I’m a bit surprised I haven’t stuck this link on the sidebar yet: http://www.justiceforjermiah.com.

I still haven’t gotten around to compiling news articles of their 1980s California ballot initiatives, which would have made public the names of AIDs patients. I will do that eventually, jib-jabbing between my joking and seriousness looks at LaRouche and his followers… replete with that occasional “Here’s something odd they’re trying to do with a wikipedia entry”.

Anyway… from a “Chardonnay”:

I hate Larouche and his followers. They are a fucking cult. My friend
who is 25, dropped out of college and joined them and in doing so, they
told him to sever ties with me because I was not “open to their ideas”.
The way they go about doing things is very erratic also. They disturb
classes at the local college with their regular “demonstrations” and
they go so far as to harass students who don’t take their literature or
who refuse to make a donation. I was one of them. I was headed to
class and a girl stopped me. She was very nice and started talking to me
about the economy and all these paranoid conspiracies. I was polite and
listened but when I declined to give her my info and take a pamphlet
she got nasty. As I walked away, she said “so you’re a guns n’ roses
fan, huh? That would explain the skanky look”, I was wearing a GNR shirt,
you see. They are very good at making insulting below the belt remarks.
Since then, there have been many students who have complained to the
dean and asked him to prevent them from coming onto the campus, but like
cockroaches, they just keep coming back hoping to find someone else to
brainwash. That being said, my very good friend simply disappeared out
of my life and his parents are also quite concerned because he also cut
ties with them at the Larouchies suggestion that they where trying to
“disorganize” him. Larouche himself is a paranoid, psychotic, fascist. I
would advise people to not even pay attention to them in the streets.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that they hold these “cadre schools”
which is a trip they take up to the mountains for a weekend full of
“enlightening, earth shattering ideas”. Anyway, my pal dragged me to one of
these once and all they do is talk about the golden ration, the
doubling of the square, the British royal family (it’s so funny, they claim
the queen is a drug smuggler lol), and all these conspiracies and how
Larouche is the only one who can make a difference. After this cadre
school, I NEVER wanted to know about them ever again and I along with five
other people took off. When they started talking about rock music, one
of the members said that he had hoped they’d make John Lennon’s day of
assasination a holiday, we said screw it and drove off in my car. One
guy tried to stop us and told us “if you leave, you will have the
deaths of hundreds of palestinian children on your conscience.” This people
are crazy and they use cult tactics to recruit people. I strongly suggest everyone to not even bother with them.

In honor of Earth Day, I think I’ll try to visit Planet Earth tomorrow.

“Yeeeaaa!!”, yourself!

Despite tending toward the “He’s doing no good” slant, this New Republic article does indeed lay out the divisions of Dean’s “50 State Strategy”– long – term versus short – term. I can lay out various articles through the last two decades starting with the disasterous 1980 election which show complaints of the organization being top-down to the point where only Carter was being paid for… by 1996 they came back full-circle and the DNC was essentially back to buttressing up the top man.

For what it is worth, Charlie Cook believes Dean is doing what he needs to…

… which is, and this is essentially what I was wanting to say here…

What Dean is doing is running into areas of the country where the Democratic Party has become defunct and non-existent — Salatia, Mississippi for instance, and recruiting and laying the money and buttressing up the local Democratic Party organization so that they might be able to elect a Democratic Dog Catcher.

Good or bad, take it or leave it. It pays off when the dog catchers are able to support a Presidential bid.

My peacenik professor assigned the class to argure over whether it was a good thing for the USA to toss a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I argured in favour, mostly because of a bit of Teachers’ psychology I had picked up somewhere around eighth grade when I had an assignment to argure for or against building a prison in town, and I noted that I was graded a bit more leniently than a fellow student who had done a better job of his paper who had agreed with the teacher. Despite what the David Horowitzs of the world want you to believe, I have found that College Professors regularly to the point where it is the norm throw a large net over opinions diametrically opposed to their Left-wing tendencies.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki plague America with a few problems. Number one, Harry Truman threw out the lie that we had just bombed a “military base” after Hiroshima was bombed. The chilling implications is in the malleability of politicians’ and warriors’ definition of military purposes, which extends right into “Collateral Damage”. Number two, there really was no moral decision to be made regarding the bombings at the time, which largely makes the “Should we or shouldn’t we” discussion the professor was throwing at us moot, or rather the question is a narrow and meaningless one. It was really a case of “Bombs Away!”, and the US Government was a couple days away from blasting Tokyo. And the third problem:

Thanks for playing, but the United States remains the only nation to deploy full-borne Nuclear bombs. Perhaps had Kennedy’s bluff during the Cuban Missile not worked out, things would be different — and, by the way, in the wild ways of history, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the last time that there was any realistic possibility Nuclear War-heads might be used by anyone… a suggestion that, maybe God is working with us after all.

Sometimes I think that we have, as a species and collection of nations, and develop nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of having Something, anything at all off limits and beyond the pale for when we engage in war. “Sure, we can drop this new-fangled ‘MOAB’ thing, but at least we’re not spreading Nuclear Destruction!” Nuclear weapons are the province of rogue states, and rogue units of terrorists. It’s okay that we and some other sane-acting states have them — even the Iranian Government would be okay ala Soviet Unions’ acquiring of them, if it weren’t for the possibility it would slip into the hands of Terrorists– but…

I remember it was Bill Maher, in his post 9/11 hawkish state, who was speaking on the subject that “We’re Responsible, because everyone knows that we’re not going to use them.” The Responsible Ones get to have the Nuclear Weapons, you see… the Civilized.

The nation, under the steady leadership of Bush Administration, has lost that moral authority. He will not take a Nuclear First Strike against Iran off the table. The very fact that it “is on the table”, even rhetorically, throws the “We’re Responsible” argument ashunder.

The funniest segment I heard on the radio this week was Tim Riley on the Rick Emerson show staggering about for five minutes about this Nuclear First Strike, playing the part of the sane man in an insane world. Doesn’t anyone think it may be a bad idea to nuke Iran? Everyone knows the consequences of nuking another country don’t they? The President is not ruling out such a thing, and no one is speaking up against the prospect that such a move would bring payback to us here at home. Maybe nothing will change until a dirty bomb goes off in a midwest city. Wake up America! This country is being run by a group of religious extremists, not that much different than those we’re fighting abroad in the so called “war on terrorism.”

The peaceniks, and no less a smart-guy than Albert Einstein falls under this category, have and do frequently argure that we need a shift in Human Understanding concerning war. In a way, we have had a shift. Not precisely that which they want, and the implications for them that, but it’s there. Give almost any war-leader in history an Nuclear Bomb, explain to them what it does, and it would be deployed with no haste. Andrew Jackson’s Genocidial policy against the Native Americans would be expedited a lot more easily.

Similarly, the world is actually more at peace than it has ever been in Human History. This is a staggering thought, but realize that throughout our history and prehistory this basic theme that when the Spring blossoms, you line up your soldiers and fight until winter descends, at which point you go home. The one thing that runs ahead of us and throws us for a loop is that the Technology at our disposal is a lot more deadly effective. And by the way, to the detractors who rail against the UN, I fail to understand how the world would not be simply at each others’ throat without this Institution. If this makes me a defender of a sometimes ineffectual and sometimes corrupt and sometimes morally in-flux with its guiding principles institution, so be it.

There is a strange thought that the passage of time simply makes it inevitable that every and any nation will have nuclear weapons. And the presense of nuclear weapons makes it, perhaps, inevitable that one will be used. And the troubling thought in my mind is that the most likely nation to be the one to breach that line that cannot be crossed is…

… Well. Look in the mirror.

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I’m not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I’m still waiting

I’m through, with doubt,
There’s nothing left for me to figure out,
I’ve paid a price, and i’ll keep paying

I’m not ready to make nice,
I’m not ready to back down,
I’m still mad as hell
And I don’t have time
To go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I know you said
Why can’t you just get over it,
It turned my whole world around
and i kind of like it

I made by bed, and I sleep like a baby,
With no regrets and I don’t mind saying,
It’s a sad sad story
That a mother will teach her daughter
that she ought to hate a perfect stranger.
And how in the world
Can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Saying that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice,
I’m not ready to back down,
I’m still mad as hell
And I don’t have time
To go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I’m not ready to make nice,
I’m not ready to back down,
I’m still mad as hell
And I don’t have time
To go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I’m not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I’m still waiting
……………………………….

To be sure, they “appeased” their “aggressors” during their ordeal and soft-pedaled — lightly taking away their criticism of Bush at their concerts back in March of 2001 — meaning, yes, they were “Ready to Make Nice”. I always thought their problem was that the whole “Country Music” arena was just packed with too many red-neck “Bombs Away” types for them to venture into that arena and not expect controversy… Tobe Keith, anyone? But, the media tried to make up a controversy about a literal handful of people walking out of a Pearl Jam concert after Eddie Vedder made a few remarks, so maybe they were skewered no matter what.

The Dixie Chicks entertained the idea of “Going Pop”, as though the arena of “Country Music” hadn’t been diluted to the point where the terms are kind of meaningless and they were, by a standard lost somewhere in the past decade, “pop” anyways. (I note that Johnny Cash news items are now regularly covered on our “Alternative Rock” station, meaning that Alternative Rock has now claimed ownership of a Country Music legend, who was a decade ago in the arena of Country Music pushed aside as “old”. The politics of the Music Industry never cease to amaze me.) So they don’t have a whole lot of area to claim to have “Stood Their Ground”, fists raised.

I had forgotten about this election I was only mildly following and made a blog post regarding — for a Kentucky state Senate special election race.

Um. Belated congratulations to Democratic victor Perry Clark. Final total, for an election held in February:

Debbie PEDEN REP 5802
Perry CLARK DEM 6757

I really don’t look at the literature that the LaRouchites try to give me or I see scattered about town, and believe me when I say that I give them less thought than it may seem I do on this blog, but I know that there’s often a list of elected, quote-in-quote “Democratic leaders” in support of the cult-leader.

Perry Clark, being that he has moved up from a state House member to a state Senate member, will probably rise up that list. Though he’s probably not up to Erik Fleming status (currently running to unseat Trent Lott) quite yet.

Sigh. Ah well. The LaRouche engine has more weight in Australian elections, and in the NCC, than they do in American elections, and the Democratic Party. Here, they’re a weird little gnat. There… well…

A comment left awhile ago:

You can read a more up to date account of the LaRouchees’ infiltration of the NCC (as of last January) here:

The LaRouchees are incredibly ubiquitous in Oz.

Former Alaska US Senator Mike Gravel (D-VA) said Thursday he will run for President in 2008. Gravel, 75, has not faced voters since he lost for reelection in 1980. His three main issues: opposition to the Iraq War, passage of a direct democracy constitutional amendment establishing national referendums on legislation (much like state ballot initiatives), and adoption of a “Fair Tax” plan that would replace all federal individual and corporate taxes with a 23% national sales tax on all new goods and services. “The American people are frustrated with the level of dysfunction of government,? Gravel said. ?The thought of getting out there early, right now, is really the big tactic for me. Once I?m out there and people see the issues I?m raising, it will resonate with people,” he explained. Gravel’s anger over the Iraq War and government secrecy — which he views as very similar to the Vietnam War issues he dealt with in the Senate — prompted him to run. Gravel, who was almost solely responsible for both ending the military draft and for getting the secret “Pentagon Papers” into the press in 1971, actively ran for Vice President in 1972 (and won a few hundred convention delegates).
…………

An overview of an interview with Mike Gravel by Ron at politics1.com is found here (though clicking it it seems to bounce to Tuesday’s entry. This is for Monday’s entry.)

For me at least, this raises a curious question. What gives a political candidate legitimacy? — and by legitimacy I mean enough to get the each member of the news media to have someone on his beat, and for the candidate to make appearances at those debates. Each Presidential Nomination election brings with it this assortment of fringe candidates that get a quick airtime on the “Human Interests” last section of local news outlets, ie: “Ain’t this guy wacky?” They don’t deserve any mind. Beyond them, we have Lyndon LaRouche, who the Democratic Party doesn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, even while he technically raises more money for his campaigns than the majority of the Legitimate opponents. He… has a dedicated following of cult-members.

Mike Gravel falls somewhere just beyond these guys on the “fringe” category, and somewhere just short of the “Legitimate” Guys on the “Granted Respectability” category. In the last election cycle for the Democratic Party these were: Carol Mosley Braun, Wesley Clarke, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Bob Graham, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Joseph Lieberman, and Al Sharpton. Ted Koppel became a bit testy with Sharpton and Kucinich for continuing to campaign past a few primaries — “Their time was up”, supposedly, and truth be told the whole lot of them were probably found these candidates a bit tedious. But they were still there… depending on what criteria you put to mark them they were legitimate and not legitimate. Truth be told, the party itself probably would have liked Al Sharpton to go away (way too much baggage for any candidate, black or white), but could not really offend his base of support. Which was the purpose of Carol Mosley Braun’s campaign, a bit puzzling in that there reportedly was no real campaign apparatus under her — to stop any potential fall-out from Sharpton.

Mike Gravel has a platform (though, that itself may actually take him away from the “Granted Respect” category — which is, the Legitimate Guys (and, hi Hillary, Gal) need Wriggle Room. He has a record, indeed I have to admire placing the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Records and thus releasing them to the public. He probably has as much money at hand as… say… Braun (though not as much as LaRouche, who nobody wants anything to do with).

And he’s not going to come near the debates or, except for a brief blip at this very moment, the media. Maybe he’s like Eugene McCarthy for the 1992 presidential election cycle?