Archive for March, 2007

making stuff up about the war protest

Monday, March 19th, 2007

I carried three signs intermittently, provoking reactions.  The first sign spurred outrage.  “Out of Iraq / Into Iran!”  Apparently people generally agreed with the first half of the slogan but generally disagreed with the second half of the slogan.  Upon conversation, I ended up agreeing that it was a stupid idea.

The second one seemed to incite a confusion masked with a chuckle, a chuckle hiding the confusion of thinking they should find it humourous, but being afraid to admit it didn’t make sense to them.  “Impeach Nixon”, which people decided was an obscure comment on our current president.

The third sign only received unadulterated confusion.  “US OUT OF CASCADIA NOW!”  Apparently we just aren’t ready for the concept.

New focus for the Lyn Marcus Youth Movement…

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

Notably, to understand Albert Einstein’s referenced conclusions respecting the significance of the general accomplishments of the practice of modern science, from Kepler through Riemann: we must acknowledge the evidence that the principle of gravitation, as discovered by Kepler, is “invisible” to mere sense-perception: that, because it is, efficiently, as big as the universe, and thus, like every true universal physical principle, it supplies that universe with the quality of boundless finiteness as a whole, but is, also, therefore, in a manner of speaking, so large, that its efficient local expression is, apparently, ontologically infinitesimal.[11] This implication of Kepler’s discoveries is then made more efficiently comprehensible, by the explicitly anti-Euclidean, dynamic, physical hypergeometry of Bernhard Riemann, as this is to be contrasted with the silly, neo-Euclidean, mechanistic-statistical, mythical universe admired by the modern, empiricist dupes, who have followed the method of Descartes, including those such as Immanuel Kant et al.[12]
Got that? No?

It’s some brilliance or other by Lyn Marcus, as relayed by the Lyn Marcus abjunct on the “FACTNet” message board of anti-cult postings over here.

I think it may be, in a very tangeantal way, part of their new anti-Gore curriculum. Oh yes. The Lyn Marcus Youth Movement appears to be taking down their “Impeach Cheney” soap boxing to make way for some anti-Gore sloagneeering. And we have come full circle.

The following are the highlights of the EIR‘s more than 15 years of investigative reporting on the philosophy, political connections, and activities of Albert Gore, Jr. All of the following items are (will soon be) available in full on www.larouchepub.com. They represent the starting point for any one carrying out a thorough review of the pedigree and performance of the man now being touted as a ‘Global Warming’ superstar.

The problem is I don’t really know how long Al Gore is going to be at the forefront of the news, so I don’t know how much mileage one can get on picking apart Al Gore. Nonetheless, had Al Gore been prompted to the president in 2000, the LYM would have had no shortage of material to draw from:

“Gore’s New Book sets agenda for environmentalist dictatorships”, a review of Earth in the Balance, by Margaret Sexton (Vol. 19, no. 14, April 3, 1992)

“Al Gore and Adolf Hitler”, by Lyndon LaRouche. (Vol. 26, no. 2, Jan. 8, 1999)

“Prince Philip’s ‘Cat’s-paw’ Al Gore, Jr. Would Usher in a New Dark Age,” by Scott Thompson (Vol. 26, no. 4, Jan. 22, 1999)

… and on and on. Oh, the paths that might have been had it not been for a fluke of history.  The same but… it’s not Cheney — it’s GORE!

The amazing predictable guess the Republican Senator Game, playable from now through the 2008 elections

Friday, March 16th, 2007

A couple of days ago when I heard that the first Republican had come out in favor of axing Alberto Gonzalez, my first thought was “Um.  John Sununu, right?”

Right.  John Sununu.  New Hampshire Senator, up for re-election in 2008, just saw his state go from an overwhelming Republican state legislative majority to an overwhelming Democratic state legislative majority, and just saw most of the Republican House members elected out in 2006.

The other guesses would have been Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Gordon Smith of Oregon.  I don’t know my House members from impkiss, so I am sticking with the Senators here.
Gordon Smith appears to be pulling a fine line of letting people hear what they want him to, fork-tonguedly saying that “it would be helpful to have an attorney general that Congress could have more confidence in”, through an aide as it turns out.  This seems to be Smith’s strategeum — he made national headlines by coming out against the war in Iraq while being in a position for the Republican Oregonian editorial writer to explain how he did not.  (To be fair, he seems to be embracing any major initiatiative coming out of Governor Kulongoski, and former Governor Kitzhaber’s health care think tank.  Which makes for amusement more than anything else.)

Oddly enough, Pete Domenici remains out of my rubric of guesses on these matters.

On through the silly season

Friday, March 16th, 2007

In the perpetual Silly Season of Presidential Campaign politics, Barack Obama has gone on the record as calling John Edwards “kind of cute” and “kind of good looking.”  Obama, of course, is already “clean and articulate”.

The only news Edwards seems to be generating are these rather blase comments directed at him.  Take, for instance, Ann Coulter’s reference to Edwards as a “faggot.”  That is Ann Coulter’s schtik, though — every Democrat is a “faggot” — John Edwards just joined the hall of Bill Clinton and Al Gore (except the former she referenced as the less offensive term “gay”, still off in that I think Monica Lewinsky has other impressions of Clinton, and the latter was a “total fag”).  It is a strange sense of humour, and one I admit to not understanding — along the lines of a four year old obsessed with the word “poopy”.  Charles Krauthammer has a different schtick, which is to “diagnose” prominent Democrats’ “mental illnesses” (in the pages of his Washington Post syndicated editorials) — and I am not entirely sure which is more offensive — even if Krauthammer’s is by default more sophisticated — but they both seem equally predictable for the individual pundits.

Obama’s statement is a sort of back-handed compliment — he’s a pretty boy of little substance and an empty suit.   It is the current state of both the media and the presidential race that news on Edwards revolves around this stuff, some personality conflicts.  An examination of their health care plans is a difficult task for anyone to perform, and nobody cares.

The Last Federalist

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

From a comment left to this list of hypothetical books nobody would ever want to read.:

and there is a brief article about the Federalists that mention the last Federalist candidates and elected officials such as this quote:
“During the last days of their party, the Federalists remained in office longest in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Oliver Wolcott, Jr. served as governor of Connecticut from 1817 to 1827. That state also had two Federalist senators until 1827, one of whom continued in office until 1831. In Massachusetts, Harrison Gray Otis served as senator (1817-22) and so did James Lloyd, Jr. (1822-26). Josiah Quincy was mayor of Boston (1823) and was replaced by his friend Otis (1829-31).

Defeatist Rufus King was the only Federalist outside of these states who held an important elective office during this time. He was senator from New York (1813-1825) and minister of England (1825-26).”

………..

New England is historically the graveyard for political parties — the Federalist Party died there, the Whig Party died there, and the Democratic and Republican Parties have found some low points confined there (the 1936 presidential election and the 1972 presidential election.)

Actually, New Englanders were always threatening to secede from the nation, until the balance of powers shifted (notably the two Adamses — Northerners — were one term presidents while the other presidents up through Jackson were two-termers) and the South seceded first.

Now we know the last Federalists.  Presumably we can get to the debate on whether Jefferson effectively destroyed the Federalist Party by out-Federal-isting them, and just how strongly he hewed to any Jeffersonian principals at all.

Oh.  And there’s also a link analyzing the Larouchites’ victory in the 1986 Illinois Democratic Primaries.   Which effectively destroyed the Adlai Stevenson political clan.  I still don’t fully understand.  I assume a lot of people will end up deciding, partially not fully informed, by looking at the voters’ pamphlet.  Where they would see one statement from individuals promoting a set of principals in accord with the National Democratic Party, and one other set of candidates promoting (ahem) forming a “Nuremberg Tribunal” to investigate drug dealing by Zionists and journalists, represented by Henry Kissinger and Katherine Graham.
And they would gravitate toward the former.  But what do I know?  Many factors have to align just so to create an anomaly.

Obama Repeat

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

In a way, this is the only question I have for Barack Obama, and I won’t go back to it because I keep repeating it ad naseum of this blog.  Prominent Liberal Democratic blogger Superstar Icon Guy Kos suddenly popped up with it, but I have something to say about how Kos frames it.

This question still requires an answer:

Sharpton went on to criticize Obama on other issues, including his relationship with Sen. Joe Lieberman, who’s controversial within the Democratic Party.

“Senator Obama and I agree that the war is wrong, but then I want to know why he went to Connecticut and helped Lieberman, the biggest supporter of the war,” Sharpton told TV.

Obama talks a great “anti-Iraq War” game. But when he had a chance to help do something about it — help get rid of its biggest cheerleader in the Senate, he decided to campaign for Lieberman instead.

Obama might wish we had poorer memories, but those of us actually trying to end the war can’t forget.

It is impossible not to be cynical about this, and I can refer to a book I referred to yesterday, Walter Karp’s Indispensable Enemies on politicos taking a stance on an issue and then supporting someone with very different stances onto committee chairs, thus always being able to take a popular position while propagating the other — wittingly sometimes, other times not.

Here the problem is mostly ingratiating oneself into a Good Old Boys Network of the Senate.  It is a funny power game, that, and whatever reason Obama had to toss his chips in with the networks behind Lieberman he choose it.

But what pops out at me about kos’s entry here is a rather striking bit of impotence with even this here Prominent Liberal Democratic blogger Superstar Icon Guy.

Obama might wish we had poorer memories, but those of us actually trying to end the war can’t forget.

And what are you going to do about it?  Understand, Obama has just raised a record amount over the blogosphere and has taken another turn in the evolution of blog-land — the “Facebook campaign” which is he seems to be reaching to something other than the “hardcore” of the Deaniac-types (think of it as the rockstar element — Oprah?  Best seller books?  And he’s so… clean and articulate!) in raising this record funds.  He has reached a different audience here, there’s some other gate that has been stormed by someone else, and we go from there.

to appear in Portland this weekend

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

So apparently, Raed Jarrar, the raed of (Iraqi) salam pax’s “dearread” blog which was a must-read through the — um — “Major Combat Operations Phase” of the Iraq War, is going to be a featured speaker at the Portland 4th Annual of the Event in March of 2003 Peace March / Anti-War Protest. Amazing, because he may be the first speaker at any of these things I have ever heard of.
As an aside for these things, in the past these nationally-coordinated marches were sponsored by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and end Racism), a fairly dismal entity which the right wing could beat up mercilessly. Now I do not believe they have International ANSWER to kick around anymore, but I know they will continue to do so nonetheless.

Raed Jarrar has always fascinated me in certain respects. Salam Pax was always in a strange way, within a plethora of mixed emotions, a crypto-war supporter, in the sense that he could shrug when it came, state that the Iraqis would never dispose of Saddam Hussein or his two sons, and at the end of the statue-dropping make a statement that the Americans had better get this right. Raed is of an entirely different mind, Take:

But if the Americans hadn’t invaded, do you believe that internal resistance would have been able to depose Saddam? If Iraqis decided to change their political regime, it’s their business. If they decided not to change it, it’s their business as well. My uncles were deported outside the country because we come from an Iranian descent. Many relatives died during the Iraqi/Iranian war and we were living with daily oppression. So, when I say that it’s fine with us to have an oppressive government that we have to change, I mean it and I know what I’m talking about.

If Iraqis decided to change their political regime, it’s their business. If they decided not to change it, it’s their business as well. My uncles were deported outside the country because we come from an Iranian descent. Many relatives died during the Iraqi/Iranian war and we were living with daily oppression. So, when I say that it’s fine with us to have an oppressive government that we have to change, I mean it and I know what I’m talking about.More aptly is this analysis, which downplays internal strife:

The current civil conflict—Iraqis in general don’t view it as a civil war—is caused by the foreign intervention. If we took into consideration Iraqi Sunnis and Shia have been living together for the last 1,400 years and they had one period of civil conflict that happened 600 years ago and they have never had any ethnic or sectarian clashes in the last century, and that they started having more political tension among themselves in the last three years, after the presence of the U.S., I think the clear conclusion is what’s happening now is caused by the foreign intervention, because it didn’t exist before then.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
In a sense that would alleviate many Americans from its last impulse to remain, the “We can’t leave a bloody civil war”… (Not that we seem to be leaving. We appear to be ready to cut up the oil — one part to Sunnis, one part to Shiites, one part to Kurds, one part to Chevron, one part to Exxon.)

But starting with the bombing of the Golden Mosque, I really can’t exactly tie into that one. But I would really like to believe it.