Upon seeing this, which is someone posting at “amazonsellercommunity” forum the sidebar category “Larouche Corner”, I thought I may as well go ahead and break my “one month moratorium”. Also I need to make a mental note to change a few things with that. Originally, my thought was that that last internal demonstration spit out from the organization was that this thing was heading nowhere and could wait, added with other materials of interest, where I could pick back up with some added context on what, exactly, is developing within this flailing little organization.

As interesting as this all may be, where we see Lyndon Larouche adjusting to the fact the baby boomers in his NEC appear to have just walked out of the building and so he clings mightily to the Larouche Youth Movement he is trying to prime for their role in carrying on the faith past his death (and he should be able to die happy with that delusion, I suppose), and while one can dissect all of this any way one pleases — I note that there is no printing and the website malfunctioned last month… (yes, asking about why we can’t hand out literature so much is, how do I say, darkly amusing)…

I have a gut feeling the dozen dozen Larouche Youth Members and the dozen dozen fellow travellers are being readied for their college tour. And I have a further gut feeling that the focus is less likely to be on the Mortgage Crisis and Bear Stearns — while the economy is certainly affecting them by way of lack of immediate job prospects and adding to natural anxieties and furthering the destruction to student loans, they’re not losing their homes — and more onto what I spot as a decipherable shift of focus onto the evils of Barack Obama. More or less, Lyndon Larouche has concocted a storyline whereby he can situate him with the campaign of Hillary Clinton in saving civilization.

At first I would think that such a thing as the following could wait a month, one more item of manure onto a sewage pile that extends over four decades. News flash! Lyndon Larouche is Racist! Why — that’s the end of this man’s political career — never to be elected to anything! (Like so, the comment to the Washington Monthly article: “Next month — The Washington Monthly blows the lid off the Prohibition Party!”). But then there’s the title of that thread, “If You Have Teenagers, Watch Out for this Cult”. About the only power Larouche wields is that of inducing a handful, and mindful only a handful, of youngsters to join his fantasy world. I have seen Larouchies swivel around old quotations a bit, and something fresh with a more difficult job to hide behind “code words”, and right into its original context, probably would be beneficial.

Frankly, I am a bit surprised it took Dennis King a few days to post them up to his website. Anyway… um… what it is that is wrong with Barack Obama:

I mean: Obama is a racist. I mean, with an African father–he wasn’t much of an African father, but was an African father of Kenya. He was part of a British operation, which took over Kenya, through MI5’s operation. But this guy was away from Kenya, and he married a Margaret Mead type, a woman who had a number of successive husbands, like Margaret Mead did. Went out to the poor, brown people, in Asia, and had sex with them! It was called “Coming in Samoa.” [groans, laughter]
And she wore through a number of successive husbands, and by them, had various children. And therefore, you’ll find Obama’s ancestry, if you chase his family tree, everybody’s climbing and swinging from the branches there–from all over the world! All parts of the world! This guy is the universal man. Every monkey in every tree, from every part of the world, has participated in the sexual act of producing him. And he works for organized crime–which is a branch of British intelligence.

So why are people sucked into this thing? And what’s wrong with the way we react to this phenomenon, as it affects the population in general? It’s not just Obama. Obama is a disease, but he’s not the infectious agent that caused the disease. He’s a product of the disease, not a cause of it. (April 13, 2008)

Alrighty then. I note a few things. Number one: Webster Tarpley has a new book out. I want to ask the question of why it is that past his life in the Larouche organization, and even assuming he maintains the basic ideological framework including his version of that dastardly British Empire which continues to orchestrate such things as 9/11 and perpetual economic collapses, why his line always seems to remain with Larouche’s — including its attendent contradictions and contrivancies. But whatever, the one thing you can say about Webster Tarpley: he’s not stupid enough to run through the problems with Obama’s ancestory.

Another thought: a while ago I noticed the presence of a Larouche disciple at the leading White Supremicist website forum for stormfront.com. His audience appeared to be a bit skeptical, and so he insisted they read the pamphlet “Christian Economics” which would show that Larouche had “love for the white man in spades.” If this fellow is reading this, perhaps he can profer this speech over there and garner his raising of funds or whatever.

From Studs Terkel’s 2007 Touch And Go: A Memoir pages 147 – 149:

The occasional FBI visits to my house were not always pleasant.  With a sense of some shame, I say this.  My wife, usually the most gracious of hostesses, was for some reason, inhospitable.  There were at least two occasions I recall whem she peremptorily showed them to the door.  She always let in small boys who sold magazine subscriptions for the benefit of the nation’s halt, lame, and blind; as well as to make points that would enable them to attend Harvard.  But to the FBI, she manifested — how can I say it — contempt.  I was, of course, terribly embarrassed.

I myself was hospitable at all times.  I seated them.  I offered them choices of Scotch or Bourbon.  I had triple shots in mind.  Invariably, they refused.  Once, I suggested vodka, making it quite clear it was domestic.  I thought I was quite amusing.  At no time did our visitors laugh.  Nor did my wife.  I felt bad.  I did so want to make them feel at home.  I never succeeded.

They had questions in mind.  They frequently consulted small notebooks.  They hardly had the chance to ask any of their questions.  I wasn’t that I was rude.  On the contrary; I simply felt what I had to tell them was far more interesting than what they had to ask them.

I read Thoreau to them; his sermon on John Brown.  Passages out of Walden.  Paine.  I told them these are times that try men’s souls.  And so on.  We hold these truths, I even tried on them.  Nothing doing.  Their attention wandered.  They were like small restless boys in the classroom, wiggling in their seats.  At times, I showed them where the bathroom was and asked if they wanted any reading material.  No, they didn’t.  I have done some of my most exploratory reading there, I told them.  No response.

After several such visits, with a notable lack of response on their part, my patience, I must admit did wear thin.  On one occasion, a visitor took out his notebook and studied it.  Our son, five years old at the time, peered over his shoulder.  The guest abruptly shut the book.  The boy was startled.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“He was peaking in my book.”

“He’s five year old.”

“This is government information.”

“Is it pornographic?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Isn’t it fit for a child to see?”

“This is serious.”

“Does it have dirty words or dirty pictures?”

“What??”

“Does it?  Come on, be a sport, let me see.  I won’t show it to the kid.”

With the determined step of an FBI man, he stalked toward the door.  He had trouble with the lock.  I opened it.  “One for the road?”  I was determinedly hospitable.  He walked out without so much as a thank you.  His colleague followed suit, step by step.

I shall now take a gander at the senate race in Louisiana, seeing as it is very likely the Republicans’ only pick up opporunity.

Mary Landrieu is one of the more conservative Democrats in the Senate, and part of a prominent political family in the sstate.  She has been elected twice by very narrow margins, her 2002 election notable as it was due to a last minute December run-off assistance by Bill Clinton phone-banking to get the black vote out.  Her vulnerability increased as Harricane Katrina dispersed the Democratic base of New Orleans, and in particular poor black residents.  Her campaign is largely focusing on the issues of her procuring Hurricane assistance and rebuilding funds, which does her the service of side-stepping national party issues in a state that was trending Republican even before the disaster.

Running against Landrieu is a former Democrat who was personally persuaded by Karl Rove to switch parties and run for the seat.  The candidate running against Landrieu is none other than John Kennedy.  This is a very fascinating turn of events, considering that John Kennedy is something of a legend and an icon amongst Democrats nation-wide, and seeing as he was rabidly opposed by the National Review for botching the Bay of Pigs, sliding forward with civil rights, and for the belief that he stole the election from Richard Nixon.  Over the years, some conservatives have warmed up to him, believing that he was “strong on Communism” and praising him for lowering the top marginal tax rate from a really high level to a merely high level.  Another interesting about John Kennedy’s candidacy which I wonder how it would play out is the controversy which surrounds his assassination, an event that swarms with many speculative theories involving any number of powerful forces.

I think it will be difficult to defeat John Kennedy, and I wonder if a whisper campaign could be employed regarding the newly discovered Marilyn Monroe sex tape — the man being obscured but Jay Edgar Hoover wished to pin down on Kennedy.  However, this is Louisiana, and you have to consider that David Vitter’s poll numbers increased after being exposed to have had sex with a rather anonymous prostitute, and Marilyn Monroe is a popular culture icon.

A certain tone deafness has emerged with Barack Obama.

We have long since established this narrative of the “Prince” versus, I don’t know what the other archtype is named so I’ll call it the “Brawler”.  The candidate skewing toward the upper class and collegiately educated who sounds the notes of change and reform versus the candidate of the lower classes and lesser educated socio-economically not much able to afford that luxury of dreaming of reformation and willing to have someone wade through the muck and slime to get it done.  The quintessential example was Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, but Gary Hart and Walter Mondale work just as well.  Things get slightly murky after that, but Howard Dean treaded to the former demographic, and after Gephardt fell Kerry had to schlep to the status of the latter.

Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton.  But this is largely a matter of personality and rhetoric, policy differences relatively microscopic, as is the level of feigning toward what amounts to pandering regarding trade agreements — the main crux for the economically stranded making up the politically dismobiled at the heart of Obama’s controversy.

Just as Barack Obama was closing the gap in the machine-oriented blue collar rust belt laden Pennsylvania primary race, he managed to throw himself a grenade in speaking before a crowd at a fund raiser in, of all places, San Francisco.  Throwing out that “What’s the Matter with Kansas” hypothesis on rural Pennsylvanian voters, “cling”ing to cultural values by way of “guns, god” (and the third ‘g’ is “gays”, but that half falls into the “god” category and only half drops simply into maintenance of cultural mores), with economic deprivation extending through Republican and Democratic administrations, and so we came that fatal word: “bitter”.

With that, forward momentum in the polls stopped, Bill Clinton’s bizarre backing over to Hillary Clinton’s phantom sniper controversy was replaced in that 24-hour news cycle, and with that my own desire — along with that of Senator Bob Casey, Jr’s, to get Obama’s inevitable nomination over and done with before June eroded.  Would it have been better if Obama had somehow included the adverb “justifiably” before the word “bitter” to suggest a fighting spirit and desire to work on behalf of their betterment, or is that parsing not going to happen due to its still being an elitist looking down on those Guns and that particular God?

Barack Obama’s response shows he knows this is a trifling annoyance, and shows the stubborness in knowing that it is hard to dignify this controversy with a response.  As he must, he spots it as a “slip of the tongue”.  Those three words are becoming a bad habit, following as it does the more meaningless controversy over the five word phrase “just a typical white person”.  This is theater review, only tangeantly connected to the matter of what a Barack Obama administration might bring, but it is what it is, and should we wake up in November to see that John McCain has been elected president, this is the personality trait which will be at the root of Obama’s failure.

From “Papering Over the Problem:  Killing the Dollar to Save Bear Stearns”, from “The Cunning Realist”‘s Wilson Burman, in “The American Conservative”.  Leaving aside some issues here and there and the Reagan love, a couple of key thoughts echo those I have had, ie; wait a decade and we’ll be blaming that president for problems time-bombed from this president.

…………………………………………

Anyone who works long enough on Wall Street knows, at least sub-conciously, that this is the way things work: if the going gets tough, a small coterie of unelected and mostly unaccountable officials in Washington will probably decide that your employer is too important to fail. […]

Inflation’s defining characteristic is expediency.  It obviates sacrafice and postpones pain.  That makes it a natural compliment to many political ventures, particularly unpopular wars.  As early as 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s economic advisers worried about rising inflationary pressures.  As Johnson resisted calls for new taxes, the deficit for fiscal year 1967 came in at $9.8 billion.  By the time Congress and the White House finally agreed on a tax increase, in 1968, after years of escalation in Vietnam, the deficit was $25.2 billion and inflation was rampant.

Of course it got far worse over the next decade.  Even as the seeds of inflation planted in the mid-1960s grew, Richard Nixon put pressure on Fed Chairman Arthur Burns to goose the economy for the 1972 election.  That dynamic continued and worsened during the 1970s.  By the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan was dealing with the consequences of decisions made by Johnson and Nixon over a decade earlier.  Part of Reagan’s legacy was the latitude he gave Paul Volcker, as risky and painful as that was, to deal with these problems.  Unless one believes that the next president will want to take the hit for Bush’s decision, or that soneone with Reagan’s mandate and courage is about to appear, whoever is in the White House a decade from now will probably confront the economic fallout from current policies.  But by that time will anyone remember how it started?  How many cursed LBJ or Nixon in 1979?  The White House not only knows the answer, it’s counting on the nation’s forgetfulness.

“I eat this blog for breakfast.” 

The problem with a comment like that one is that devoid of context, you would be hard pressed to know whether it is an insult or a compliment.  Figuring that other statements by “revenire” read like crypto- but not quite death threats (re: Or better yet, call the cops.  […]  Go ahead, jump… because you’re a nothing and the rest of your soap opera characters are empty husks… dead souls.) — because I am the Cuban Frogmen of the 21st Century – I know it’s supposed to be insulting, though I can’t say precisely how.  It does come across as flattery, though, worth sticking on my sidebar.

I do not believe this blog offers enough fiber to be the best nutritional punch, but it almost certainly is better than a couple of doughnuts and a Jolt Cola.  My imagination struggles to conjure up the visuals for “eating this blog” — I have a vague image of a cartoon panel I think I might have seen, I think from Shannon Wheeler, with an oversized mouth awkwardly wrapped around a computer — but it’s vague enough that I would not know where to look and do not know precisely what I am looking for in order to post it.

revenire would also like everyone to know that he defecates this blog out as his 11 am constitutional, and that it makes for intriguing bowel movements.

… Why does anybody need to hear from Chelsea Clinton?

(To be fair to Chelsea, I always thought that her campaign trip to Hawaii was a stroke of genuis.  What was to be gained from delegate-thin and Obama is a native son Hawaii?  Well, it’s… Hawaii.)