There is an election coming up on Tuesday, with various local issues tossed in your face that you have to deal with wherever you are.  I do not know if you can aggregate anything into national significance — the best we can think is to witness the elections in Virginia to see if it can gallop a bit further into the “blue” column, and I guess the Kentucky governor’s race flushes out who might be taking on Mitch McConnell in the next Senate election campaign.  So, beyond my station here in Portland, Oregon — and aside from that curious race in Northern New Jersey I can’t say I know what is worth observing.  I’m sure something will pop up when the elections all flush out.

Anyways…

I happened upon this list somehow or other.   The Republican honchos at Human Events compile their list of the “10” most vulnerable Republican Senate seats for 2008.  Which I would think is a relatively easy task — Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon, surely.  Alaska.  Maine… a bit skeptically, but we’re working to ten here.

Kentucky is an interesting one, and in horse race terms, which is what all the bloggers seem to like to observe, the Republican Leader’s numbers have fallen below that magical 50 mark.  The Republican Party is sort of self-destructing there beneath McConnell, as the Weekly Standard noted recently — and as the Nation noted recently from a different direction.  Hence, it becomes that “hmmmm…”

Number 10, I don’t know.  Nebraska?  Sure, why not?  Still.  Even though dearest Bob Kerrey, thank god, walked away from the challenge.  Do I think the Democrat has much of a chance?  No.  But we are talking ten seats here, and it’s a juggling act between this and all the others.  If you want to dash Maine out of the equation — the Democrats hope it is the image of Rhode Island who offed the popular Chafee for a Democrat, but the problem comes in the urgency isn’t there with a sure Democratic Senate (as opposed to possible if you off the Senator) and a likely Democratic president — you’d have to fish one out of North Carolina or the “netroots” dream of Texas or…

Which brings me to the basic problem with this Human Events list.

Idaho?  The Democratic candidate is pretty well set — Larry LaRocco who received 39.36 percent of the vote in a statewide race for Lieutenant Governor in 2006.   There’s a strong chance the Republican candidate will be Jim Risch — who received 58.29% in that exact same contest.  And at any rate, it’s not going to be Senator Bathroom Stall, who — I will give you this — would surely lose the race to LaRocco.  They saw the Senator Bathroom Stall, they didn’t quite notice that he would sooner or later disappear, leaving a state that is Idaho with a voting pattern that is Idaho.

Wyoming?  Now this one is just lazy.  Really?  A quick google search shows me that the man who nearly won the at large House seat was recruited for this Senate seat, and has wisely decided to try again for that House seat.  The wiseacres at Human Events split the difference, saw this as a quasi-open seat — Barrasso having been appointed — and decided that makes it competitive.  I don’t think there’s anything special about Barrasso, which makes him, but — Wyoming?

That list thus becomes stupid.

We’re on a fast track to something hereabouts, and I had always thought there about three shoes ready to drop.  One has dropped, I await the other two.  In the meantime, I floated about and noticed a cutesy bit of writing, as I scanned down their latest offerings, with the dateline of LPAC to the late 18th century… don’t quote me on that, because I was distracted by something more amusing on the sidebar.  “The FACTS on Duggan”.  Hovering right next to it was the recent article about how Nancy Pelosi is an asset, or in the same blood-stream, as Joseph Kennedy.  I’m not sure this is a good juxtaposition for them if they want to spell out their spin on Jeremiah Duggan, but I don’t know how something like that can be avoided.  (And wherefor are their Kronberg Facts?  Coming any day now, I suppose.)

FACTNet is back up, and somewhere amongst there I find this bit:

There’s some distress in the org over Molly Kronberg’s interview with Chip Berlet, along the lines of “How could she?”

No kidding.  Probably moreso than I can really comprehend.  By way of an answer, one can look to the the second part of the exchange between “res republica” and Molly Kronberg.

res republica:  Marielle, I respect your perspective. However, I would never have discovered List and Carey, or appreciated the genius of Benjamin Franklin without the work done by the best of the writers Ken published over the years: Spannaus, Chaiken, Salisbury. Or alumni like Robert Dreyfus. LaRouche, on the other hand, always needed a good editor, although I’m sure the problem is he would never permit it. IMO he hasn’t written much that’s new and interesting since Dialectical Economics. On coherence. If the ideas are not coherent, why I am able to guess LaRouche’s reaction to world events (whether I agree or not) before I open up the website or see the street sign. From its own points of reference, it holds together as a way of thinking. My real point is that people who feel that they wasted their time are over-estimating the value of much of what we “normal” working folks have done over the last 15 years. Apart from creating islands of sanity and joy in our families, friends and local communities, not much (at least for me, except I keep hacking away). Enjoy your freedom and the rest of your life without looking back with regret.

Marielle Kronberg:  I’m not likely to “enjoy my freedom and the rest of my life without looking back with regret,” since my greatly loved husband, the most important person on the planet to me, along with my son, was driven to suicide by LaRouche.

As for Spannaus, Chaitkin, etc.–if you want to read something decent published by a LaRouchie, read Ken’s stuff.

And as for being “free” of LaRouche–I’ve been free of him for decades.

Ken’s death didn’t give me any kind of freedom, it made my distaste for and disapproval of LaRouche into something far more visceral.

Which has a way of putting this comment in perspective:

What a shame that the LaRouche cult is being hounded in the man’s twilight years. One supposes he’ll be quickly forgotten when he snuffs it.

Which I take as a sort of “He brought us laughs with that ‘Queen of England'” thought on the value of Larouche as a curiosity.   A criminal enterprise that throws out kooky tangeants is still a criminal enterprise.  In other news:

LaRouche supporters distributed literature outside the Ciccone Theater, where the debate was held, saying the attacks on Johnson amounted to a “public lynching.” A man and a woman were escorted from the theater after accusing the forum’s moderator, Record editorial page editor Alfred P. Doblin, of bias for writing a column that took Johnson to task for contributing to LaRouche.

Later, a woman was ejected after she accused the forum’s sponsors — The Record and the League of Women Voters of Bergen County — of acting like a “lynch mob” for allowing a question about Johnson’s ties to LaRouche.

When order was restored, Johnson said he was initially intrigued by LaRouche’s allegations of “corruption in the pro-war actions of the Bush administration.”

“I now see that supporting this individual has hurt a lot of people, so I apologize for that,” he said. “And I ask people to look at my record, look at my character, look at my reputation. After that, I’m moving on.”

One of Johnson’s Republican challengers, Wojciech Siemaszkiewicz, said he was “surprised at Johnson’s lack of judgment,” adding he was stunned that Johnson, an Army Reserve officer and former Englewood police officer, “just allowed everything to pile up and blow up in his face.”

I gather that Johnson would … just as soon that the Larouchies… disappear.  He’s having a hard enough time as it is.  In other contortions of this news item, Eliot Greenspan offers his piece.  (Memo to self:  google ‘Eliot Greenspan’.)