It’s always interesting to hear the “rant snippet” commentary of talk radio hosts placed for the station’s promotional advertisements.  What is interesting is how they have a way of telling us that the talk show host has, roughly, nothing to say.  Here is the man I previously referred to as “Conservative Pundit talk-radio type guy to watch for” in this “Obama Era”, and which Talker’s Magazine has ranked at #5, distilled down to what the station producers deemed the attention – getting appetitizing sound-byte:

“Tell Me What Europe has done for the World in the last 150 Years!”

With that I am supposed to go “Wooah!”, and program my radio to catch more of the wisdom of Glen Beck.  The answer to Glen Beck’s demand on what Europe has done in the last 150 years:  It has stationed itself over 2% of the Earth’s surface and about comprised about 6.8% of its land area.  Take that, Mr. Beck!

Looking down that “Talker’s Magazine” list, we see the first “liberal” as “Thom Hartmann” at #10, situated right there behind, um er and huh, “Mancow”.  It’s relatively arbitrary to rank them, and I suspect that it’s deemed best to slot “Liberal Talk Format” (which, regardless of relative failure, has secured some presence on the radio-waves) host close to the Top 10 — better Thom Hartmann than Ed Schultz.  Randi Rhodes, at #48, surely will fall to that “101 – 250” list, based on the news of what happened to her, and the fall of that make-shift up-start network.  But does this mean that Randi Rhodes become a supplicant at the station she fled from to sign up with Air America?

The smallest New Left group is the New England Party of Labor which publishes Hammer and Steel, a memeographed sheet that some people believe expresses “pure Maoist views.”  The man behind the organization is Homer Chase from New Hampshire.  He wants to have a hammer and sickle carved on his father’s headstone and has been fighting the town fathers for years on this issue.  “The headstone seems more important to Homer than anything else,” says critic Communist Gus Hall.  “but he gets written up by the press as a big factor in the Sino-Soviet split.”  For once perhaps Gus Hall is right.

— George Thayer, The Farther Shores of Politics, 1968

Hm.  This is an entirely different interpretation of the group than what we see on wikipedia.  That Gus Hall quote seems relevant to place into the wikipedia article on said organization — see “Ray O Light Group“, which has all the appearances of having been pieced together by members of the organization.

Originally called Hammer & Steel (H&S) or, more infrequently, New England Party of Labor, they split from the CPUSA following Krushchev‘s Secret Speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU. After several name changes (Youth for Stalin in 1968 and Stalinist Workers Group for African-American Liberation & a New Communist International from 1969-1976) which reflect shifts in both composition and political line, they became the present Ray O. Light Group. Many of its members were Northern Communists who came to the South to organize. Hammer & Steel was a small editorial board which grew out of the struggle against what it saw as revisionism in the CPUSA. It criticized the CPUSA for liquidating the revolutionary line on the African American national question, and for returning to a position of “American Exceptionalism” (by supporting the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy) which had previously been upheld by Earl Browder. Though it was a small group, H&S was the only group to be attacked by name by Krushchev in his polemics against the Communist Party of China (CPC) for siding with the CPC and Party of Labor of Albania (PLA) in the Sino-Soviet Split. H&S was the only revolutionary group in the US to have a representative at the 5th Congress of the PLA in 1966. Hammer & Steel argued that there was a focal contradiction (see, contradiction) around the oppressed peoples fighting for national liberation. This was reflected in the United States in the African American struggle for self-determination.

Why, they were a big factor in the “Sino-Soviet Split”!  According to their literature, backed up by Kruschev himself.  Take that, Gus Hall, you old Communist you!  Must have been the jack-boot from the Soviet propaganda he was spurring forth, minimalizing their role in the Soviet — Sino split.

The news of the death of Socks the Cat has lead me to look at the wikipedia entry for “Socks“, largely interesting only to read through the “Cultural References” section.  But this hic-up stands out:

Socks found Buddy’s intrusion intolerable; according to Hillary Clinton, Socks “despised Buddy from first sight, instantly and forever.” Bill Clinton said, “I did better with … the Palestinians and the Israelis than I’ve done with Socks and Buddy.”

Keeping that Socks — Buddy relation in mind, take a look at the “White House” website portrayal of Socks and Buddy.

The Clintons.  Why must they turn this house into a house of lies?  Is there no end to their conniving?  We will never know just how much damage this did to the nation, and will never be able to measure the impact of the betrayal the youth of America had when reality dashed up against the false image of Socks’s and Buddy’s relationship.

There seems to be a push-back afloat against Obama’s embrace of Lincoln.  Picture me looking over a book store’s selection of political and current events magazines and seeing these two magazine covers a couple magazines apart:

I’m not sure the background of the author who wrote the National Review one, but I instructively trust the author to have a more interesting take on “Lincoln the Conservative” than Newsmax’s author by the name of “Gingrich”.

The political battlelines were, of course, drawn a bit differently and the context of the times calls for no neat categorization here — there are certainly tenants and tendencies from the birth of the Republican Party that you can trace straight to today in what Republican Party politics preach.  But as a rule the Reconstruction Era Parties in the South had the “Conservatives” as your anti-Lincoln contigency and “Radicals” as those perceiving themselves as holding up the Lincoln legacy.   The annual “Conservative Political Action Committee” always (reportedly) attracts some booths from Southern Lincoln-haters, wanting to set the record straight on Lincoln’s Federal Usurption of powers… though I imagine they attract a sort of niche following as the grouping trends toward thrilling to the words of Ann Coulter.

Three weeks ago I say I’ll be back to covering Larouche in a week.  It then took two weeks for me to assemble enough worthy to pass on, hence I ended the next post by saying I’ll be back in two weeks.  I assumed a set pattern where I’d assemble a pile of largely meaningless links of “Larouche” in its modern usage of slur, and here and there a “local color” flickr photograph of a cardtable shrine against the British Empire.  But we have a weirdly notable development, hence I return to the subject of the Lyndon Larouche Organization one week after that last post.   A development that I do not know precisely what to make of this, but it is something that should only be explained with a kind of Kremlinogy analysis.

So, sometime after giving up on his quest to find a cheap copy of Kamandi The Last Boy on Earth #29, my resident Larouchie suggested, as a guage of the awesome political potency of Larouche and an indication of the mass following he has amongst the people, to watch as city councils and state legislators everywhere pass the HBPA Resolution.  I could spot one local news copy which would make the troupe in the boilerroom in Leesburg smile — thank the good folks of Hazelton, Pennsylvania– , and one other item of reaction to being lobbied at a council meeting by Larouchies pressing for the resoultion’s passage.  In terms of the (quote-in-quote) “citizen journalism” of blogging spit out another person noting the LPAC news release of a passage, and a look through in the council record revealed for them a giant “Meh.  Whatever.”

But I think we may now have a first.  I think.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but usually LPAC is anything if not Triumphantal.  LPAC has published a report to the effect that a Resolution has failed to pass.  Now, this I presume happens all the time (Did that LA Council, greeted by masked Schwarzenegger and Rohatyn impersonators, pass anything?) , but here for some reason they just HADCHA report this: 

The Crime of Marielle (Molly) Kronberg Defeats LaRouche’s HBPA in South Dakota LegislatureFebruary 20, 2009 (LPAC)–On February 18th, South Dakota Democratic State Rep. Richard Engels cited Lyndon LaRouche’s fraudulent criminal conviction in 1988 as the reason South Dakota legislators should send House Concurrent Resolution 1009 endorsing LaRouche’s Homeowner’s and Bank Protection Act (HBPA) to defeat. Engels, a Democratic lawyer from Sioux Falls, did not even discuss the content of the bill, which is the only approach that could save […]

Here I refer to an example of an early 2004 Democratic Primary Debate (the one that Democrats were upset enough to petition the 2008 candidates not to participate in a debate sponsored by Fox News, one reason for “outrage” which was cited was that they weren’t able to clamp down disturbant audience members represented in this exchange:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (OFF-MIKE) “Where’s Larouche?”
DEAN: I suspect he’s in jail.

AND, later, at another heckling moment, an exchange between Sharpton and Lieberman which lacks the direct punch but is a bit longer than I’m willing to post.  The South Dakota state representative is simply following in the foot-steps of a long line of such references, which I think starts with a response to Larouchies by George Herbert Walker Bush (the original enemy in the frame-up, the enemy having been replaced by Kronberg), timeline being during the trial so the Larouche Organization probably decided Bush’s comment was a case of “letting the cat out of the bag”.

I do not fully know to what this “press release” is responding.  It strikes me as an excuse to lay down the Larouche line of defense, for his troops, on the Larouche Court Trials, which suggests a number of possibilities.  #1:  There has been an up-surge of Larouchies “on the ground” being entreated by the public noting Larouche’s criminal history.  #2:  As relatively small bore as this is, the “wikipedia Entry of the Day” feature on “Larouche Criminal Trials” proved a source of dread and foreboding — I suppose stacked next to 20 pages of “Secrets of the Elites” posted at factnet.  #3:  Larouche is anticipating (for good reason and bad) something in the way of court trials here and/or abroad, and needs to gird the org’s members with its history.  #4:  The small bore flutterings, reporting of which is kind of my stock and trade here, of insults needs to be rebuffed by the storyline of a proud Organization, arrows shot from bows with the arrows falling to pieces upon hitting the target.

Of course the antipathy toward Molly Kronberg is long established, as demonstrated in the comments section here, and I believe this to be the current “line”.  I too am a fan of grade school playground insults, so I may as well add:  Margaret is a poopy-head.  There.  Even stevens!  Richard Engels’s career, I assume, will survive this assault — hasn’t even made his wikipedia entry (though, nothing has).  (We’ll see how monetary contributions to Larouche affect New Jersey pols careers.)

In other news, we have this following item of surreality, wherein we see that Larouche has commented on the NY Post  “shot monkey” political cartoon.

Lyndon LaRouche denounced the cartoon as a threat of assassination to the President, who has championed the stimulus program which just recently passed the Congress. LaRouche said it was obvious to him that the President has not yet gotten his feet on the ground, and has to deal with problems which he is still in the process of sorting out. In the meantime, the risks of delay are costly.

I’m told that linking to the comments from this summer is too obvious, becoming a bit too cliche.  There’s this former Larouche member who has packaged that quote into his habit of blog commenting (nom de plomes “Lyn Marcus” — seen in that earlier link which featured Margaret’s coarse insults toward Molly Kronberg — and “xlcer”).  It has immediate relevancy of a sort — as we currently see that the Larouche Youth Movement is trying to take advantage of the platform offered by what I’ll loosely and sarcastically refer to as the “Barack Obama Youth Cult”.  Witness another one of these.

This is interesting, because the last time I saw using this “myobama” platform, the Los Angeles organizer used their names in “organizing the masses” to watch a Larouche webcast, to answer questions from non-existent Canadian girlfriends.  This doesn’t refer to any names.  The second reason is because this “myobama” platform was used by a man warning about Costas Axios with a heavily conspiratorial perspective on Jeremiah Duggan.

Also, Barack Obama was supposed to be a British Agent.  Now the British are out to assassinate him.  Has Obama gone rogue?  I guess it depends on whether he follows the Fascist Synarchists or… um… follows this guy’s advice.  (Yessirre, the leader of the Larouche Cryonics Movement has set up a new weblog!)
We need to get off coal and get to Nuclear Energy, and advance on to Dilithium Crystals!

 EROI is about using the most efficient fuels–bang for the buck. Jevons paradox is that increasing efficiency, increases consumption. The reverse of that is that decreasing efficiency(EROI) will reduce consumption hopefully to the point of sustainability.Instead of seeking to maximize EROI, you need to minimize it. And this proves that the entire fraud is INTENDED as a “power down” hoax– which can lead only to planetary depopulation– consistent with genocide. […]
The starship Enterprise was powerred by dilithium crystals– not oil or coal. A coal powered star ship isn’t possible due to it’s not having a high enough energy density whereas a coal powered train is possible. Similarly, a nuclear powered population on a planet of 7 billion is possible whereas a wood-powered or pedal-powered population of 7 billion is not. All the ERoEI arguments IGNORE power density. The perveyors of the ERoEI hoax should watch more star trek and think about dilithium crystals.

There is something odd about the Star Trek reference.  Its supposed to be all bestializing our culture — like the Star Wars characters who, as commented in 1999 While you might be watching any small portion of the Star Wars series, the most crucial epistemological issue stands out clearly at first glance. At that moment, you have merely to ask yourself: “Do these creatures look human to you?” How could anyone excuse himself from overlooking the significance of that question?
How indeed.  Maybe Robert Beltran’s presence in the org has changed all that.  Maybe their stance on some rock music can change too by tapping Billy Corrigan — I will note that uncovering such sentiments was how Beltran entered the org, so my advice to the org is get while the getting is good. 

One final note, from the LPAC release of LPAC releases:

 … as opposed to Sudanese President Bashir?

That’s all.  One week or two, I’ll come back to this topic.

First, a moment of silence for:

Who would you trust more as President: Socks, or the guy we had for the last eight years?

Okay.  I draw anyone’s attention to a letter in the Oregonian, written by someone younger than Socks:

As the stimulus bill moved through Congress, Republicans added their tax cuts and then didn’t vote for the bill.  If the Republicans weren’t going to vote for it anyway, why couldn’t they have left the tax cuts out?

Ketl Rodakowski
7th Grader, Metropolitian Learning Center
Northeast Portland

Question: Precocious 7th Grader, or aping opinions of the parents? 

Although, to be fair to the seventh grader, opposition is getting a little nutty and in the official talking points of one party versus the talking points of the other party (as opposed to some pretty decent mixed commentary I see), I’ll stick with the Donkeys.  As a result, I  really would like to see the letter from the child of a couple of Republicans under the influence of  these three exhbits.   Exhibit #1:

“Suppose you spent $1 million every single day starting from the day Jesus was born — and kept spending through today,” an announcer says. “A million dollars a day for more than 2,000 years. You would still have spent less money than Congress just did.”
The ad, sponsored by the American Issues Project, walks viewers through a timeline of history, starting with the three wise men on their way to the manger and ending with a view of Washington in 2009.
That’s followed by a clip of Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, defending the stimulus — somewhat awkwardly — on the floor of the Senate:  “Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments,” Mr. Schumer says in the ad. “The American people really don’t care.”

I think there should be a reverse Godwin’s Law.  Godwin’s Law is that in a debate, when the name Hitler comes up, it means you lost the argument.  Here, I’d say that if you bring up the name Jesus Christ, you lost the argument.  I recognize this as an arbitrary setting of dates, though the name Jesus Christ is evocative and loaed enough that it ceases to be so arbitrary.

Exhibit #2 — NY Post cartoon.  I don’t have to link to it.  You know what it is.  And you know that its defense is that it references a current event.  A current event involving a monkey attack.

Exhibit #3, and this needs to be unpacked by itself.  Simply stated, if this is the face of the Republican Party in 2012, Obama will be able to weather a prolonged mini-Depression into a landslide vitory of FDR 36 dimensions.  I’ll get back to this one.

I seriously don’t want to make this a habit, but I simply have to return to the comics page to make a quick comment on the flaws of this Luann strip storyline.

The problematic line is:  “One of those decoy stand-in guys”?

I know that was de riguour in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but is that a standard procedure in the United States, to have a bunch of Presidential look-alikes who might fool a would be assassin, an extra layer of protection for the president — maybe it was issued for the extra problems that meet a President Obama?

While I’m looking at the world of comic strips, I point to yesterday’s Zits as a weird item of social commentary, and I’ll link it to the “Josh Reads” site:

Huh.  Not good, not bad, just kind of interesting that this strip would wander into the arena of “Abstinence Pledges”.  There is no follow-through — today (Saturday, least read days for newspapers, and where cartoonists of comic strips traditionally dump their worst gags) we have the Pierce character making an innocuous funny — we will never know whether the cartoonist behind “Zits” has a positive or negative opinion, thankfully sparing us all from a bout of “Relevancy” by way of political and sociological commentary.

At this point I see the perils of commenting on modern comic strips, and will pledge to cease to do so.  But the Luann strip had a strangely political bent which needed to be unplugged a bit.

Yesterday, reading the Comics page in the newspaper, I had a queasy feeling with the “Luann” strip.

The story in sum, an incomprehensible and implausible story.  Um.  So, they got the idea to have the class visit Washington DC for Obama’s Inauguration, a prospect that excited in particular Luann’s black friend, Delta.  (Character name I had to get from the “Josh Reads” website comments here, and if you want the entirely predictable and rather dumb spoiler to be exposed, don’t go that link.)  They raised money, but as so happens, ended up short of just enough money that one student in the class would not be able to go.  Now, frankly in the real world a school class would not let this happen, but if it were to happen I believe they would find an academic reason (ie: the student flunking out is not going) or behavioral (the student caught sniffing glue in the boys’ room is not going) to disqualify a student.  But in the Luann-world, the teachers had the class draw straws.  The black student drew the short straw.

The story wound its way to even more ridiculous premises when Luann and her friend (the frizzy haired girl, I don’t know her name) came up with the perfect fund-raising tool to get that extra bit of money so Delta could go.  See, the idea they hatched, which was accepted by the higher ups of this high school (how, I do not know) was getting the class bimbo (again, I’d have to look up her name, but that’s basically her role in the strip) to agree to be dunked into a tank for a buck (or five, I don’t recall) a ticket.  This lead to the strip presented here, and I see that her name is Tiffany.  From that strip, she was forced to put on a t-shirt, tied in a knot, and there were a few strips of a gaggle of guys waiting to dunk her, drooling over her.  She quit, and — ha ha! — Luann filled in, and the lines dissipated.

This part of the story actually reminds me a bit of a part from this episode of “This American Life”, where the writer of “My Possee Don’t Do Homework”, the book the movie “Dangerous Minds” and the tv show that followed were based on, commented on the continued Hollywood debasement from book to movie and movie to tv show, commenting on an episode where her class had a fund-raiser at a strip joint with “I would not have approved of that.”

Anyway, they somehow or other get the funds.  I think Tiffany ended up not going, maybe?  And they go to Washington, and it leads to this strip…

To which I knew that my worst fears of where this rambling and disjointed story is leading were about to be confirmed.  Though, my thought was “I hope that she’s about to have her long time dream of meeting Senator Patrick Leahy affirmed.”

It’s all a little bit nauseating, isn’t it?

Although the creation of a “Car Czar” to oversee the bailout was originally proposed, President Obama is now reportedly dropping that plan, and devoting his administration’s top economic minds to the problem.

There will be no Car Czar.  ‘Tis a shame.

But maybe Obama can retap Bush’s planned mission to Mars and at least salvage a “Mars Czar” out of this wreckage.