Archive for September, 2009

More Signs Obama is losing the Health Care Fight

Monday, September 7th, 2009

A discussion I heard on public transit.  I didn’t catch what spurred this comment, but

“Yeah, it’s kind of scary.  The bible talks of a man everyone’s supposed to rally under…”
“… Coming in on The PALE HORSE!”
“Right.  Pale Horse.  And this is the Anti-Christ of the End of Days.”

I had a weird sinking feeling at this point.  I don’t know.

“What we’re hearing from Obama about Health Care sure fits the description!”

Huh.

As this conversation arried on, it appeared that one person was somewhat to the left of things, close to Socialism, and the other somewhat to the right, somewhere close to Libertarian about these politics.  But despite these political differences, there was one item which both sides could agree on: Obama just might be the Anti-Christ as described in the Book of Revelations, bringing about Armegeddon and all that good stuff.

I have come to the tendency to shy away from the “Anti-Christ” reference of the Bible, preferring instead The Who and the line about “Meet the Old Boss, Same as the Old Boss” — which is about the same message without the unfortunate tendency to so many false starts on predicting THE END.

Craziness Abounds in Politics all over the world and universe

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

The new First Lady of Japan, Miyuki Hatoyama, believes she has travelled to the “very green” planet Venus.  She is also married to a man nick-named “Alien” due to his very big eyes and a few eccentricities, the new Prime MinisterYukio Hatoyama.  Upon hearing this, I suspected a definite connection — albeit I knew I would have to check chronologies in order to figure out the casual relations.  Did she marry an “alien” due to an attraction that came after the experience of Venus, or did she have this dream experience thinking about her husband / muse?  The latter is roughly the answer.  I also imagine that the eccentriticies of the two attracted each other.

I want to know whether the the new prime minister in Japan given his version of Obama’s “Skinny kid with big ears and funny name”.  I assumeYukio Hatoyama’s name checks out fine in Japan, so we’re left with something like, “Only in Japan can a man with funny bug-eyes get to the highest position in the Land.”

So, the prime minister’s wife is the new Japanese Administration’s either embarrassment or funny eccentricty.  There is, reported by the oh so illuminating World Net Daily and Townhall and on from there, a story about the president and White House being in a panic about Michelle’s mother’s practicing of voodoo rituals.  This is, I think it’s fair to say, purely racist claptrap — from what fevered imaginings it’s pushed its way into these realms I can not say.  Though, there’s nothing too much wrong with voodoo — if you asked a voodoo priest how to handle this or that, they’ll be liable to answer to say the Lord’s Prayer.

A bit less fanciful, Obama has working for him in advisory capacity, not “Czar” a man who signed a petition to investigate the circumstances of 9/11, including as it were “foreknowledge” and “complicity”.  The signiture is justifiable and understandable — we are rolling back to a time when the Bush Administration was stonewalling any investigation and than throwing out the name Henry Kissinger to head such a thing (Why Kissinger?  Just to increase the number of 9/11 Truthers in the polls, I suppose), finally tossing out a report redacting mentions of “Baudi Ababia” (to use Senator Bob Graham’s term).  Well, it’s justifiable to the point where he’s in an “advisory role” — meaning he had a bit more to do with signing off on the terms of the investigation.  So it comes to the point where I couldn’t much care one way or the other the fate of this man Van Jones within this administration.  It appears he has resigned — forced to, one would presume.  I shrug, and await more important matters.  I see, looking around the blogosphere, much dancing on Obama’s Gravestone due to this.  Why?  Because some people are just very much jacked up on Cortosone.

Following in on his detractors, I see the hovering around on the name of one signator to this petition — Howard Zinn.  I followed a link from commentary from the comments section of a “Huffington Post” thing.  This blogger is wrong.  This does not prove his “9/11 Truth” membership.  Quite the contrary, it shows Howard Zinn as proferring a “Popular Front” with his intractable anti American Empire pure Blowback position and the 9/11 Truth Movement.  This does not alleviate the main point, which would be that Zinn can’t move away from signing that thing as far as he’s trying to here, but it is a distinction worthy of note.  Also worth noting, he’s in the six years following that, moved further away from this “popular front” position and blasted them.

Interestingly enough, at least for me, this puts Howard Zinn circa 2002 / 03 — if you want to go through the prism of a one dimensional left / right continuum and define the positions like this — to the left of Noam Chomsky, who I note from my skimmings of 9/11 Truth Materials is pretty well bemoaned and testily shoved away as a “gate keeper” and not consistent in having said words against people who charge “conspiracy theorist” too quickly and with his words brushing off 9/11 Conspiracy theories.  I conjecture that every person throws up a “popular front” of some sort or the other, things being a matter of what your own personal coalition allows.

Van Jones,  I guess we can say that he failed that “25 – 25” rule proferred by some liberal blogger or other (Yglesias?  No.  I see it was Kevin Drum.) with concerns to the college work given by Virgina Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell.  But Robert McDonnell fails, for me, on my basis that anyone who attended one of Pat Robertson’s universities should be disqualified from high public office.  That, I guess, is one of my gate-keeping outtery.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

dissembling roosevelt

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

In 1937, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader — Joseph Robinson — passed away, opening up a contest to fill that spot between Alben Barkley and Pat Harrison.  Barkley won by a vote of 38 to 37 — Roosevelt favoring the more reliable Barkley, playing a two-faced game of “impartiality” in the manner but offering the key assistance.  Everyone immediately posed for “Party Unity” photographs, shaking hands, praises all around, publicized conferences.

And Pat Harrison used the opportunity to separate himself more fully from the president.  The anti-New Deal Democrat nucleus for the Senate that consisted of Joshiah Bailey, Millard Tydings, Carter Glass, and Harry Byrd expanded as Roosevelt’s Court Fight went under way.  When Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts bowed to political pressures and switched his judicial decisions from conservative to liberal — a bullwark of opposition that some skeptical Conservative (largely Dixiecrat) Democrats had leaned on to serve as a line of Obstructionism they would not have to force themselves – served to move them further afield — during the War period, opposing every Domestic policy of the Roosevelt administration en masse.

 How this plays in terms of modern day politics and the sudden comparisons to needing act like Roosevelt, I can’t say.  Perhaps there is a “Use It or Lose It” lesson for Obama, or rather a “Watch your back”.  Or perhaps there is a lesson there in getting around devolved and artificial political procedural norms.  But when dis-sembling Roosevelt,…

Glenn Beck blows it

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

Okay.  Glenn Beck.  The Man of the Hour.  Mr. “Key to the City.”  Good for ratings, his curious foray into conspiratorializing.  And it has come to that point where the blogs — Huffington Post on down– as well Keith Olbermann can snatch out a few minutes of his program on a daily basis for their own amusement.

We laughed when he left out a letter in spelling “Oligarchy”.  We scratched our head as he expounded on the art at Rockefeller Center — can you spot Lenin and Marx?  (A bit more here.)   And, yes did you catch that — he admitted it!

All very good and well.  But I’m stuck on the Czar Quote thing.  This just doesn’t strike me like good propaganda.  It’s like revealing the horror of Naziism by playing “Springtime for Hitler”, or showing Hogan’s Heroes programs.    (Or… this?)

Actually I want to test this.  Take the video again.  Czar Quote thing.  Now, watch the video, but have — instead of your Van Jones and whatnot, play the clip and put in some quotes from Hitler and Goebbels.

“The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies.”

“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”.

Robotic voices make anything, including the most sinister, funny and non-threatening.  Including John D. Rockefellar.

The Paranoid Stylings: Obama is Coming to Indoctrinate Our Children

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Obama.  To speak before the children on the day after Labor Day.  Horrors!

Time for all the bloggers to run to Photo-shop and splice together images of Hitler Youth with Obama buttons!

I mean, the timing of it all!  Right here, when he’s pushing Health Care!  And… on the first day of school for many locales.  One or the other.

Parents in Utah, Kentucky and Texas are keeping their children out of school for the day.  To boycott th video taped message.  I don’t know what age children will start making these connections, but the connection will be made: your parents are bonkers!  (Or, I suppose, in the most rarefied of red districts, the students left behind have parents who are Liberal Socialist Communists?)

There is some manner of historical digging.  We remember what Bush was doing on September 11, and that was tied directly to promotion of his “No Child Left Behind” policies.  Reagan took a student’s question and gave his support for Supply Side Economics.  Apparently.  I suppose politico digs up something a bit more algined to this “controversy”.

Obama isn’t the first president to be criticized this way. O’Neill recalled President George H.W. Bush made televised address to students in October 1991 as campaign season was heating up. A handful of Democrats denounced Bush’s address as pure politics. Bush asked students to “take control” of their education and to write him a letter about ways students could help him achieve his goals, strikingly similar to Obama’s messages.

I don’t remember that speech.  Will the kids remember the Obama speech?
I do think things surrounding the Persian Gulf War trended around the boosterism that Obama is claimed to be pecking out here, treated as the naturally good thing in stasis.  I know that in grades higher than I was and probably in locales more liberal than I was in, some students organized a walk-out at the start of the Gulf War… for a conciousness veneer to play hookey, I would say.

Anyway.  My message to the Negative Reaction to Obama on this:  Get a Grip.

Pat Buchanan. Adolf Hitler. Yeah, we knew that already.

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Yes.  Pat Buchanan.  Hitler Apologist.  He penned an editorial entitled, “Did Hitler Want War?”  The answer, I think, is round about “Yes.” 

I don’t know why everyone’s in such a furry over this.  He wrote a book expounding on his views on Hitler in this stuff down in his last book.  Perhaps he added something new in his column, but I doubt it.  I guess he’s chomping at the bit, waiting for a grand debate in Great Britain to knock down Winston Churchill.  He’s not at Michael Savage level in getting banned from the nation, it appears, because he’s a lovable bigot.

How did Buchanan manage to keep this out of Sprio Agnew’s speeches, we’ll never know.

A few months ago, Pat Buchanan white-washed American history, essentially removing black soldiers out of all of America’s wars.  It was a bit strange, as all anyone needed to do was roll through the National Archives and pull out some photographic evidence.

Pat Buchanan was long run out of the Republican Party.  He won a third of the New Hampshire primary vote in 1992 and 1996, the latter enough for the win.  He made a blistering speech in 1992, such that he was locked out of Bob Dole’s convention in 1996.  I recall an NPR news feature of alarm over Buchanan’s advisors hailing from such groups as the “National Association for the Advancement of White People”, the organization founded by David Duke.  (I got a haircut once at around that time, television was on in the corner and an NAACP ad went on.  The barber asked that question “Why isn’t there a National Association for the Advancement of White People?”  I stared ahead in awkward silence as he continued clipping my hair, not sure what response I could possible give.) 

In the rev up to the Iraq War, some liberals noted his strong opposition to the Iraq War, with added with his Protectionist views on trade gave him a bit too much sympathy.   In her round up of strident voices at the dawn of the bombing, Amy Goodman on Democracy Now included in a couple sentence quote from Buchanan, blasting those “neo-cons” (for … Israel).  It is good to see the balance met back to square one, we can all now remember his 1992 RNC speech.

Notable, and I don’t know what can be noted with this, The American Conservative magazine — Buchanan helped found and remains published on the website and in print, a cover-story panel focus on his anti-Churchill book, for instance (a little loopy was that!) — has published this thing to their blog on Health Care, and I find no mention of Buchanan’s Hitler apologia and controversy from their stable of bloggers.  That strikes me as very odd indeed for a controversy that every political magazine’s blog has tossed, regarding one of their central figures.

… Who deserves a good biography by now, incidentally.

Herschelkrustofsky, take gajillion 5

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Steve Grayce.

Steve Grayceset up an account at Wikipedia.  He made a couple edits that were the same edits as every other “Herschelkrustofsky” nom de plome — obsessed with getting the original subtitle of Chip Berlet’s High Times article in, for instance.  Apparently he made three edits in quick secession, in fact, which lead to his temporary ouster.  He then challenged his temporary banishment.  And was then banned permanently because he was, in reality, none other than  Herschelkrustofsky, the famous Jewish clown on the Simpsons.

Also in familiar to previous “Herschelkrustofsky” puppets, though new as pertaining to new events, Krusty the Clown deigned to remove the reference to Molly Kronberg’s libel suit from the end of “Larouche Criminal Trials” case, when by any measure the article warrants a couple sentences as a post-script.  We also see Krusty’s attempt at forcing newly Larouche’s rewritten history into the Court Trials itself.  Will Weback, ever too gracious in too accomodating these compromises, “added a little more about LaRouche’s allegation.”  Actually, what needs to be added in terms of Larouche’s response to Kronberg’s lawsuit is the reference from the LPAC release as this being part of the British plot against Larouche due to them bring down Obama’s Health Care policies and his opposition to the Iraq War.  A similar feeling I’ve had with respect to both Kronberg’s wikipedia article and Duggan’s — get the craziness there, and don’t white-wash it.

His supporters say they regard him as a world statesman, yet when they edit this article, they do so as though he’s a figure of no importance, so that every even slightly positive reference to him in the media must be mentioned. I suggest we stop engaging in OR entirely (which includes picking and choosing material from primary sources), and stick only to what secondary sources regard as important. That doesn’t mean we can’t use LaRouche articles at all, but it does mean that someone else must have mentioned them first. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The surreality of this is shown in the manner that they have, in the past, commented disparingly of the use of a college newspaper here and there (one of the people who had any reason to pay attention for the past decade), while “Leatherstocking”, in question for a source, pulled up a college newspaper (as well Italian sourcing and something else — I am having trouble finding this and don’t consider it worth my time trying any harder.  There he made the amusingly bald  statement that “I forgot your search engines only bring up negative references to Larouche.” )

Meanwhile, Krusty’s tag-team member, the sort of “Good Cop” of this “Good Cop / Bad Cop” routine in terms of retaining a permanent presence, comes out with:
Another point of dispute is that recent edits have highlighted the two WP:COATRACK articles on the LaRouche list, Jeremiah Duggan and Kenneth Kronberg, without giving similar emphasis to other articles on the LaRouche list that depict LaRouche in a more favorable light, such as Amelia Boynton Robinson. —Leatherstocking (talk) 01:05, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Reading the Robinson wikipedia article, I would think that a reference to a recent interview where she expressed great admiration and pride in the presidntial election of Barack Obama should be placed there, as a means of balance.  She likes Larouche and she likes Obama.  Make of that what you will, and I do make of it something but I’ll bite my tongue.

In other news, some amusing clips have shown up at youtube.  And stuff.
This strikes me as important enough to plop from out of my commenting in the comments section.  Barney Frank’s letter to the editor.  Also from out of Boston, they get a sentence or two in a piece about a John Kerry thing.  Funny that, as the Cult leader, in their fantasy world, “took over the Party” and rallied under John Kerry toward victory… or at least to the next hub ub — John Conyers and allegations of irregularities in Ohio.  Also worth mentioning, page A25 of the  Washington Times article for September 3rd has a photo of two Larouchies holding a sign — (first google find here) and is conflicting with the editorial bias of the article and newspaper — unless the Washington Times wants to claim the Larouchies as a legitimate source for their oppositon.

Overheard Theater

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

A young woman, I’d guess aged 19 or 20, on the phone.  What I hear: “Yeah.  She’s from Littleton.  Littleton, Colorado.” [Pause]  “Yes, I’m sure she’s sick of that.”

These are the towns nobody had ever heard of, until one day everyone had heard of.  “Yes.  I’m from Waco.“  Great.  An immediate  mental image is conjured up. 

“Anyone here from Ruby Ridge?”

Oh.  You’re from Jena, Louisiana?

Can we get a Wasilla?

Another overheard conversation.  “You look like that Obama spokesperson, can’t think of his name.”
“Yeah I can see that.”

I interject, fumbling through my mind a bad answer.  “Axelrod?”

“No.  Not him.  Hm.”

The answer was, in case you’re curious, looking it up just now, Gibbs.