings has acquitted himself by clarifying his position on DeLay (unless by “clarify” they mean “contradict”… am I missing the sarcasm?), they are clearly sending a message that they will hold Hastings responsible should he fail to follow through on his responsibilities.

On to Doc’s defeat… except, um… we get to the political reality: Indeed, if not for the fact that Democrats have such a weak bench in Eastern WA – they hold only 6 of 63 county commissioner seats – Hastings would be vulnerable to the corruption and incompetence fueled political storm surge that threatens to deluge Republicans in 2006. Well… you do realize that Doc Hastings would once again become meaningless in a minority party situation, right?

Actually, there’s more comments regarding this comment here…

Take One: Hastings is putting WA’s 4th Cong. District on the map as a bunch of country hicks. Take Two: DumbDoc, who failed to complete his college career at CWU, is incapable of independent thought. HIs drool cup runneth over. His voting record is the most partisan of any of Washington’s representative. He is nothing more than DeLay and Bush’s bitch. He has no business playing any part in making the laws that govern all of us. Having grown up in his district, I know there are plenty of Brian Schweitzer-types there who could give DumbDoc a serious run. By the way, how about Schweitzer for president? That’s, like, the third time Brian Schweitzer’s name has been mentioned here. Maybe we can bus Brian Schweitzer over in from his Montana governorship and have him run for the House seat of the 4th Congressional District of Washington State? Take Three: I’m embarrassed for my sister who lives in Kennewick … even if she isn’t. Funny comment, and it doesn’t even have to involve politics of any kind. Take four, just for bemusement let’s keep stock ofthe most entertaining of the trolling going on: Richard Pope: These LEFTIST PINHEADS are Stalin’s Useful Idiots. They want all righties indicted immediately incarcerated without a trial just like in commie Russia under Stalin. I agree if DeLay is convicted he should visit Dan Rostenkowski. Take Five, and reality seeps in: Douglas County PUD Comissioner Jim Davis ran against Hastings in 2000. He’s a gun-toting pro-dam wheat farming veteran moderate Democrat. Friendly, personable, straight-talking. Raised a fair bit of money. Seems like the perfect profile. Davis fought a hard campaign and got beat very very badly for his effort. Honestly, we aren’t going to get this seat until Hastings retires. Hastings has got inertia and that nice harmless quality that people never have good reason to *not* vote for him. Goldy, as a side note, always refer to the Congressman as Richard “Doc” Hastings. It drives his Chief of Staff up. the. wall. Hm. Richard “Doc” Hastings you say? Duly noted. Take Six: I don’t resent eastern Washington their congressman-for-life. After all, we have Jim McDermott. But I sometimes wonder if the 4th Cong. Dist. voters have been exposed to too much radiation, which does funny things to the brain. Ideology aside, Jim McDermott is a much more interesting personality / individual than Doc Hastings. Take Seven, and really the bottom line here: Doc Hastings is a dozy turd. Sorry, I just can’t muster anything more intelligent to say about him. I have been his constituent, and all I could really determine about him was that he seems to enjoy his franking priveleges. That’s about it. From talking to my neighbors, it seemed to me that a lot of people voted for him just because he had an “R” next to his name on the ballot. What a way to waste your voting franchise… sadly, a lot of people do it.

Say what? Richard “Doc” Hastings’s “Issues” page is “Under Construction”? Can’t he just copy and paste the RNC’s book, and toss in something about Hanford, and be done with it?

I’ve about reached the end here.

What’s the point behind Lyndon Larouche? I don’t understand it.

My answer to Falconrath, simple enough:

I don’t understand the question. He was born. He’s crazy. He uses the right memes to attract enough of the politically disaffected to send him money. He operates as a cult.

Right memes to send him money? Take this guy, who has my deepest sympathies:

my brother gave 5K to Lyndon LaRouche

No shit! I just found out today. He’s been brainwashed. At some point during his years at Northern Va Community College he got tuned in by those live at home with parents/bullied in high school/no social life twits on campus. He doesn’t read the newspaper or watch the news, he only gets information from the LaRouche newspaper, and during the fall campaign he made some pretty hefty donations to the cause. I was googling him today and found out, such donations are legally required to be posted. Anybody know any good deprogrammers?

Though, I must say, that is a little harsh to those who live with their parents, were bullied in high school, have no social life on campus, and for that matter those who don’t watch the news. (Actually it’s a good idea not to watch the news — better to read the news… tv news is defacto a joke.)

It occurs to me that these are boom times for the Lyndon LaRouche organization. During the Clinton administration, Lyndon LaRouche was stuck demonizing Alan Greenspan, who one can justifiably criticize — but the basic problem is it’s not a terribly sexy target. Today, he has a full plate of “Children of Satan” to choose from… the Bush Administration, war, and a flunky economy provide him with the restless makings to “fight the power” against.

And the memes? I do not believe that Lyndon LaRouche ever actually came out in support for the election of Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis, etc. In fact, quite famously he injected the idea that Dukakis was crazy into mainstream debate, which the George Bush the Better Campaign smiled and nodded when the question was asked by EIR at a press conference. (EIR is “Executive Intelligence Review” — LaRouche’s newspaper.) And he called Walter Mondale a KGB Agent. Thus, with the support of Kerry, he threw himself into that classic corner of liberal and Democratic frustration: “Anybody But Bush”. (And if I had a nickle for every time I’ve seen a right-wing blogger make the statement “What’s the difference between LaRouche’s conspiracy theories and the current Loony Left’s? — the parlor game of figuring out the powers that be are a bit messy, and opportunism strikes for those who want to butt in.)

Next, you muse on the spectacle of LaRouche’s discardinging of the low-brow and silly, in favour of… well, the high-brow and silly. Do any of the LaRouch Youth Squad really understand “Gauss’ theory of squaring the circle”? You play with the idea of giving the student knowledge that they’re not being given due to our current decaying educational standards. Also note the backlash against the corrupting 1960s and the “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” ethos. These are indeed good ways to interject your cult (any cult, mind you) into the mind of a certain vulnerable types of college students.