Hm.

There was a novelty aspect to Shroud of the Thwacker — hey now, Chris Elliott wrote a novel!  — which cannot be replicated.  So what do I do with what apparently is a career-shift?  (Besides watch this and this ?)

Craigslist-related crimes are becoming so well known that several Web sites and blogs have been established to track them.

One – www.craigscrimelist.org – is operated by a true-crime buff who uses the name Trench Reynolds to avoid retaliation, he says.

After starting his first blog on school shootings in 2000, Reynolds said he began noticing news stories about crimes related to the Internet, including many connected to Craigslist and such social Web sites as MySpace.

After starting a Web site dedicated to such crimes, he soon realized that the majority were connected to just one site – Craigslist – and started the Web site dedicated to it.

A blog about school shootings?  Huh?  Now, I’m a little bit more interested in reading a news article about such a thing as they happen than most, but really… Who the hell starts a blog about school shootings? That seems like a rather morose and odd hobby, and not particularly a pleasant addition to a blog-roll.

Which reminds me:  my subscription to “Abortion Magazine” has run out.

Ronald Brownstein has a new book out, released to some acclaim for the consensus beltway insiders, which extolls the virtues of that which we call the “Bi-Partisanship” and rips that which we call “Partisan”. Apparently it includes a good historical overview that traces the cycles of The Party Line, and when and where it strengthened and weakened. Interestingly enough, the time I heard in an interview where the lines were drawn as tightly as they are now was the Wilson Administration — which, in terms of our historical bulletpoint overview we bump along with his Republican predecessors into the “Progressive Era” — or, at least up to The Great War and the public’s reactions to cries for “Normalcy”.

But, if we must. A great era of Bi-Partisanship preceeded the “Progressive Era”. As described in Walter Karp’s “Indispensable Enemies”, the New York State legislature for a time in the 1890s would roll out a batch of bills designed to punish particular industries. These bills would be tabled when the correct amount of money exchanged hands to each party’s political bosses. And so we had… the Great Era of Bi-Partisanship that was… The Gilded Age.

Actually I might have botched that one, but the gist is correct. I do not know if Brownstein swerves into those years. I do know, through scanning some reviews and hearing an interview (I think by Thom Hartmann, but I’m not sure) that he describes our current situation as having come out of a “Great Sorting Out” which occured more or less from out of the 1960s, which aligned the two parties into more or less one liberal party and one conservative one. No more cleavage of Conservative (Southern) Democrats and Liberal(Northeastern, more or less) Republicans. This, I suppose, would line up the Great Era of Bi-Partisanship back to the 1950s, where the Bi-Partisan “Conservative Caucus” held sway. This more or less originated from Republican desperation following the 1936 election, as well as Roosevelt’s more or less stated desire to re-align the two parties as such. The defacto birth, though undoubtedly with any number of antecedents, with the battle to thwart Roosevelt’s Court Packing Plan. (A mixed victory for Roosevelt, but that’s another story — an uncomfortable lesson of realpolitick for us all.)

It’s not the whole story, but the “Sorting Out” would come in earnest starting perhaps with Strom Thurmond quitting the Democratic Party and joining the Republican Party in 1964. (Angry at the Democratic Party as early as 1948 when he ran against Truman because of the party’s Civil Rights plank.) That this great epoch of Bi-Partisanship is thus borne out of the pangs of keeping alive White Supremacy and Segregation does not speak well of Bi-Partisanship, though I guess you can say that that other side of that coin too was bi-partisan — a victory for the stalemating on a real act of Political Progress.

More of the story comes with, for example, the 8 to 4 Democratic to Republican House Committee Labor during, for example, the 1959 – 1960 Congress — as JFK was trying to ramp up his election — being a defacto 6 to 6 roadblock. Which makes this sort of “Bi-Partisan” ideal in the eye of the beholder. The same working with some of the great bi-partisan mechinitions Brownstein described, as with his description and comparison between Harry Truman working with a Thomas Dewey advisor to get the UN and related alliances in place versus Woodrow Wilson’s stubbornness which thwarted the League of Nations. All good and well, but as the Cold War developed so did that great bi-partisan consensus, and so Vietnam was that great Bi-Partisan project, and so we had that spectacle of Eisenhower somewhat impotently deride a “Military Industrial Complex” in passing from central stage, security being that issue which makes the Patriot Act a near unanimous, by definition bi-partisan, deal and which passes the Iraq War Resolution with all of one party and half the other party.

I do not understand why we ought worship at the feet of “Bi-Partisanship”. It’s… required and a good thing, and it’s somewhat unhealthy to lead a silly partisan life. But to oppose “Partisanship” is to want that great “Smoothing Over”. Our author is aggrieved by the sight of “penalties” being meted out to those who fail to stem a party line, which I suppose runs to the gamut of our dear friend Joseph Lieberman. You will excuse me if I suggest I’d rather he not be in power — what the heck am I supposed to say?

I cannot quite recall the headline for the “Street Final” edition for the front page of either the Thanksgiving Day or the Day-After-Thanksgiving Oregonian, and the oregonlive website is the most impossible-to-navigate website out there, but searching through google news, the headline was something to the effect of:

Iraq wants US forces for long-term stay

There are many variations of this headline, some approaching accuracy better than others.  IE:

Bush, al-Maliki sign agreement on troops in Iraq

… considering those were the two parties involved in all of the millions of individuals in the US and all of the millions of individuals in Iraq.  Not even the respective legislative bodies of the two countries, such as they are.  Actually, looking down the headlines with the key search words, I see contradictory headlines, IE:

2008 ‘final year for US troops

That one must have been earlier in the day.  Before events on the ground changed.  Familiar to when Bush spoke of the pride of Iraqis in wanting America to leave, eventually, the same with America.  Not that anyone believed him.  It was a transparent falsehood, and understood as such.

Hey.  What?

I always wanted to see him with his hair-piece off.

Why would he quit at this insane time?   Oh, that’ s interesting.  New Ethics rules comes into effect at the end of that year which force a two year wait between Congress critters and a job as a lobbyist.

… Hm.  Does this mean that a Democrat might win a Senate seat in Mississippi, and we can expand the number of Republican senate seats up for re-election to 23?

Oh, damned.  Republican Governor appoints replacement.  New Quasi-incumbent likely win.

… Hm.  Rumor of involvement in Alaskan oil scandal that is dragging down Senator Stevens.  Oh, whatever

… Hey, wait!  Rumor of Gay Hooker!

Okay now this is getting stupid.

Oh Strom Thurmond, where are you now?

Mitt Romney:  While in New Hampshire this weekend, 2008 US Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney quipped while looking at a couple’s tree with its very big leaves:  “Adam and Eve would not have looked as promiscuous if they had had leaves this big.”

Hm.  Interesting.  I’m sure there’s a fetish for that type of thing, and that must be who Romney is courting.

Hillary Clinton:  Touting her experience in a dig at Obama, which Barack Obama countered by saying he “doesn’t remember her”  as head of the Treasury Secretary.  Let’s face it.  They’ll all be stocking their white house from the same cupboard of wandering policy wonks.  Lots of Clinton-era retreads.

So I saw two Ron Paul supporters getting to work to wave their stupdifying “rEVOLution” signs.  One said, “How’s my favorite Liberal?”  The other said, “How’s my favorite conservative?”  And thus you have these two counterparts with their sort of self-aware storyline.  To be honest, someone needs to talk to the liberal and ask him a few questions.

Mike Huckabee is pulling upward in the polls in Iowa, and I think will torpodo Romney, only meaning good things for Rudy Giuliani.  Then again, that might be a sign that someone could pull a Jimmy Carter in this stilting political environment after all.  Ah well.

I have, over this Holiday weekend, received what amounts to a request to plug http://laroucheplanet.info/.  I have linked to it already, though I do not think I ever got around to posting it in the sidebar — aside from the “Internal Memo Generator”.  But there it is again.  Your best online bet for background Larouche-related material.

Absurd, Absurd.  It’s most absurd.  But Here I am, the Dingle Bird!

Okay.  What is absurd is the comment thread involving Robert Beltran.  A “Miss Anthropy” wanders in dangling supposed inside information, promising that Beltran’s involvement with Larouche is done and gone.  He insists that we (or whoever it is that is supposed to be doing this) need to “Dig deeper”, and so there is this bit of masturbatory stupidity:  You’re both wrong but if you can’t see the forest for the trees I can’t help you. All I can tell you is to dig deeper, if you really want the answers. It’s up to you to pick up the shovel. Sayonara.   Which gave me my only contribution to this — the sarcastic naming of  “Miss Anthropy” as “Deep Throat”.

At any rate, Robert Beltran has appeared in the L-PAC headlines, defending the greatness of William Shakespeare, because — as we all know — the world of Academia insists of calling him an over-rated Hack playwright.  Which leaves me with the question of what the hell anyone is suppoed to make of “Deep Throat” — Nixon sends G Gordon Liddy, cloaked in darkness at all times, to Woodward and Bernstein — and makes another third-rate performance of his task.

What was the point of that exercise?  God only knows.  The freaks over in Loudon never cease to amaze me.

A bit obscured, but of relevance, and just now with one thread reposted to FACTNet, several points of discussion with Steve on relatively esoteric matters that signal larger matters of importance.  As a practical matter, I’ve generally avoided interjecting with anything — both the ex-Larouchite Rachel Holmes and the concerned family member of a long time Larouchite — have better insight into what the hell it is the drawing value for a Larouchite.  But the term “Intellectual Cargo Cult” has been coined by someone at FACTNet, and it is what “Earnest One”‘s explanation of Larouche’s intellectual dishonesty regarding Lincoln is all about.  One of the sins of Larouche is that he has provided for college aged youth a short-cut for their thirst for knowledge that stunts their understanding to the very definition of sophomoric — a half knowledge whose gaps are filled, in this case to suit Larouche’s insistence that he falls in the lineage of just about everyone that is valuable to fall in the lineage for.

Speaking of the “Intellectual Cargo Cult”, a recent morning briefing… what the hell Larouche, Inc thinks it’s trying to pull with their website material.  (I should edit out eaglebreak’s comments, but I’m too lazy to right now.)  The game continues…

TO:ALL POINTS BY: TONY PAPERT/***

MORNING BRIEFING

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Stay Tuned for “Extreme Events!”

The vibrant and brilliant campaign of our Danish cothinkers, which has electrified (virtually levitated) that tiny but very important country [Duck! Here comes Denmark!], went into a new phase after the conclusion of yesterday’s elections. [They lost.] Our great Danes [Stop–you’re killing me] sent Lyn the message that they had had a lot of fun, and that, whatever the vote with which they will be credited [They didn’t get any votes] they are far better known, and more widely known, than they ever were before. This signal success [what success?] for our method [what method?], should serve to remind us in the US of all that we have lost since March [he means April 11]. It was about then that the LPAC mass organizing campaign, through which the “new politics” triumphed in the 2006 elections, was wound down and terminated. [We destroyed our printer; we ran out of literature; we freaked out the Boomer members.] Perhaps some Boomers thought we should be doing “infrastructure” instead. [Must mean paying the printer.]

Now we must regain the ground we have lost, and move forward from there. [Uh, Tony, maybe if you hadn’t written that April 11 briefing lead, you’d still have a printer. Speaking of which—I see they have you writing briefings again. Who are they trying to kill this time?]

An indispensable part of that mass campaign now, is the defeat and discreditation of the Internet brainwashing of MySpace, Facebook and video games. [We just found out the Internet is lethal to us.] In that connection, Lyn is working to complete a paper on “Extreme Events.” The first pages of his draft invite a comparison of that sequence of monstrosities from Michael Milken, through last week’s Myspace murders in Perugia– that sequence, to those “portents” of disaster which featured in the final scenes of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” and other tragedies,– the dead rise from their graves, strange shrieks rend the night, and so forth. [Not so fast, Einstein. Back to the Cliff Notes for you].

Along those lines, a new feature is in advanced preparation for the LPAC website, which will raise howls of terror among those who merely more-or-less politely objected to the relatively very tame, “What is in Nancy Pelosi’s Head?” [Translation: They took down Nancy Pelosi’s head. Some of the yutes didn’t like it.] Stay tuned! When will it appear? Maybe at the midnight hour, some few days ahead! [Maybe Caesar’s ghost walks abroad and turns his sword in Tony’s very entrails. Anyhow, it’s on the LPAC site now.]

………………….

And yes, I too noticed the “myspace induced suicide” item… and had that thought “What a coincidence!”  (See also Larouchite complaint in the discussion page on the Ken Kronberg wikipedia page of Dennis King’s “crazy conspiracy theory”.)

Alice’s Restaurant.

Several months back, this movie passed by my sight — aired on — like — AMC 3 or something like that.  Some things about it bugged me.

It is an adaptation of the song, the Vietnam era protest song turned Thanksgiving – themed song … aired on classic rock radio at noon.  And that’s what bugs me.  It plods on.  With that theme.  Plods on.  Following the story of the song.  With precision — the narration is the song, the narration precedes the action to a tee without any deviation.  That’s what the movie is.

Never mind that it is a period piece, and does not jive with any current-day sensibilities — aged rather strangely — I just don’t understand what the point was.  But it wasn’t a box office smash at the time; the song has been picked up on as a pop cultural artifact and the movie has been allowed to float and fade into oblivion.

…………

Other Thanksgiving tradition:  Iron Maiden.   Sing it and mock it.   (Though, to be honest, I just mumble badly “White Man Came!  Took our land!”, and let it go at that.)