Archive for August, 2009

Let us now draw Hitler mustaches on famous men

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

“Mr. Dewey has pledged himself to an administration of unity and efficiency.  In our time, we have seen the tragedy of the Italian and German peoples, who lost their freedom to men who made promises of unity and efficiency and security.” […]
“When a few men get control of the economy of a nation, they find a ‘front man’ to run the country for them. Before Hitler came to power, control over the German economy had passed into the hands of a small group of rich manufacturers, bankers and landowners.  These men decided that Germany should have a tough and ruthless dictator who would play their game and crush the strong German labor unions.  So they put money and influence behind Adolf Hitler.  We know the rest of the story.”
— Harry S Truman, October 1948

It’s a bit difficult to remember what about Dewey might inspire any passion of any kind — neither a Saint nor a Devil be that Thomas Dewey, but I believe that there was a bit of the 2004 Bush v Kerry “Swift Boat” going on there where the idea was to throw out something ludicrous and should it not be responded to ask the question “If he can’t handle this punch as a candidate, how is he going to handle a punch Stalin as a president?”

Harry Truman presents a bit of a conundrum with this classic item of raw demagougery.  In the great game of ahistorical Hitler references… The problem with Thomas Dewey is shown with a photograph:

thomasdewey

If I wanted to do that whole “Hitler” thing, would  I strip him of that mustache and replace it — or go ahead and scribble a differently colored “Hitler Mustache” over Mr. Dewey’s already extent mustache?

For a more current example, we can turn to John Bolton.  Could I just color a big chunk of his white mustache brown, leaving the chunk of his mustache that hangs around his mouth white?

johnbolton

John Bolton at least has enough of a crowbar to make a color swatch work.  Dewey just kind of flummoxes me.  (You’d have to — what? — color the two sides in and clip it off ever so slightly at the edges?)

In the end, if I have to go ahead with the generically understood two factioned tribalist nature of the body politic, I will take “our” hyper-ventiliating rhetorically ratcheted ahistorical Hitler analogy over “their”s.  Ted Rall wrote a Bush = Hitler piece (one?) which probably could have been proferred with only slight variations by an advocate for a war in Iraq with the typical always at the ready (and always tired) “If Hitler had been stopped at Munich” line.

Consider the Disruptors at the Town Hall meetings.  When not speaking of the “One day God’s going to stand before you” (and his… um… right to leave?), we have (Can someone identify what the woman from :12 to :18 is trying to sell us?), we have an allusion to the Socialism of Russia — Obama dismantling the nation, apparently — Maoist China.  Also please let Obama know he’s an American (for once, I can cheer Arlen Specter for something: “I think he knows that.”)  To explain the problem of the incoherence, I can point to sometime in the Bush Administration, a bit annoyed by Hitler references I pleaded for some new infusion of Totalitarian Leaders through history — though with specific allusions for specific items, I therefor can’t get behind rolling them all into one. 
For the Obama — Hitler analogy (Hey!  The Larouchies are getting around!), we are churned over to The Euthanasia Card — the Death Panel that might have voted down Sarah Palin’s baby and perhaps Steven Hawking.  It does feel like addressing that one is addressing a straw man — ’tis heavily compromised by its very nature — Obama bought out phrma to get Harry and Louise on board, (something I see Jonah Goldberg couldn’t help but notice, though he calls phrma “naive” and profers that Obama can’t say “no” to the extremist leftist Henry Waxman and — I guess double crossing Big Phrma?), and Senator Johnny Isakson is in the artful position of having to push away at this while not allowing Obama to claim him for political purposes.

Was Gerald Ford ever Hitler for anyone’s darkest impulses?  It seems like a weird proposition but consider for a moment one thing (on this, a few days after the anniversary of Ford’s ascension to the president, and as we come near the release of Squeaky Fromme): 

A much reviled and despised man, the fury of public scorn through over two decades.  He had the honor of one hell of an electoral thumping, and then was kicked out of office in the lowest public regard.  He was replaced by a genial well liked man, who went out of his way to not offend the sensibilities of a troubled nation, who was impossible to hate, and not a terribly bitterly partisan official.
Richard Nixon didn’t come particularly close to being assassinated.  The best we can do there is Samuel Byck.  Gerald Ford, on the other hand, had two attempts — at close range — in quick succession — on September 5 and then September 22 of 1975.  Those two particular assassination attempts were, I guess we can call sort of after-shocks after the that funny period of time we define as the 1960s.

Arthur Laffer: “Keep the government’s Hands off of Medicare!”

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

The story (stories) of the old befuddled scared men and women crying out their Representatives, Senators, and President to “Keep the Government’s Hands off my Medicare!” is that tad too easy encapsulation for the advocates of Obama’s Health Care Reform, a sledge hammer that works largely to corrall the emotional out of the more legitimate concerns.  I do not know how to rate it in terms of propaganda versus a matter of clarifying a frame.

But it is one thing for your befuddled octagenarian grandpa to worry about a government take-over of Medicare.  The man I don’t understand with this one is Arthur Laffer, that influential economist who, as that Creation Myth holds, doodled this on a napkin, thus heralding in the reign of Supply Side Economics.

laffercurve

And here is that napkin!

And now he adds these two cents to the current Health Care debate.:  “If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.”

Huh.  Far be it for me to shake my head in wonderment at a economist, but… Huh.  Can he please scribble a graph of that on a napkin to clarify his position?

The Laffer Curve is, I have to admit, certainly true in extremis.  A zero percent tax rate will bring in no revenue, as would a 100 percent tax rate.  It gotes to figure that various rates of taxation should, therefor, be somewhere in between those two figures.  I suspect that there is no scientific answer to the “law”.

I have always admired Sean Hannity’s extrapulation of the principle.  “Every time you cut taxes, revenue doubles.”  It goes to figure that he should be, therefor, advocating a long series of two cent tax cuts — the $10 Trillion debt would be paid off in no time flat.  Except, I suppose, the “Starve the Beast” theory, which would require the government not to have too much room to grow.

It is worth musing over the (I would say undesirable idea) of a 100 percent top marginal rate.  I know it has been debated and discussed in the halls of various Green Party platform discussions, at least I assume it is as it is the quickest path to a “Maximum Wage” — and I know (from some listening to KBOO) that that socialist idea has been battered around in Green Party politics.  I also remember that the “Maximum Wage” was a great boogey-man for Rush Limbaugh (from my occasional listening back in the 1990s), the end of a slippery slope which would serve as the final sign that the “Great Experiment of America” is “Over”.  There is no real way to know if he believes that, since he never bothered to leave New York City for test case number one in the slippery slope.

But such a thing is a radical enough idea, fundamentally changing our country in ways that I think would justify and explain a chant of “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK” jumping to starting up a chorus of the “Star Spangled Banner”, and thus the successful shuttering of a Town Hall Meeting.  In the meantime, we’re stuck with too many knots in engaging a plan that would either modestly benefit or modestly hamper the country — I would go with “benefit”.

New Republic versus National Review

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

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Advertisements found in this New Republic issue include:

Biotechnology
Americans Against Food Taxes
America’s Natural Gas Alliance*
CATO Institute
FLAME (Facts and Logic about the Middle East)
Phrma (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America)

Advertisements in this National Review issue include:

Natural Gas Alliance
America’s Oil and Natural Gas Industry*
Americans Against Food Taxes
a Michelle Malkin book
Emergency Wave Radio (with free Newsmax Subscription)

* Not to be confused with each other.  Unless… they are?

Hot or Not?

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Okay.  Let’s play that “Hot or Not” thing with this thing.:

vladmirputinshirtlessonahorse 

Hot… Or Not?

Or is Vladmir Putin sending a message to Joseph Biden?  “Russia Weakening?  Oh YEAH?!?!?”
Let’s see Biden shirtless on a horse, huh?

I do know of the group in Russia who would answer “Yes.  Hot” to the question, and go about plastering that photograph as a poster onto their ceiling.  See here.:

Meeting at its annual summer camp in Seliger, the Kremlin-led youth group, Nashi, decided to establish bands of militia consisting of disadvantaged youngsters armed with stun guns. Under the plan, hundreds of thousands of Putin’s young stormtroopers would patrol Russia’s streets and have the right to check people’s IDs.

The initiative to establish the Russian Militia Association (Vserossiiskaya Assotsiatsiya Druzhin, VAD) comes from Vasily Yakemenko, director of the Federal Agency on Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) and former leader of the Nashists. The organisation would be financed from the state budget and receive administrative support from Rosmolodezh.

Igor Kon, psychologist and member of the Russian Academy of Education, expresses grave concern about the initiative. Such organisations are usually established specifically to carry out tasks given by those in power and those who are giving the orders, Mr Kon says. Controlling these rowdy youngsters may, however, be difficult, he warns.

Then again

Webster Tarpley and Lyndon Larouche: Barnacles in Search of Hub Ubs.

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Yes, I’m thinking that that image was photo-shopped.  (For it in action, see here.  .  He has found the one bit of illogic his membership doesn’t seem to understand is a bit of illogic — See my comment in the last post.  And as for him, meh — I’ve been swirling around this train for some time.  Wherever a political leader is referred to as Hitler, the Larouchies will come in like barnacles.  The answer to Chuck Beardsley’s question lies round about there and with these things.)

Okay.  Here we have Howie G laying down the Larouche line on the town hall meeting disruptions.:
The Republican Party says it’s not behind the protests, but LaRouche Pac and Lyndon Larouche say that they are. Yes, inside sources say that larouchepac is the catalyst in the resistance to a Nazi dictatorship over health care.  The phrasing is off.  Is Larouche saying that the Republicans are saying the Republicans or the Larouchies are not behind the protests?  (Ah.  “Inside sources”.  I suspect the “inside sources” are random Democratic bloggers and cable news commentators wanting to put the Disruptors in its worst possible light?)  Of course he [Harry Reid] doesn’t have enough cajones to admit that Larouche Pac is in on the action.
Uh huh.  Actually the risk of tarring the whole “movement” with its Larouchite barnacle element is not worth the rewards (nor rewarding Larouche, for that matter).  It’s a careful tactic that would require  not tossing in the more mainstream opposition of mainstream Americans into that pot, and such a thing would buttress against a cry of “Hey!”.  (The Reason Magazine blog numerating the “Birthers” citations.)  Sorry, Howie G.  Enjoy your Fantasy World — you’ll get mentioned in passing by the non-Elite.

For the Larouchies, the “Disruption tactic” is in their tradition, learned from sparodic hits on college campus lecture classes where they … dressed up in gorilla suits? … to “challenge” the Newton Cult and inject the Riemann — Larouche into Econ.  So, this is their element, I suppose.

Fringe movements often follow a sort of pattern, where the initial genuine energy of fringe devotees is exploited for the financial gain of their leaders, who then collapse into infighting over reaping the benefits.
Consider that when considering this.:
 I get the feeling that the loudmouths I’ve encountered the past two days at the town halls were most likely LaRoucheites, birthers or truthers rather than people that attended a tea party because of their concern about the current state of the country.
Can’t get too haughty with that one, throwing a link to an article about the Minute Men.  Sometime around that time Keith Olbermann was entertaining the notion of the 2004 stolen Ohio election, with the opening caveat along the lines of “Somewhere between tin – foil hat and legitimate citizen investigative journalism”, one Bev Harris was traversing about for cash and fame.  Also swarming around that one: the Larouchies.  Here it was because they were injecting themselves into the Fantasy Shadow Government as a “player”, working with Representative Conyers they claimed.

Interesting to note: PUMA activity is still going on in the wikipedia editing section.  There is not a whole lot to say about that brief spurt of disgruntled Hillary Clinton partisans, suffering the affront of personal identification with a losing presidential candidate.  Two figures who hovered around this one: Lyndon Larouche and Webster Tarpley.  In this case, I have to say Larouche’s message made more narrative sense.  Larouche wants to claim to be an “Insider” fighting factions of the Elites, and thus he is with Clinton and against Obama.  Tarpley’s stated hope with Clinton, that she would open up a Democratic Party Realignment, made no sense on his own terms of a nation that blows up the World Trade Center.  But I suspect Tarpley just had a long range in his purview, to act as a number one conspiratorial oppenent in the Obama Administration.  He was more consistent in opposition of Obama from that point to the present, whereas the Larouchies toyed with the always lingering Death Threats problem that plagues Obama for a time after the election — watching and waiting for Hub-Ubs to attach to.

Interesting to note, Webster Tarpley has thrown himself well into the Birthers.  He is, at the very least, wading into it, though it looks as though he’s careful not to cement it part of his conspiratorial storyline — offering his radio show as a platform for the Russian women generally mocked on mainstream media, and from the start during the election campaign thrusting it as “an issue that needs answering”.  Larouche, meanwhile, has opted out of this hub ub.  Probably a good idea: he’s positioned himself for re-entry into Obama support if Obama shaves his mustache and somehow is seen as rejecting his Nazi Advisors.

The thing about these things is that I don’t for a moment think Larouche gave one whiff about the presidential run of Hillary Clinton, nor do I think he cares about Health Care Policy.  I don’t think Webster Tarpley cares at all about Obama’s birth certificate.  You know the Columbia University Student strike of 1968, which served as Larouche’s “coming out”?  (I say that aware that his most loyal associates, still today, were with him back to — I think 1965, actually).  The strike had in it the two great struggles of 1960s politics: the Vietnam War and Civil Rights — eliminating Defense Contracts from the University, and wanting to stop the construction of a gym encroaching into black Harlem.  Larouche didn’t care about those issues.  Even then, 1968, before mop-up, ’twas hub-ub and he was a barnacle.
It may or not be worth looking at the wikipedia edit attempts.

This week’s Willamette Week Cover Bugs the Hell out of Me

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

That Willamette Week cover story?  “To Catch a Stoner“, on Tigard Police’s highly questionable Prostitution Sting Operation?

That cover that shows an image of three young “Soriority type looking” women “looking slightly buzzed”?  The one that the Tigard Police reportedly snatched from the Internet for use in their sting operations, snatching “Casual Encounter” visitors either engaging in a transaction with marijuana for sex or sharing their marijuana stashes with casual sex, depending on your vantage point?

Okay.  I am really anticipating Willamette Week’s explanation for use of that photograph, because unless I learn that somehow they managed to trace down and contact all three “slightly buzzed sorority sisters” looking women, who then consented to use of this photograph (never mind the goddanged Tigard Police), I feel my respect for that publication suffering a sharply steep drop.

Al Gore wasn’t good enough for Kim Jong Il?

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

So, we get to the FANTASTIC NEWS coming out of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea!!

 A national exhibition of August 3 consumer goods was opened at the Three-Revolution Exhibition on Monday.

Displayed there are ironware, electric appliances, clothing, grass-work, agricultural products and sundry goods produced by industrial establishments, housewives’ work-teams in ris, townships and districts (dongs), reutilization production work-teams of direct sales shops in cities and counties and home welfare service workers across the country.

The products draw attention of visitors as they have satisfactorily met the Koreans’ taste and their requirements for living.

To put events in the proper perspective, remembrances of Past Glories, and Benevolent Leaders:

On an August day of Juche 40 (1951) President Kim Il Sung examined cotton-padded military winter-shoes.
After watching shoes with care from the height of rubber rim to thickness of shoe-sole, he instructed an official that he should carry a pair of shoes with him when backing.
Next day after he came back to the Supreme Command, he came out, putting on the cotton-padded shoes.
Officials dubiously looked at him wearing the shoes unfit for hot summer.
After having put on the shoes for a week and more, he told officials that, while wearing the shoes for several days, he felt they were good as they were warm and comfortable for feet. What worries myself, he added, is that feet of soldiers might be frozen as the shoes became wet easily.
Pointing to the rubber rim of the shoes he told in an anxious tone that the height of the rim was so low that the shoes got wet like this even in some mud and the wet shoes might make feet of soldiers frozen in winter though cotton was padded.
At last the officials realized why the President wore the shoes in summer.
After an interval, the President earnestly instructed them that the height of rubber should be raised higher.
The officials were deeply moved by him who worried himself so much about the problem of military winter-shoes in the height of the hard-fought war, not a problem of military operation.

Regarding the North Korea Journalists Held ?  North Korean media lead up to it with:

The video of Mr. Clinton’s arrival in Pyongyang was featured in a news bulletin on North Korean state television on Tuesday evening, just after a report on the improving quality of biscuits at a local factory.

The freeing of the Journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, happened about as I thought it would.  It is a predictable game.  The quid pro quo (and here John Bolton can, to use a vulgar common vernacular “Suck on that“) is a photo-op with Distinguished World Figure (apparently Al Gore was rejected.  He’ll have to console himself of this rejection with the fact that more people have actually heard of his television news venture).  And Kim Jong Il wins the chance to claim this:

A little girl presented a bouquet to Bill Clinton.
As well, probably as important for Kim Jong Il’s propaganda purposes than a photograph of a girl handing Bill Clinton flowers:
The measure taken to release the American journalists is a manifestation of the DPRK’s humanitarian and peaceloving policy.

The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea have also thoughtfully stuck this to the forefront of its news page.:

Understand, the Bill Clinton visit makes up the top five headlines at the PDRK state news source.  Impressive!  But what I don’t understand, seeing as “Beer Summits” have become all the rage in the United States, and North Korea is now selling its people beer — well, that was a confluence of events that has been missed.  Then again, it is not worthwhile to get these grim-faced folks in the photo-op tispy.

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[Bloggers’ note: I look for images of Clinton and Kim Jong Il meeting in google images, with those search phrases.  Image #3 is from me.  Image #4 is from me.  Weird.  I’m flattered by somehow ending up there with this blog that’s read by — like 7 people — but it frustrated my attempt to find the now famous summit image.)