From a week ago:

The straw poll at the Value Voters conference should give some indication about the Nuge Factor that is rattling some traditional Republicans. Nugent was the star of the show in some of the Texas “tea party” rallies on April 15. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, was sent almost to seizures when a purely conservative crowd started chanting “Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul … ” to the tune of “USA, USA, USA … ” during one of his speeches. Paul is not a Republican, Graham shouted back at the group.

I don’t know how that works.  “USA” is three syllables.  “Ron Paul” is two syllables.  Is it “Ron Paul Ron”, “Paul Ron Paul”?  Doesn’t that throw the cadence off?
Is this on youtube so that I can figure this conundrum out?

See also the comment in the postings:

Ron Paul is the only hope for the United States of America, and you and everyone else knows it. Some may be afraid to admit it and some may be too uninformed to recognize it, but by 2012 it will be plain as day.

Individual Liberty my arsh!

I will say, though, that the Lindsey Graham versus Ron Paul supporters storyline is one of the political matches worth watching.

Military Industrial Complex has been defunded thanks to that enterprising ACORN busting shoody pimp and ho duo.

I wish.  Then the Pimp and Ho team would be Good Lefties in disguise.   But we know what’s about to happen with the legislation.  It will be spliced back to fit the one political target.

But if you thought ACORN was bad, meet ArmorGroup North America. It’s the private U.S. government security contractor whose employees at the American embassy in Kabul were photographed in drunken revels that included urinating on and sexually molesting each other. It also has been alleged by whistle-blowing employees that ArmorGroup cut corners on security hiring, leaving our embassy personnel vulnerable.

Take a look at POGO’s contractormisconduct.org site for a list of the corporations that could be out of government work under this legislation. It’s a veritable Who’s Who of defense contracting, including Houston-based KBR.

It does the interesting problem with “The Problem With Acorn”, which is to assume the worst — we’re still dealing with piddling crap amongst a sea of bigger concerns.

Incidentally, back to Acorn — the piddling little controversy:
And now we know that the evil ACORN worker who played along with them later spoke to the police about the incident.  ALA
One out of four videos accounted for.  The other three?  Rule of thumb in reading through this account : (and I’d have to go over and watch the video to watch for body clues to see if this is credible) when you’re a political target, don’t play the “Amused Game”.

And, yes, it appears that The Pimp is politically dishonest in falsely claimed that he was never turned away from ACORN offices.  I think that puts the organization down to 3 out of 8.
But next stop for them, I’m sure, is to expose the corruption of Military Contractors.  It’s what his agenda is, right?

A few paragraphs in, and I have this mental check list to this James Pitkin Willamette Week article.  A fairly reasonable and predictable quote from Chip Berlet (check), a quote from the Southern Poverty Law Center on “right wing extremist recruiting” (check), and something from PSU Sociology Professor and reformed ex-skin-head Professor Blazak.  (Nope)  I’m two for three on a drinking game or bingo game of alt weekly fascist coverage.

Leaving that aside, and pointing out that I know that van, and with a passing reference to something about about this:

Anelauskas’ talk was moved to the Old Wives’ Tales restaurant on East Burnside Street. About 12 people showed up to hear his talk on the Frankfurt School, a group of 20th-century Marxist scholars Anelauskas accuses of sabotaging Western culture. In a video of the lecture available online, Anelauskas makes no overtly anti-Semitic remarks.

Predictably enough, this has been clipped by Lyndon Larouche and his organization for their salad of conspiracy theories… see here, 5 paragraphs in — a list of those sorts of things, read by nobody.

But leaving that side, the thing I found peculiar enough about this article.  Tell me if I’m wrong with this one.  There is something unconvincing and incomplete about this history of the “Anti Fascist Movement” for Portland:

Anti-fascism first arose in Europe in the 1920s to oppose violent far-right groups, and has since spread to the Americas and Australia. Rose City Antifa is part of the Anti-Racist Action Network, which boasts 20 chapters in cities across the U.S. and Canada.
Rose City Antifa was founded in 2007, when anti-racists organized to shut down a meeting of the neo-Nazi Hammerskin Nation set for the Sherwood Elks Lodge.

So, it took 80 years for the “Anti Fascist Movement” to spread from Europe to Portland?

There is this gift store downtown.  The past administration saw it sell a lot of anti-Bush crap.  By the time we got to the to the last election, a lot of pro-Obama stuff was pushed in — including a Baby shirt with some ramification of the word “Change” collided with the kid’s diaper.  Place it next to the grown up shirt about “Only Good Bush” with an allusion to a part of a woman’s body.

The merchandise sold makes me espect that something like this shirt my brother spotted when perhaps searching for something to clothe his son in.  They are for the parents’ amusement, not the child’s.  In the past few months, a baby shirt has appeared in the window, “Living Proof that Geeks Procreate.”  All right.   But apparently this shirt comes in adult sizes.  I can’t picture why an adult would want to charge their parents as a Geek, or a teenager would want to advertise their parents as geeks — this market exists?  The thing is, though, they have this shirt over the cardboard cutout of Barack Obama.

Lots of things have been said about Obama.  I can’t recall too may things levelled at either Obama’s parents — perhaps something is implied with his Kenyan father.  But I have never heard any of Obama’s parents rolled into the category “geek”.

No incident of this session so well illustrates the partisan bitterness and the venomous nature of the hates engendered by the struggles of the preceding years as the attempt on the life of Jackson at the Capitol on January 30, 1835.  Under normal conditions and in ordinary times the incident would have been dismissed, and, properly, ascribed to the insanity of the assailant.  But it was the first time an attempt had been made upon the life of a President — and it was a President who had been intermperately denounced as a tyrant, despot and wrecker of American institutions and liberties.  Just as John Tyler had instantly thought of “political effect,” the ardent friends of Jackson caught the same idea from the opposite angle.  And two days later, Frank Blair in the “Globe” threw out the suggestion of a conspiracy.  “Whether Lawrence [the assailant] has caught, in his visits to the Capitol, the mania which has prevailed the last two sessions of the Senate,” he wrote, “whether he has become infatuated with the chimeras which have troubled the brains of the disappointed and ambitious orators who have depicted the President as a Caesar who ought to have a Brutus; as a Cromwell, a Nero, a Tiberius, we know not.  If no secret conspiracy has prompted the perpetration of the horrid deed, we think it not improbable that some delusion of intellect has grown out of his visits to the Capitol, and that hearing despotism and every horrible mischief threatened to the Republic, and revolution and all its train of calamities imputed as the necessary consequence of the President’s measures, it may be that the infatuated man fancied that he had reason to become his country’s avenger.  If he had heard and believed Mr. Calhourn’s speech of day before yesterday, he would have found in it ample justification for his attempt on one who was represented as the cause of the most dreadful calamities of the Nation; as one who made perfect rottonness and corruption to pervade the vitals of the Government, insomuch that it was scarcely worth preserving, it it were possible.”

The intimation here thrown out was bitterly resented by the Opposition leaders, and particularly Calhourn, who was mentioned.  The very fact that the intemperate and insincere denunciations of high officials as responsible for the distress of the people, acting upon the diseased brain, can very easily persuade the madman to constitute himself the executioner, served to infuriate the orators who had given themselves full play.  Stung to the quick, Calhourn denounced the “Globe” as “base and prostitute” and described it as “the authentic and established organ” of Jackson, “sustained by his power and pampered by his hands.”  “To what was are we coming?” he exclaimed.  “We are told that to denounce the abuse of the Administration even in general terms, without personal reference, is to instigate the assassination of the Chief Executive. . . . I have made up my mind as to my duty.  I am no candidate for any office — I neither seek nor desire place — nothing shall intimidate — nothing shall prevent me from doing what I believe is due to my conscience and my country.”  Mr. Calhourn sat down — and Mr. Leigh immediately rose to present a report from the Committee on Revolutionary Claims.

But Mr. Calhourn’s attack on the “Globe” was not unnoticed by Blair, who replied by quoting from the most venomous portions of Calhourn’s and Preston’s tirades on the Post-Office report.  A week later the Administration organ was still harping on conspiracy.  “Every hour,” wrote Blair, “brings new proof to show that Lawrence has been operated on to seek the President’s life, precisely as we had supposed from the moment we learned that he had been an attenant on the debates in Congress.”

Very soon the capital was startled with the connection of Senator Poindexter’s name with that of the assailant.  The obsession took possession of Jackson that his Mississippi enemy had instigated the attempt at assassination.  The examination of Lawrence had clearly established his insanity; just as clearly shown that he had taken to heart the charges of Jackson’s enemies that he was responsible for the distress of the people.  Finding himself hard pressed by fate , and ascribing his unhappiness to the tyranny of Jackson, he had determined to kill him.  That explanation was convincing and sufficient.  But the suggestion that Poindexter had planned the deed fell on receptive soil.  Affadivits had been placed in Jackson’s hands to the effect that “a gentleman who boarded in the same house informed him that Mr. Poindexter had interviews with Lawrence but a few days before the attempt on the President’s life.”  Some time before the attack, “a captain in high standing in the navy” had said that Poindexter, on a voyage to New Orleans, had threatened
(etc etc)

The Party Battles of the Jackson Period
Claude Bowers, 1922
pages 376 – 379

During the Bush Administration, it was either Barbara Lee or Maxine Waters who invited Cindy Sheehan to the State of the Union Address.  She was barred.  The reason was pretty much to avoid the display that was just enacted by Joseph Wilson.  On any number of occasions, at Bush election campaign gatherings and through “Medicare Reform” meetings, people with anti-war t shirts or Kerry / Edwards bumper stickers were barred, questioned by officials.  Further, Bush’s town hall meetings were screened far beyond the paranoid conjecture that Obama has for him.  Further, Obama’s gatherings have been met by protesters — off stage at friendly church grounds — brandishing guns, a display which is taxing on secret service attention and resources as they fumble around the 400 percent increase of death threats.

I get the sense of the surreal with some “movement conservative” commentary throwing the charge of hypocrisy in remembering the Bush years.  Take the matter of Joe Wilson.  This has been met with “revelations” and discoveries of, for instance, Pete Stark saying mean things about the president.  He said Bush is a liar, you see, and therefor how can we say that Wilson was off base for calling Obama a liar?  “Wow.  You don’t say?”  Where the equivalence is here, I don’t know.

What happened at Bush’s SOTU addresses?  A few occasions of booing.  Other manners that effectively display one’s displeasure include, for instance, Ted Kennedy shaking his head furiously.  And then there was that moment where he was perhaps dozing off, perhaps not.  The camera loves those to pick those things out.  Perhaps Wilson’s problem was that he had to up the ante in order to get some name and face recognition?  Also workable, in group dynamics,m is the old run of the mill partisan dividing sit up versus sit at various presidential applause lines.  This is more interesting with divided government where it’s immediately apparent without camera roll over — the Speaker versus the Vice President, and was also interesting during the Clinton years when he gave the Republicans almost as many stand-up moments versus the Democrats as he did his Democratic party — the rules of “Triangulation”.

There is a continuum at work here.  I can forsee that moment where it will be de riguour policy to heckle and heckle.  Though, I can’t quite see the shoe throw as being standard just yet.

There is something that has become a reoccuring bit on The Daily Show.  It is reoccuring not as any attachment to a running joke, but because of the repetitiveness of our politics.  Last week’s rendition had footage of the 9/12 tea-party rally with Sean Hannity speaking from out of the Bush Administration years, commenting on how “they’re calling the president every name in the book” and on and on.  It’s a strange one, indeed.  A mindset of manichean qualities, defining “Americanism”.  Incidentally, I probably shouldn’t comment on Nancy Pelosi’s words — not having had a look see myself — but around there might be her weakest point (it has been in the past)– the spirit of McCarthy and the spirit of Calhourn are just as much a part of the American fabric as anything else.