The Atlantic Monthly had some pretty good timing with this one. The cover for the latest issue: What went wrong with Karl Rove.

Karl Rove was supposedly setting out to create a “Permanent Republican Majority”, using Mark Hanna for William McKinley as his role model, “The Architect” of a system of spoils which kept the Republican Party as the dominant force until the Great Depression and … um… Roosevelt’s system of spoils made the Democratic Party the dominant force until Vietnam and Civil Rights. Exiting from the playing field after engineering Bush’s two elections and the Republican victories of 2002, but not so much anything good in 2006 and not so much of a good situation going into 2008, I suspect he is still in the background, privately if not publicly in service with the RNC.

The image I remember came from Karl Rove with an NPR interview last October. The interviewer asked the question of how Bush would deal with a possible Democratic Congress. Rove responded that that wasn’t going to happen. The interviewer interjected that “the math shows” a strong likelihood that the Democrats would retake Congress. Rove retorted that “You’re entitled to your math. But I have THE math.”

One of the weekly news magazines followed Rove on Election Day. He apparently began the morning, or that weekend, planning a meeting of political scientists to discuss the new unreliability of election polling, because it was so off from “THE math”. There was a moment time when his black-berry rang off with the news that the Democrats had taken back the House. And they photographed him staring at the black-berry — the moment that he knew that his plans had been foiled.

But it is hard to quantify the success/failure rate of this adviser in concerns with sticking a political party on a good or bad footing. Compare Karl Rove to the success/failure quota with regards of Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party. Bill Clinton, you will understand, came into office with his party the dominate party on the state level, and with a solid long-term Congressional lock. He left office with the Democratic Party largely in tatters on all those fronts. However, whatever one can say for the Kerry and Gore campaigns, the national electoral map certainly looked better for the Democrats than it did before Clinton came to office. As well, it is hard to imagine the morale plunge that would have taken place had the Democrats not been able to get victory in 1992 — coming off some 1991 book stating the Republicans’ Geographic lock on the White House, and with surprisingly strong murmurs that if the Democrats managed to lose, they might as well find a different horse than the National Democratic Party for the presidency while retaining its local and regional parties.

Karl Rove’s tag as “Genius” wore off very quickly, and after a spell all I can really say is he had a good run, but his success came in that he foisted Bush on us, and that was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode in his face.

Sitting on the stands at your local Safeway and Borders bookstores right now (probably less so any comic book store) is a copy of an Archie Digest, of interest because it is a reprint of Archie #1 from 1942, as well the first Archie story from one year prior.  (Oddly, the Joe Edwards funny animal stories were more amusing than Bob Montana’s Archie comics.  An alternative route for the company, the path not taken, I suppose.)
Now, we all know Archie as roughly the most white-bread creation there is.  They inserted a couple of black teenagers into Riverdale in the 1970s, which if one complains is a little token-ish, i would suggest that they would have been in a place rhetorically if they had not.  One comment on the evolution of Chuck Clayton, though: the company appears to have evolved his main character trait from being a superstar basketball player to a prodigious Artist.  I imagine a board meeting at some point pondering the issues of Racial stereotypes for their token black character.

Back to 1942, and you have this:

(Image lifted from here.)

I do not know quite what to say about the image, not the most egregious example from this comic book.  Though, as somebody pointed out in the “Comics Journal” message board, he did get the best line in.  But I’d think the editorial staff would be obligated to mention something about this.  Save some of that space of company promotional material published at the top of this digest to make a somewhat bland historical point, on par with what I have seen in reprints of Basil Wolverton’s Space-hawk (when he was diverted from his science fiction soap opera to direct attention to the War effort) of Japanese caricatures, and I have seen for Carl Barks Donald Duck reprints toward American Indians (except the example I can think of off the top of my mind Disney actually awkwardly altered, “cleaning up” the racism.)  [I don’t think the Tintin reprints have as much obligation to mention the problem.]
I know what I am seeing, but there are kids reading this, right?

It probably is not worth mentioning the just taken-place Iowa Straw Poll – slash – Republican Primary, but one thing bothers me about the coverage.  It is found within this headline.

Huckabee’s Surprise Second In Iowa.

See, it was a foregone conclusion that Mitt Romney would win — and he splurged to get his victory like nobody’s business.  But the question was who would come in second?  Would it be…

Brownback, Tancredo, or Huckabee?  Giuliani and, mercifully McCain, were not a’participating.
And would it have been any less or more of a surprise if Tancredo or Brownback had taken the honors of second place?

Shouldn’t a “surprise” hinge on something nobody could see coming?  Now if John Cox had come in second, THAT would have been a surprise!  (As it were, he received 40-some votes and came behind Tommy Thompson, who has just dropped out of the race… without anyone really ever noticing that he was ever in the race.)

Okay. I get it.

The “Get Larouche” campaign is all part of the “Get Clinton” campaign.
Avi Klein is connected with… um… the Irish Republicans? Not to be confused with the Irish Republican Army, except I gather, yes, to be confused with the Irish Republican Army.

Also connected with a bunch of names tossed out to and fro. Many of them seem to be cribbed from the Joe Conasan book.

Klein has written a slander piece against Lyndon Larouche to ensure that Hillary Clinton does win the next presidential election, which will be a great victory for Larouche because it will ensue the successful completion of 1998 era monetary policy, which had been derailed when the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy impeached Bill Clinton.
No. Seriously. That’s a lot of names tossed out to and fro. A mixture of the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” — or, if you will, the “Get Clinton” campaign of the 1990s — as well the old “Get Larouche” campaign(s) of predominately the 1980s.
Did you notice he’s using the old Hillary Clinton moniker “Vast Right-wing Conspiracy” to describe this “Get Larouche / Get Clinton” effort?
Um. The children are the future. The LYM will outlast Larouche, I tells you, it will! You bet! And they should stay off of myspace, because it is owned by Murdoch. (Say. Do you have anything to say about Ken Kronberg, or for that matter baby-boomers of any and all stripes?)
Then there’s this.

Given this Anglo-Israeli pedigree for Avi Klein’s recent position with Homeland Security Daily Wire, LaRouche associates took seriously a recent e-mail from Klein, which he signed as “Avi Klein, Special Agent, Mossad.” A formal inquiry has been initiated through the Israeli Embassy in Washington, to determine whether Klein’s self-description is accurate, or whether he has possibly violated Federal laws as the result of some psychological aberration. U.S. government officials have confirmed to EIR researchers that all actual Mossad agents operating inside the United States are required to alert the FBI and Justice Department in advance of their arrival.

Okay. Gots that?

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2007/08/12/vast-right-wing-conspiracy-it-again-new-twist.html

I have had this thought for a long time, which is that once partisan passions cool a little bit, and once the political winds shift enough and with a new crop of politicians unassociated with the crop we have right now, Republicans will come to terms with the Bill Clinton Presidency and realize that what they had with him was something akin to “the best Republican President they didn’t realize they had”.

You won’t find too many Democrats bitching and moaning about President Eisenhower.  And we have encounted a decent amount of hedging on some of the policy legacy of President Richard Nixon — the post-modernist interpretation of him as the “last Liberal President”.

But I must say.  I did not expect it too come so very suddenly, as to effect the course of the 2008 presidential race.  It almost seems that the only people on the opinion-meister Right to come out in full force, with the urgency they had with Bill Clinton, against Hillary Clinton may just well be orbiting around Fox News and talk radio.  Oh, for the days of Vince Foster conspiracy theories!

I think I am — and this blog is — a study in the Heisenberg Effect, visa vie L’Affaire Larouche. This puts me in a better spot than Larouche and the cabal in the boiler room in Loudon, though, who are currently studies in the Hindenburg Effect. It is a shame that it took a suicide for events to proceed for them to unravel, but in considering Ken Kronberg’s situation, short of Witness Protection, Ken Kronberg had no immediate way of escaping the torment that was coming.
It may be best to leave this new thread alone — anything I might add would only sully it in terms of raw knowledge. Ignoring for a second the hysterical efforts by the Larouchian that derails the effect (Decent strategy, I suppose, particularly as a new thread starts up. But the damage of the thread starting with what it did is already done. It is one of those attacks on FACTNet which only makes sense in the Larouche-world). Coming off of the analysis of that last memo, we move to a stringing together of the contradictions arising from Larouche’s frantic cover-ups. These two series probably belong together, thus I have cut and pasted them over here. Next follows some excruciatingly inside inside baseball, which comes across like uncovering a new 8th circle of the concentric circles of Hell, answering the question: What was going on in the cult while Larouche was in prison? (Tangent-wise: what happens when Larouche passes away?) The cabal in the boiler-room in Loudon probably learned a couple things from that.

They have apparently passed on an identity for the poster “xlcer”, a matter I do not have much interest in one way or the other — to the young Larouchies for debating and argumentative purposes. They might have even sent a second name, seemingly picked out of the Washington Post article from a few years ago. The phrases used are “Get Larouche Task Force” and “Weak link of”. Entertaining enough concoction, I suppose.

“The Weak link” is a phrase with its own internal logic, used to slam shut in the mind of the Larouchie the debate — in his/her own mind, at least, and that’s all that is needed for these purposes. The second phrase is the “circle the wagons” and toughen up against the external enemy, who seem to have no particular motivation except their own evil hearts to “Get” Larouche. In reality, I suppose the “Get Larouche Task Force”, such as it is, concerns the likes of Dennis King and Chip Berlet, and the world of former Larouchites who have fed them much of their information. In the Larouche world, it rolls to them from the supposed drug-laundering money of John Train, and now the nefarious financiers of FACTNet. And Felix Rohatyn — can’t forget old Felix Rohatyn.

I think we can now reassess the “Get Larouche Task Force” for the current moment. A handful of journalists — the old standby of Dennis King. Also the old standby of Chip Berlet — who I haven’t really seen, but he is just popping up in the coffers. And then Avi Klein — presumably about to throw out a fair and balanced assessment. Scott McLemee, who I now have to add based off of one article for “Inside Higher Ed”, one blog entry, and one Pacifica Radio interview. And then there is Nick Benton — more on him later.

There are a couple of bloggers. No comment on them; they are moving along as best they can, back to the Heisenberg Effect.

And a good handful of former members, several of whom have congregated on a freaking message board. I walked past a point that I made in commenting on that last memo, the one that fingered the “Star Trek Groupie and Robert Beltran Stalker” — because my main purpose was to defend myself from the statement on “not knowing Ken Kronberg” (which I would do so again). The people on the FACTNet board knew Ken Kronberg.

The “weak link” of the “Get Larouche Task Force” appears to have developed an impressive little Intelligence gathering agency, in so much as he keeps all of those g-danged Internal Memos, and can interpret them based on his experiences. Which leads us to the final unspoken membership of the “Get Larouche Task Force”, and answer me the question “Why the Hell am I able to read these things?” It’s not like I’m reading things marked “INTERNAL” from Steve Jobs at Apple Computers.
Sitting at a conference call, getting your marching orders for the day. Look to the guy to your left. Then to to the guy to your right. Then to the guy behind you. One of those people? In the “Get Larouche Task Force”.

Also seemingly half of the membership in the national org in and around Loudon. (BTW: I quit using the name “Leesburg”, because the reaction to the New Republic piece suggests that the Cabal in the Boiler room in Loudon will harp on any mis-statement of specific location, even if only predetermined to be false. I do not know where the boiler room is. Is it in Leesburg? Is it in Round Tree? La La Land? Is it even a boiler room?)

It gets more interesting as one pieces together how internal each internal memo is. Some are probably not too troublesome to find their way to the public — indeed, that last one was written for public conception as much as internal conception. Some? Probably would rather not get out. But then again, the honorary member of the “Get Larouche Task Force” is probably Jeff Steinberg, who I am told and suggested at is piecing together his post-Lyn apparatus.

Good luck with that one. I am one that thinks Larouche will survive this crisis. In the same way that a chicken with its head cut off runs around in a circle for a half hour. That is roughly what Helga and Steinberg will have to work with. It has been a steady process that has gotten me to arrive at the point where I can use a reference to the metaphorical fork which one sticks things into. I think I arrived there at around the time I saw Larouche’s response to that Dennis King piece.
……………………….

Worth taking a look at is the wikipedia article on Nick Benton. Worth taking a slightly longer look at is the wikipedia history page on Nick Benton.

Somewhere in the history page, you will find that a Larouchie added this to the wikipedia entry, later edited out:

“As a member of the National Committee, he was a trusted friend and associate of Mr. LaRouche. It seems that Mr. Benton has never adequately explained his departure from trusted leader, to unflagging adversary.”

Hat tip to “tuer07”, and sorry if the following comes across as something of an attack (and I guess it is a little more critical than my last reference to Nick Benton — one part is only quasi-critical, the other a bit more so).  The wikipedia article notes that:

Benton asked the famous question of Ronald Reagan, as to whether Michael Dukakis ought to make his health records public, to which Reagan replied, “I’m not going to pick on an invalid.

Which was part of a Larouchian smear job on Dukakis, spreading the rumor that Dukakis had a history of mental illness, promulgated through Executive Intelligence Review, the meme picked up by the mainstream media, which followed the Dukakis presidential campaign for an entire news cycle.

That was 1988. Meaning it took him a decade to make the phased exit he describes, the big major step seemed to have been the 1987 establishment of his “Century News Service”. The timeline gets a little tricky in terms of hitting heavy clean up duty for Larouche — clearly had his mind on the way gone, but still doing Larouche’s dirty work.

I note that historical recollections are a little screwy as time has passed on, and I have heard the Dukakis story mistakenly passed on — by John Gorenfeld on the Thom Hartmann Show — as coming from Reverend Moon’s Washingon Times — which ticked me in the way that spotting rivial mistakes you know are wrong can sometimes do.

Somewhere on a page of Republican dirty tricks performed by the Larouchites at Dennis King’s website, and I cannot find it right off the bat, I saw a reference to the effect that “Michael Dukakis is owed an apology.”

I’m just saying… I probably shouldn’t, though. It is a little harsh, and it is water under the bridge in that this is now basically a footnote to the 1988 presidential campaign, ultimately insignificant to the results.
At any rate, I will state that I know Dianne Bettag’s April reference to “not knowing who I was using” — a meaningless misdirection, though I will say that Benton’s name was vaguely familiar at the time. But it was possibly vaguely familiar from non-Larouche land, ie: seen an article here or there.

There are a handful of different 9/11 conspiracy websites being chalked onto downtown sidewalks, one chalked all over the place at any given time.

I suspect that the sites all go back to the same server, but nonetheless I cannot help but wonder and amuse myself with the possibility of a sort of raging Turf Battle.