The one thing I can say about the perpetual Silly Season of the Permanent Political campaign cycle is that it does tell us about whichever individuals or clusters are putting out the particular silliness at any particular time. Take the issue of Hillary Clinton’s cleavage.

Think about this for a moment. I can probably figure out the manner in which this little nugget passed through various channels of communication into a controversy, and find the original source, but I do not really want to. I want to suggest the absurdity that somebody looked at Hillary Clinton on CSPAN and chomped at the bit about something less than what a normal person would notice as cleavage.

Do I dare show you a picture of cleavage?

Actually I probably should have made it a point to find something non-blond for that one.

One snippet from this ridiculous brohauhau:

Harwood then asserted: “When you look at the calculation that goes into everything that Hillary Clinton does, for her to argue that she was not aware of what she was communicating by her dress is like Barry Bonds saying he thought he was rubbing down with flaxseed oil.”

Yes. Hillary Clinton was hypnotizing the 18 to 35 year old male voter, prying them loose from their Jessica Alba posters and various pornographic and semi-pornographic images, getting us all to chant “Must. Vote. Hillary. Cleaveage.”

Really. How did anybody notice this? Every answer to that question that I can think of does not really make any sense — it is beyond my comprehension.
Does this Harwood character really have a hard on for a rather asexual looking 60-something year old woman? Is somebody going to go ahead and comment on Hillary Clinton’s shoes and just make this more blatant?
On the other hand, maybe this is for the best. Otherwise we would all have to come to grips with candidate Barack Obama’s positioning to prove he can be a hawk by promoting the idea of invading Pakistan — something everybody with any brain knows is never going to happen, ever.

If you ever listen to Rachel Maddow, you know about her harping on the sort of neglected issue of the decay of our national infrastucture — The Council of Civil Engineers gives America a low grade for the situation; European media has taken note of it more so than American media has, and it is not a topic that lends itself to fiery discussion — even though it is basically the nuts and bolts business of government.

… That which makes John Quincy Adams an underrated president, and Andrew Jackson an overly romanticized figure…

So, in the wake of the giant explosion in New York City, you look back and see that Rudy Giuliani’s insistence on annual tax cuts trimmed budgets in this area — suggesting future geiser explosions.  In the wake of yesterday’s Minnesota bridge collapse, we note that the Minnesota legislator kept passing increased budgets to allow for bridge repair, but was vetoed by Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Read this news item of the issues in a special election in Minnesota very closely, and there isn’t a doubt which side of that issue — Gas tax for road repair versus not — just received a major boost — regrettably due to an unhappy accident.

I tend to be weary of taking these major news stories and harping for political points, but there is no other around it — policy decisions lead to real world consequences.  But the problem on a national level is that the budget is pretty well diverted unevenly to those with the plum chairman assignment, arrived at largely through Seniority.  The good news on that score is that Ted Stevens looks to be chopped off to pasture right about now, which can only really mean that the chances that the next pork-laden Transportation Bill will end up with money to an arena that repairs a choppy stretch of our national infrastructure before something like what happened in Minneota happens again is modestly improved — by dent of Ted Stevens not getting to slice himself up a huge piece of that budgetary pie.

That strikes me as entirely cynical, but I guess there is no way of getting around that analysis.  I have to stare at the situation as is, and process accordingly.

“Zavtra Editor Catalouges four Decades of British Malice Against Russia”.

So popped up something from out of Larouche’s pump. Just passing forward some current Russian government propaganda against the British … Oligarchy.
It is not difficult to figure out Larouche’s affinity for the Russian government of Vladimir Putin. For one thing, Vladimir Putin is spitting out anti-British propaganda (still fighting World War II, I suppose, only fighting it from the vantage point of before Germany decided to invade Russia.) For another thing, Putin has a youth movement going, complete with instilled elder generational hatred and references to their enemies by scatological references. More. Regretably the person who posted a glossy propaganda pamphlet for Nashi has stuck it behind a firewall.

Oh, and then there’s the line on Litvinenko. No comment on how this shadows Larouche.

But there is nothing new under the sun, and one hobbles together these pieces in the operation of the Fantasy Shadow Government.
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On Nick Benton:

In his weekly national affairs column last month, Nicholas F. Benton, founder, owner and editor of the Falls Church News-Press, an award-winning weekly newspaper in Northern Virginia, became the first person in the U.S., other than on the Internet, to openly and publicly describe his former association with political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., during the 1970s and into the ’80s.

I am having trouble believing that he is the first, and “The Internet” can’t exactly be brushed aside as meaningless, apart from the points of anonymity. A National Review article I can’t locate easily in my file folders pops up as seemingly written from an insider, but I suppose it may have just been a mere former member (someone with somewhat more knowledge than, say Rachel Tuttle/Williams for that book I keep mentioning). Besides which, Larouchies would be more than happy to “describe their assocation”. But it does not matter, it really doesn’t. Even if false, I am more than happy to let Nick Benton be the first to have done something here.

What is weird is that if I go back and read anonymous quotations from described “early associates” of Larouche in various news articles — this for instance, and I think Benton is a likely source for any number of them. Here’s some anecdotal evidence of the place Nick Benton has put himself in his community.
One man I wonder about is Robert Dreyfuss. (That has long since disappeared from his resume.) It looks like he has never commented on his Larouche associations, which is his call I suppose, though I do note that it is an issue that dogs him a bit, his critics use against him to discredit him.  I am curious if he has ever been approached and asked about it and opted out.  What I find interesting with him is that his work is pretty continuous — he has covered the same intelligence beats from much the same political point of view.

He wrote it, Benton stated, to clarify his personal and professional purpose for being the first news entity to write and publish the report in April on the coincidence between the suicide of a long-time LaRouche associate, Ken Kronberg, and a LaRouche memorandum circulated in his organization the same day. The memo assailed Kronberg’s operation within the LaRouche circle, and stating that “baby boomers,” ostensibly of the Kronberg ilk, are not “the real world … unless they want to commit suicide.”

“Coincidence”? Never mind. I suspect that additional motivation is found here:

“There are many people who were once associates of LaRouche who cut that off once the true nature of it became clear to emerge as highly accomplished and successful,” Benton said.

He wrote in his column, “I and others who aligned with LaRouche in that period, like Kronberg, were generally well-meaning young people determined to follow through on their zeal to end the Vietnam War by bringing social and economic justice to the world. In that era, being a socialist, advocating the creation and re-distribution of wealth, was considered a meritorious vocation.”

It’s a word of encouragement for anyone in Larouche’s orbit looking to get out, as well a humanizing statement to a group of people average people look at as autotrons — take an account of motivations. Looking over Dennis King’s website, the left side of which is bulging ever fuller these days — as we have that lawnchair out watching the supposed destruction of Larouche’s Empire, there are plenty of items on the dreadful life inside the cult. But I think I spot a hole — successful accomplishments after life inside the cult. Thus, a crucial part of the message is missed — and in a round-about Larouche is aided in attacking his “enemies” from this omission. Or so it dawns on me.

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FROM MARC COOPER. (Blog conversation goes on over here.)
Unfortunately, Sheehan’s efforts have borne some fruit — so to speak. Check out this upcoming event in which the “unity” sought be Sheehan is at least partially reflected. One expert fringe-watcher has extracted some real nuggets from the stew of participants and backers of this horrific event. He notes that speaker Webster Tarpley was a long-time militant in the proto-fascist Larouche cult.

I have read comments from “9/11 Truth”ers that Larouche has “infiltrated” their group, and Webster Tarpley appears to be the pin-point of this. I believe Webster Tarpley to be something of a cloaked Larouche affiliate, disassociated only for the point of having enough credibility to disseminate Larouchian conspiracy theories in these forums that would balk at the most direct association. But to say that Larouche has infiltrated “9/11 Truth” is akin to saying that Trekkies have infiltrated a Comic Book Convention. Then again, 9/11 conspiracy theorists are sort of the Crazy Aunt of any Liberal gathering — there, and nobody in control of the proceedings wishes to acknowledge it for fear of drawing attention to it. It came to a point where Eric Alterman had to address them in a Nation article.

I say this based on such FACTNet posts as this:

Chaitkin never left the cult. There are people who claim to have left, but that is usually to hoodwink others. Security honcho Paul Goldstien claims to have left, but hosts soirries for the cult security chief and a guy code named Carpet who probably recieves more money in one week than the entire LYM payroll!

Maybe Lyn has franchised the cult as you can often see the raw material of the cult end up in Webster Tarpley’s material. I once received an email from a person who was in Leesburg as a guest and heard a talk by Lyn about how some of the members need to “go out and forage”. It is not uncommon for cults to send out their people to infiltrate or diseminate more lunacy written with out the cult leaders name attached. Mon has hundreds of front groups. Always keep in mond that spending years and years in a cult like this of endless hysteria will screw you up big time.
And I also say that based on the fact that Webster Tarpley’s current work is still filled with that goddamned Larouchian jargon.
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There. “What words can I type that will move us one small step in the direction of the utter destruction of Lyndon Larouche?” But I probably would just stick to that paragraph about an assembled post-cult Success story rafter.

To go back to that posting of “Where are the Baby-Boomers supposed to go?”, and tuer07’s response on Second Chances and all that. It really is not the long-term or even middle-term that I had in mind with that question. It is the short-term and the immediate — a practical point, and a point of reference that probably fits the profile of some Field Operators, who are probably experiencing tightened control right about now, and as Rachel Holmes put it — not a problem for those in the National Center in Loudon.

I watched as somebody– I presume mother, even though she seemed a little too young for the three she was toting along — though not inconceivable, also could have been the eldest sister and the oldish woman in the seat adjacent somebody else in the family dynamic, who knows? — hand out some peanut butter sandwich, made out of sourdough English Muffins and peanut butter.  There was this moment when one of the lads, the toddler in the carriage, half handed it toward someone, half didn’t.  The statement was made that the kid wanted to share yet keep the whole thing for himself at the same time.

The site of these three kids  eating the peanut butter sandwiches brought to mind this story:

Trying to remove radioactive sludge that is thick as peanut butter clogged a pump and led to a spill at the Hanford nuclear reservation, officials said Tuesday.

Now workers are trying to determine how to clean the worst spill that Hanford’s tank farm area has had in years.

“The release to the environment of this waste material is not acceptable,” Delmar Noyes, of the U.S. Department of Energy at Hanford, told reporters during a conference call.

No workers were contaminated by the radioactivity and the spill was contained within a tiny area near the waste tanks, so it posed no threat to the public, Noyes said. […]

The waste from the bottom of the tank is so lethal “that a cup full of waste would kill everyone in a room in a short period of time,” Pollet added.
Well, if the United States had the same lax standards for food safety as China, the kids might wel be eating Nuclear Sludge Peanut Butter sandwiches — a cheaper way to the same sensation, I suppose.

I noticed the Steve Novick ad of a few days ago on blueoregon.  The ad spot for the Steve Novick has changed to one priming an interview on Rachel Maddow, but something about the old ad struck me.

3 frames of text flash.  “First there was Paul Wellstone.”  “Then there was Jon Tester.”  “Now there is Steve Novick.”

Interesting.  Apt for his audience there at blueoregon, the primary voter who would donate money.  The Wellstone reference makes perfect sense.  But I do not quite understand the Jon Tester reference makes all that much sense.  Is there a great contingency of Jon Tester love out there in the state of Oregon?
Sure, his campaign served as a protege and continuation of the populist politics Governor Brian Schweitzer, “blue” governor of “red” Montana, and a welcome discontinuation of the politics of the Senior Senator of Montana — Max Baucus.  At least rhetorically — in terms of policy and voting I don’t know that anyone has seen enough.  Nothing wrong with it, as it has been seven months so far in the Senate, but I don’t know that Jon Tester has established himself such that referencing him as a lineage makes any sense.

I can’t figure the “Turning a Red State Blue” figures into the mix either, because Oregon has voted for the Democratic candidate since Dukakis in the presidential races, and has surged very pro-Democratic at the moment.  Besides, Wellstone’s Minnesota is in that mix as well — they voted for Mondale.

Which leaves me with, at least with regards to Tester, the fact that Tester is missing some fingers and that Novick is missing a hand (“Great Left Hook”, as his campaign promises to use as a slogan).  Is that the connection?

Recently I noticed one of those blog to blog to blog conversations dealing with the issue of the words “Progressive” and “Liberal”.  I don’t remember who was involved in this — I think it was Josh Micah Marshal, Matthew Yglesias, and someone at the National Review.

Hillary Clinton used the word “Progressive”, which was determined to be the final nail in the coffin in the transferance of the word “Liberal” to the word “Progressive”.  A poll was released which found in the tipsy world of public opinion which had held the moderate, conservative, liberal hiearchy of public esteem had been inverted with the introduction of the word “Progressive”.  Meanwhile, the National Review person attacked the Progressive Moment of the early twentieth century — which lead the realization that the word “Progressive” is in for as big a whirlwind as “Liberal”.

Actually, if you want the clumsy beginnings of that consult Bill O’Reilly and his dichotomy of “Traditionalists” versus “SPs” — “Secular Progressives” shortened to “SPs” and I would like to give him the trademark so that I may avoid anybody else from picking up his cringe-worthy invention.  I can also point to a Reason article which tied “Progressivism” into such things as the Eugenics Movement and the nadir of America’s civil rights for black people (I think that was the National Review columnist’s tact)– and that book “Bully Boy” from a libertarian perspective attacking Teddy Roosevelt because the Food and Drug Administration is an unwanted intrustion of Big Government into the market-place.

The poll results that show the favorable impression toward “Progressive” and the lukewarm at best impressive to “Liberal” — I do not know what to do with.   The basic problem is that theoretically the two words have two different meanings, but for marketing purposes we now use them interchangably, and thus the use of one to displace the other makes the meanings meaningless.  I have seen debates that posit that the two words have two different meanings, and by the principals that the two stand for — this is what I am.  I find these debates to be meaningless within the context of American politics, angels dancing on the point of the pin, and it shall be that way until the two words are not used reflexively in political discourse to the same ends.

The other problem is that I am out of step with the mindset of Average America in that I am apt to think about these things — as opposed to reacting on a check-off-the-list level.  I assumed that people will regard “Progressive” as a weasley way to avoid the word “liberal” — thus reinforcing the “wimp” stereotype of liberal and getting the liberal/progressive nowhere, but apparently the check-off-the-list equation occurs quickly enough to not give them that pause.  Or maybe I am wrong and they have conjured a difference of meaning where I never knew one existed.
I have been meaning to delve into the history of how the two words have been bandied about over the course of the past century or so, more to the point how we arrived at this rather bizarre liberal – progressive dichotomy.  I have heard repeatedly that the word “Conservative” at its nadir was held in less esteem than the word “Liberal” in the sort of post 60s backlash which has had it at its nadir, but a quick bit of checking shows a few surprises — it is not quite that simple.