So, Shannon Wheeler and This Guy , along with who I assume was German White Chocolate Girl with Almond, were performing at my regular coffee-house this morning for the benefit of Fox Channel 12 news promotional filler.  And I remembered why I became sick of the whole enterprise about a decade ago.

I should not be so mean.  It is just that the absurdist observational humor, from watching the enactments of the three scenes, tended to degenerate into that one joke singing about caffeine addiction, and I can’t say I really need to see that.  Also I half wanted to strangle the News – caster for 12, but end up having to shrug it off as a necessary promotional item.  In the end one offers Shannon Wheeler the best of luck, and forgives him the quarter he owes me.   (He is the fourth most famous person to have commented on this blog — that’s worth that quarter, right?)   He’s come aways in 15 years, I suppose.

The man in the red costume did smile directly at me, which was welcome because otherwise I was stuck looking at the red flap over his butt.

The trend that is sweeping this city of mine, as well probably any number of cities with the same cosmopolitan-yearning demographic is…

Bottled fungi-marionetted water.  Apparently a man in Los Angeles has cornered this market, so buy some up and help the man build his empire.

Also, marionetting your own water with this fungi in a musky jar placed in some corner or other of your home.  I figure this substance is a sort of once every fifteen year fad which breezes through, leaves a mark, and than vanishes to plot its return.

I note that an “I Anonymous” gretting was recently published in The Portland Mercury which focused venom on the perils of a Kombucha Tea.  And I note that radio host Rick Emerson alluded to his hippy-ish wife growing it.  The cultural zeitgist of this city has officially picked it up.

I feel as though I am in on some bizarre in-joke.  The back of the bottled Kombucha Tea says it is native to some spot in the Himalyans, and I assume this to be the case.  It is also native, as I have said before, to a place in the middle of Siberi, probably far less exotic to name drop than the Himalyans.  I note that a google search for “Kombucha Tea” brings it as 100 times more popular than “Kargasok Tea” — where it sits at #1 suggesting that I am as big a lynch-pin as any to the task of keeping the phrase “Kargasok Tea” in the popular domain — and this phrase edges out “Manchurian Mushroom Tea”.

I also note a note placed next to the stock in the cafe in Powell’s which says it all.  “It’s supposed to taste like that.”  An acquired taste with supposed health benefits.  Hm.  I occasionally news-check “Kargasok” (a place I was in for, like, 2 days with my parents, and which is nothing one can possibly reference in any conversation) — the residents of the area do indeed experience health problems, meaning the Wonder Cure for Every Known and Unknown maladay has not solved everything.

Which means I will not partake of it.  Unless I find myself in any place in the Himalyans which claim it as their own.  Or back in Kargasok.

Speaking of which, more fun:  Travel up the Ob River and re-create the journey to far-flung Gulags!  Weee.  (I’ll plug it in later.)

The other day The Oregonian — a slender paper indeed, Section A being all of eight pages — had a certain “pleasant” aura to it.  It was “Pleasant News day”.  By this I refer to their inclusion of two feel good stories, one involving the Tallest Man in the World, and how after being cited as the tallest man in the world by the Book of World Records, his life had become more pleasant as all manners of people threw in their lot and helped with the difficulties alloted by being so tall.

And the other item picked out from the wires.  Bhutan held elections for the first time ever, at the behest of their beloved king who wished to lead the nation into a semblence of modernity.  Held somewhat against their will, they naturally “Royalists” who wished to continue the latest of their beloved King’s 5 Year Plan, and the nation enjoys a higher quality of living than does their neighboring nations of poverty stricken Nepal and India, one of the reasons they are circumspect about giving up a benevelant monarchy in favor of Democratic elections.  All very … pleasant.

Looking for the article online, I do note one of the cut-off points takes us to this:

But this dedication to preserving Bhutanese culture has a darker side.

More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalis — a Hindu minority — were forced out in the early 1990s and have been living as refugees in eastern Nepal.

Bhutan says most left voluntarily, and refugee rebel groups have set off at least nine small bomb blasts this year in an effort to disrupt the election, killing one person. Bhutan sealed its borders Sunday to head off more attacks and said it will not reopen them until after the vote.

Well, you can’t win in any Pleasantville, I suppose.

Meh.

Hmmm.  No.  Meh.

And.  Meh.

Yes, Yes.  I know that Hillary Clinton has connected herself to that very same Right-wing Conspiracy she blasted off in the figure of Richard Mellon Scaife.  But that is almost beside the point.  Almost.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has become a mad scramble to legitimize the most undemocratic part of the Democratic Party nominating process, which has surfaced in the way of rebuking Nancy Pelosi’s helpful suggestion / hint that superdelegates may just lin up behind the popular vote and delegate count winner.  So the Clinton campaign informs us that this does not fall into what the party had in mind in when they set the system up in 1984.  Which, as I already rattled off, what the party apparently had in mind was bolstering the chances of Walter Mondale so as to defeat the possibility of the 49 state loss disaster of George McGovern.

The word on the street is that Hillary Clinton is rolling into the “Tonya Harding Option”.  I never fully understand these post-modern politics we have, whereby the public is supposed to not just respond to the tactics “Tonya Harding Option” but also the full awareness that the “Tonya Harding Option” is now being employed, the wink and nod and marionette strings.  Understand, the 3 AM phone call ad was perfectly legitimate, and naturally exposed in full an item of vulnerability in Obama’s candidacy he will just have to shore up largely with is veep pick but also with a strong suggestion that the “You know that old Beach Boys song?” message of John McCain’s is not where we want to travel as a nation.  What is not good from the Clinton candidacy is the appearance of the message of “Clinton loves our country.  As does McCain.”

This has lead more than one to speculate that Clinton is now running for the 2012 election, after a McCain — yes McCain — term.  I was with that one first (or before this found its way into the zietgiest), though I guess I can’t take credit for that since I did not bother to record it.   I guess we will have a better idea of this when we get to the 2008 DNC Obama nominating convention by the tone of her speech.

De ja vu, bu then again everything has moved in concentric circles for four decades, and we have already formulated the basis of a Generational War going back to Plato and Aristotle.

Try this one, seemingly the organization is begging me to add to this running commenatary of mine:

For example. I am presently eighty-five years of age, and would be eighty-six in about another half-year to come. At this time, my passion for the future experience of our nation and of the world at large, is more intense, more impassioned than it has ever been before. The thing I hate the most among my associates, is either evidence of cheap ambition for personal gratification in the short term, or shirking needed commitments to more long-ranging goals, where their passion should be a gloating satisfaction in the benefits which none of us may live to experience, but which we are working to bring about. All really good individual persons, or groups of persons think like that; they think like persons who really know that they are immortal, and know that their future lies in the outcome of their devotion to the future of mankind.

The de ja vu comes with the three ingredients of the failure of the baby boomers in not holding up the banner of — um — this banner, the prime target of one Kronberg or another, and — if you will indulge me for the moment — the presence of a sort of blurred between figurative and literal metaphor of “suicide” as a means of domineering control, with the up-is-down down-is-up dichotomy of “the real world” and “the bridge jumpers brigade” — which one relies in the real world and which one doesn’t?

Cowardice, and related forms of personal moral corruption, among former associates, as exemplified by the case of the Molly Kronberg who, in 1989, went, like Benedict Arnold, out of corrupting fears under threats from government, over to the cause of civilization’s and our own association’s leading adversary, the British Empire, have taken their toll in such forms as virtual treason to that cause of our republic and humanity generally which we continue to serve.

Now we have reached the great historic hour of decision which I foretold nearly thirty-seven years ago. Never has there been a moment during that interval, when, except for the political or moral equivalent of victims of either sexual ejaculatio praecox or rage provoked by fears of sexual impotence, that that perspective I set forth between August and December 1971 not been the most crucial feature of the way in which history since that time has actually unfolded, up to the present moment.

It is important, especially for us, who remain troubled by the morally disappointing patterns of personal behavior among some former and some present colleagues, that we understand the deeper implications of the indicated pathological tendencies.

You got to hand it to the man.  He has his own sense of self-serving mythological destiny working for him, mentally if not physically in control of his own Fantasy Shadow Government.  He knows about being President.  Or something.  And he predicted the internal set of circumstances of 2008  in the year 1971, which I guess had to have been a year of momentous events of some amount of coercive consolidation.  See, the man is just like Jesus, well aware that Judas is going to sell him out.  I suppose.

Incidentally, I find this analysis from Dennis King pretty amusing:

It would appear from many articles by Greason and others over the past 20 years that the LaRouche movement in Australia is the most successful in the world. It controls the Citizens’ Electoral Council, a previously important far-right group, enjoys nebulous alliances with demagogic rural politicians, and raises money on a large scale from naive seniors without getting indicted. I suspect this success is partly the result of the local LaRouche network being farther away from Leesburg, Va. (LaRouche’s headquarters) than any other international LaRouche group–and hence being less under the sway of Der Abscheulicher‘s constant micromanagement (including his often-disastrous tactical directives).

I always thought the relative success of “the movement” in Australia had something intrinsically tied with Australia itself, but that would not make too much sense.  It beggars the sort of half-hearted analysis that Nazi Germany would have been better off had Hitler died somewhere in, say, 1940.

I heard a classic song the other night from Nina Simone, which reminded me of one comment made within the Reverend Wright controversy.  The comment was the blacks shouldn’t say “God Bless America”, blacks should say “God damn America.”

The Nina Simone song… Mississippi Goddamn.

Which, of course, you could replace “Mississippi” with any number of locations in America at any number of racially charged incidents.  Everybody knows about Detroit Goddamn.  Everybody knows about Los Angeles Goddamn.  Everybody knows about Little Rock Goddamn.

Goddamn America; please bless it.

But the controversy has shifted slightly.  At the moment there is a mild whoop-de-do at one phrase in Obama’s speech, regarding his aunt “She is a typical white person.”  I have to roll my eyes at this one and ask anyone bothered by that one to please grow up.

Who do you think would win a Superhero match-up between Aquaman and AntMan?

With the dying out of Lyn’s generation, the Baby Boomers lost all competence in science, because they were no longer under pressure from a rational population. Scientific discussion also died in our organization. Thus they have no conception of economy, and don’t believe in reality.
(From the Morning Briefing, March 11, 2008.)

It looks for all the world as though the Baby boomers are being tossed under the Bus, almost in a sort of “You can’t quit. You’re fired” kind of deal. I had thought that the Baby-boomer rhetoric had subsided, but it seems to be back in full force.

Anyway, the collapse of Bear Stearns and its government bail-out, I suppose, has to be viewed as one of those “History Changing Events” which sets up something like a 1,000 Year Dark Age that needs to be combatted. Similiar to the BAE Scandal, which as we all remember — changed EVERYTHING. The BAE Scandal was the reason everyone in the org was perturbed and a little shell-shocked in late April and May of 2007. The BAE Scandal. Right? RIGHT?

June 30, 2007: I think that Lyn’s message to everybody in light of the stunning events of the last week, is that people have to have a quiet, frank contemplation and recognize any impulses and tendencies to be driven by fear and to especially overcome any other forms of rage or other means by which people can tend to deny if they’re in a fearful state. Because the world has just changed in the
most dramatic and profound way, as the result of Lyn’s webcast on the June 21st, where he blew the lid on the BAE scandal and on Dick Cheney, and set about an absolutely dramatic change in every aspect of the global strategic situation.

One Thousand Year Epoch stops a few months in to to usher in a new one. “Lyndon Larouche has predicted 100 of the last two Recessions.” That’s a funny quotation, everyone ought to remember it for easy access. Hm. Remember the Great Depression which was set off with the stock market tumble in October of 1987? Maybe you lost gobs of money off it. Or maybe you managed to ride it out and regained more money. We all remember the effects were exactly like the Great Depression, just as prophesyzed before-hand, and just as cited after-ward. Except for, you know, the 30 percent unemployment rate lingering through a decade.

The crisis of October 1987 which I had forecast in June and later to occur in approximately October, happened exactly as I had forecast, expressed in a stock-market crash of 1929 characteristics and magnitude

It is interesting to sort out the references being made with this phrase, “The Jumper Brigade”. Obviously it is a bludgeon against Ken Kronberg as well Jeremiah Duggan, petty grievances when there’s a Thousand Year Dark Ages to stop. And it is an allusion to the Stock traders who lost everything in 1929. But beyond an insult at me, it looks more significantly as a shot in the dark toward the slice of baby-boomers in that strata of the cult referenced here, as… um… no longer really into this thing, and are “Joining the Bridge Jumper’s Brigade”, so to speak.:

A stupid manpower policy with the NEC and NC is key. How much work is each of the leadership doing each day? How many are on the job, versus how many away from work? There work is here! Why are they not on the job? The leadership required to run things is not on the job. Why not? They have jobs on the side! We have non-functioning leadership,–misleadership. The organization is slipping around with no leadership. NEC members attend a meeting from time to time, but they’re not out there working in the organization. The sales people are working without supervision and direction, so they tend to flounder into incompetent things with no idea, no clarity. The organization around the country is not as bad as it looks. How bad is it? It’s not really that bad, it just lacks effective leadership.

Another slash of Kremlinology. It is hard to shake the feeling that there has been a massive Document Dump onto Dennis King. Look around that conference table, and apparently you will find it sparsely attended. So, is the LYM ready for prime time?

In other items of interest, I half followed Phil Ossifur’s banishment from a forum devoted to Cryonics because “he seems to regard cryonics as sub-genre of Larouchian politics”. He left this post. Which, you know, reads as you might expect, except I miss references to the “Bridge Jumper’s Brigade”.

Oh. By the way. Famed Sex columnist Dan Savage. But just skip to the final post.

A few years ago some LaRouche supporters got the 89 year old mother of a friend of mine to write the 11 checks for $5000.00 each in the space of a week. She had that much money available in order to pay her home-health care workers. When questioned by her daughter she told her that they had said the money was for national defense and she would be helping the president. Any group that uses lies to prey upon the gullibility of the elderly is in no way legitimate.

Which puts his concern over corruption and greed in our financial institutes, and the short term thinking that goes into creating the exploitable problems, into a correct perspective, methinks.