Well, here he is writing a piece for the Heritage Foundation.  Drill.  Baby.  Drill.

And the comments.  What is Obama’s motives, anyway?

Lloyd Scallan – New Orleans writes:
Doc Hastings views are spot on! However, Obama will never allow drilling off or on our coast.
Within weeks after Obama took office, he (or his minions) cancelled lease sales […]
We all better understand that Obama wants this country on its knees. With no gasoline or natural gas, most every industry will be forced to shut down (not to mention transportation). Then Obama will get just what he wants, to declare a national emergency so he can completely take over every aspect of our lives.

Why didn’t Doc Hastings write that?

Gail, Amarillo, Texas writes:
President Obama has no intention of developing energy independence or jobs for the American people. His Secretary of the Interior Mr. Salazar will follow his boss’s wishes. The President wants our country on its knees without energy and without jobs. I don’t believe that anyone can stop him from putting the country in that predicament because he believes in a one world economic plan and ignores the pain of his own people.

One World Here We Come!!

Bob Atwood Goldendale Wa. writes:
I just want to thank Doc for his work, He is a real sourse of pride for us in the NW. Something is very wrong in America today, Without people like Mr. Hastings I can’t imagine how intolerable our government would be.

Just wait til John Boehner becomes Speaker after 2010.  Then we will see Mr. Hastings UNLEASED!

Dennis, Ohio writes:
Thank you Doc for your efforts. Unfortunately, Obama and his czars are intent on the destruction of this country, our resources, and our wellbeing. There is little to be done unless we vote these people out of office as fast as we can. It may be too late already.

Face it.  It is too late.  Go ahead and leave these people in office, because it’s too late anyway.

So, Nuclear Power coming soon?

The fascinating lie from Leatherstocking, repeated for the umpteenth time.

The irony is that I am quite ambivalent about LaRouche, but I strongly oppose what I see as the abuse of process that has frequently been employed as a tactic by the team that controls the LaRouche articles. So, I open my mouth (figuratively speaking) and for my troubles I get branded a LaRouchie. —Leatherstocking

A thought experiment for everybody.  Let’s pretend that there’s a person making edit attempts and wikipedia arguments at various Star Wars topics, to the exclusion of any other topic — save, perhaps, a tangeantal slash at Gene Roddenbury meant to bolster an argument about George Lucas.  Let’s say that his nom de plome was(and this is an essential point) “Wookie”.  See how this reads.

The irony is that I am quite ambivalent about Star Wars, but I strongly oppose what I see as the abuse of process that has frequently been employed as a tactic by the team that controls the Star Wars articles. So, I open my mouth (figuratively speaking) and for my troubles I get branded a Star Wars fan. –Wookie

I think JN466 has at the very least developed some degree of plausible deniability in his new found editing attempts.  At the very least, his edits have caught Leatherstocking’s eye.

I’d like to encourage you to keep editing the article, because your edits seem carefully neutral, and otherwise the process is dominated by disputes between Mr. Beback and myself over article neutrality. —Leatherstocking

But it looks like JN466 and Leatherstocking have successfully truncated Kronberg from the Larouche wikipedia article, whatever JN466’s motives here.  A single sentence which gives JN466 away.:

We have 300 words on Kronberg’s death in 2007. Is that really appropriate in this BLP? I don’t see what the connection is to LaRouche personally. —JN466 […]

When I get a spare minute, I will go forth and see what the edits here were.  Unless someone wants to do that for me.   This strikes me as important in their ongoing Propaganda Offensive.  If someone wants to do my work for me, feel free to leave the alterations in the comments section, on down to 153 words — the words matter more than the quantity.

Curiously enough, Leatherstocking seems intent on pulling the word tic upward.
I have expanded one line, giving a more accurate description of LaRouche’s claims vis-a-vis Molly Kronberg. One possible solution to the problems of this section would be to remove all speculation (from both sides) about the reasons for the suicide, since this seems inappropriate for an encyclopedia.
Disingenuous as always, the “reasons for the suicide” about that which matter here, and that which is important in the history of the twin set of the cult and its cult leader.  Mind you, I would not know how to ferret out internal history and external history here, but the internal certainly spilled out to the external — and the four biggest news events of the cult in the past decade are: Jeremiah Duggan’s death, Kenneth Kronberg’s death, Obama Hitler Euthanasia Rahm Emanuel blehdebleh, and Neocon Children of Satan Cheney blehdebleh.

Fun fact about the Fusion Energy Foundation:  The entity now bearing that name has nothing to do with the organization.  Good luck to Will Beback on that article, though.

Over to the attempt, by both Webster Tarpley fans and Larouchies, to slash Webster Tarpley from the listing of related topics.  This is a fascinating convergence of mutual interests.  Great moments in Movement argumentation!
I have no problem with leaving Zepp-LaRouche off the template, along with all other individuals other than Lyndon. –Leatherstocking
A Movement of one.  A relevant rejoinder.

To my knowledge, those would be Jeremiah Duggan, Webster Tarpley, and Kenneth Kronberg. The latter two were members, but their listing is contentious for other reasons. In the case of Tarpley, Mr. IP believes there is guilt by associating him with LaRouche when he has parted company. In the cases of Duggan and Kronberg, it is violation of WP:NOTSCANDAL.–Leatherstocking (talk) 00:58, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Tarpley was a members for over 20 years, Krongberg a member for at least 30 years. Will we delete Billington when he leaves or dies too? I hope not. “Mr IP” specifically warns, elsewhere, about Orwell’s “memory hole“. There’s no gossip on that template, so I don’t know why you’re referring to them as scandals.   Will Beback  talk  01:03, 9 October 2009

Of course, Leatherstocking’s whole editing purpose is to push various items into the Memory Hole, see too:
because LaRouche is first and foremost an economist and those seem to be his core economic policies
Comedy Gold!

In reading through these wikipedia editing attempts, I find myself deliberating with myself whether I should just chunk completely any and all use of wikipedia.  Sure, we find the obvious — Leatherstocking is generally called out by the editors here as obvious “ Very clearly a POV-based nomination“  in his ongoing “Scandal Mongering” mongering.

One thing to remember, is that when an editor is trying to combat POV-pushing in a certain subject area it can make that editor look like they’re pushing the other side, when all they’re really trying to do is balance the coverage of the topic. Haven’t you ever felt like you were inadvertently in that position? I have. Cla68

But ultimately, this is always a rearguard action from Leatherstocking, and whatever Krusty the Clown repopup comes forth.  We have seen the odd Columbia University professor comment that taps this topic as the poster child for wikipedia’s limitations, why he warns his students against wikipedia.  We have, at the same time, seen insta-wikipedia checks that get the necessary guage of their encounter.  That some clown can sneak out a reference about anti-semitism, sneak in a reference about predicting cataclysmic economic troubles, and obscure events and names  in the cult’s history becomes immaterial.

In other news, the controversial neoconservative strategist Laurent Murawiec has passed away.  A check into the Internet reveasl some French language posts (makes sense) you’d have to check and translate yourself, this item for the National Review, and this for Pajamas Media.  This thing to “Britania Radio” is most curious, because in the past what’s washed over to me from that site are these items.  One tribute to him is that one can assess his work without reference to his writing for Executive Intelligence Reivew.

This has become a surreal presidency.  Obama supporters of the qualified and caveat-filled type will just have to fend off against an outsized cariacture, selling the steak not the sizzle.  But the lesson of the moment is Norway: More anti-Bush than you.

I find it notable that the Huffingtonposts’s “most viewed” list seems to have moved off from what has historically been its top view getters — item #5 is Hilary Swank Sleeps Naked, Stays Naked In Front Of, and in the past the site has buttressed its hits with – as an example, July 4th weekend’s most viewed was a slideshow of “Top Flag Bikini Moments”.   Or maybe the Obama Nobel Peace Prize has trumped the celebrity / sex matrix.  Wait to see what we get next week.  At the moment, the most popular page at huffingtonpost is “8 Most Outrageous Attacks on Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize”.  Rush Limbaugh pops up twice, unremarkably.  Glenn Beck’s recommendation for the Tea Party Movement gets a mention.  Perhaps John Bolton said something untorrid, but huffingtonpost didn’t bother to place it here — glomming straight to the relatively sensible and defendable decree that he should “turn it down”.

This leaves me hanging at William Kristol.  Kristol points out that after Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize, he was chunkered out of office.
Woo Hoo!
Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. A year later, he was out of power and the Soviet Union had dissolved.
Who knows… maybe things can unravel in the United States in just that matter that they unravelled in the Soviet Union?  Are we travaising back to Igor Panin’s chilling vision of a United States eaten up by Outer Empires, or John L Perry’s vision of a Military Coup the type of which supported by Jim DeMint for at least Honduras?
I don’t mean to compare Barack Obama to Gorbachev, who was, whatever his faults, a truly historic and courageous figure.
Sure he doesn’t.
But let’s hope the parallel extends this far: that a year from now the Democrats suffer a major electoral repudiation, and that the New Liberalism goes the way of Reform Communism. And that, beginning in 2013, Obama will have lots of free time to spend hobnobbing with Gorbachev on the international celebrity circuit.

To further run with this analogy, the new Yeltsin would have to be a figure that — at the very least promises — to accelerate further those at one time looking like they were revolutionary but now seems kind of piddling reforms alongside that “New Liberalism” / “Reform Communism” route of the Gorbachev / Obama figure.  And you know what this makes Bush in this equation?  The Old Communist Apparatchiks.

Fascinating.

In other news, the anti-Wilsonites have slid into view, and a few items from their litany of Wilson abuses need to be sorted out.  Woodrow Wilson was not the author of the Treaty of Versailes, and his vision with the League of Nations was severely compromised.  It is interesting to note that the great gap of dearth of winners between 1914 and 1918 which preceed Wilson’s victory — with that clever Red Cross disrupting those war years.  Another great gap followed for 1939 through 1943 — where the Norwegians apparently didn’t even muster the heart to find a Red Cross.

Theodore Roosevelt is another matter.  His brand of Jingoism “War is the Health of the State”  kind of jars here.  But, as head of a major world power he stood there, ready “for his successful mediation to end the Russo-Japanese war and for his interest in arbitration, having provided the Hague arbitration court with its very first case“^.

With the sort of flickering Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and the more mainstream Jimmy Carter and Al Gore (not terribly controversial choices outside the United States, with some kibatching about strenuous connections for Gore), why oh why isn’t anyone going after Vice President Charles Dawes’s Nobel Peace Prize?

I can do William Kristol one better, though.  Statistically, the receiving of a Nobel Peace Prize for currently residing political leaders, raises… well, Rabin and Sadat and — well, there’s also MLK.

 Then again, one step further than this — we have further evidence for those that believe this sort of thing that Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ of the Book of Revelations.

Hey!  This is interesting.  Were you aware that there was, at one point in time, a thing called the Stalin Peace Prize?  FANTASTIC!  Though, after Kruschev came into power, destalinazation happened, Stalin was thrown out the door, and it was renamed the Lenin Peace Prize  (or, if you must International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples from International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples.)

Insane, isn’t it?  But appropriately inappropriate.

Interesting things are afoot in Putin’s Russia, and for the sake of rebrandishing a strong Russian Nationalism, a sort of restalinization process is taking place.

A Moscow court began hearings Thursday in a libel suit brought by Stalin’s grandson against a Russian newspaper that he claims called into question the Soviet dictator’s honor and dignity.

Recent years have seen an escalation in efforts to rehabilitate the dictator who, according to the rights group Memorial, ordered the deaths of at least 724,000 citizens during a series of purges that peaked in the late 1930s.

Earlier this year, Stalin was voted the third-greatest Russian of all time in a television poll. A plaque bearing his name that decades ago vanished from the vestibule of a Moscow metro station was recently restored. And former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last year denounced efforts to portray Stalin as a ”brilliant manager” rather than a murderous autocrat.

”There are some people in power who want to see the history of the country as entirely glorious, as a step from victory to victory,” said Genri Reznik, Novaya Gazeta’s defense lawyer. The Kremlin’s goal, Reznik said, is that ”nothing must darken the attitudes of our people, and all negativity … plays into the hands of our enemy.”

Plaintiff lawyer Yury Mukhin disagreed.

”Stalin for many people is the symbol of an honest and fair leader,” he said. A victory in the libel case would vindicate that version of history, he said.

Of course, there are old family grudges at work here.

Nina Khrushcheva, the great granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, said she was ”absolutely on the side of Novaya Gazeta.” Her ancestor first exposed Stalin’s crimes and allowed the 1962 publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s ”One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” which told of Stalin’s network of slave labor camps.

Khrushcheva, who teaches in the international affairs program at the New School in New York, told The Associated Press that the lawsuit is evidence that at least some Russian officials are determined to promote what she called the myth of Stalin as a wise if strict leader. ”The fact that in 2009 we’re still unable to separate facts from fiction is mind-boggling,” she said.

So, with Stalin making a comeback, it looks like it’s about time to renew the old Stalin Peace Prize.  The Kremlin is surely taking nominations.  As is the blog “Skull / Bones”.  I have one nomination in mind off the top of my head.

Igor Panin.  Who is Igor Panin?  He made news a few times by predicting the imminent dissolution of the United States along the seemingly nonsensical lines shown here.  Now, you must admit that if that were to happen, that would be catastrophic to the cause of Peace — lives would be lost as the wars that carve out the United States along those lines happens.  Also if you notice, this dissolution has not happened — which can only mean that Igor Panin’s warnings have been heeded, and the necessary steps have been implemented to stop it.

But my guess is the new Stalin Peace Prize will end up going to Vladamir Putin.

The question I want answered from anyone who bemoans Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize a bit muchly.  Who should have won it?  Take your pick from, for instance, these seven individuals:

  Yes, all seven figures in that image are probably are more fitting for a “Nobel Peace Prize”, unless you go ahead and figure the Prize as a “spur for action” and “Symbol” (ie: Good thing Bush is no longer around), but you will search in vain in rolling up and down the am dial of conservative talk radio to hear anything about the people in that montage of images in their diatribes about Obama being awarded the thing.  And these were realistic candidates they should be discussing, as opposed to their Dream of the man who “Liberated Millions of Muslims”, George W Bush.

I know a guy, sort of drearily and pessimistically holds to the view that Obama’s election represents and significant long term break and spiral downward.  “I’m sorry, but Obama was SOLD TO US.”  It is a pretty wide-spread and not altogether unbalanced view, albeit a bit ahistorical.  See, for instance “The Selling of the Presidency”, 1968, Joe McGinnis looks wearily on the campaign of Richard Nixon.  And see too, the “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” election of William Henry Harrison, 1840.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama will feed his outlook that the Jig is on.

I also point to the weekly Friday march and vigil that occurs at Pioneer Square.  It’s taken place every Friday for the past eight years.  I have seen as few as four people in it, and as many as several hundred.  The sign that has edged into that mix is “Afghanistan:  Now Obama’s War.”  Unnoticed by just about everyone, when Obama vacationed this summer to Marth’s Vineyard, Cindy Sheehan shadowed him, as she did Bush at Crawford, and was as usual arrested yesterday outside the White House.  And, Code Pink is getting a bit jittery right now, as things roll.

I am a bit curious as to what the demonstrators at Pioneer Square have to say about Obama’s Award.  They should be a bit more coherent and straight-forward than the “Talk Radio” crowd.  A week ago, we heard from The Drudge headline “THE EGO HAS LANDED!” and (I can hear Limbaugh’s voice gloatingly) “The World Has Rejected Obama!”  So, today, to flick over to Limbaugh and then Beck.  Limbaugh:  “Can you imagine how big Obama’s Head is today?” […] “This fully exposes the illusion that is Obama!” […] And a bunch of angst against the “World Elites” and Nowegians.
The comedic bit came in with the “announcement” from the NFL that the Kansas City Chiefs had been declared Superbowl Champions, with the citation of approval for this 0-4 team for starting the Rebuilding Process.  This is an interesting analogy which, following its natural course, would have the logical idea that Obama is doing that tough job of rebuilding after Bush.

Glenn Beck rolled into a phone-in question of “Name the other two sitting presidents who have won the Nobel Peace Prize.”  This would present him with the opportunity to do something he dearly loves to do, which is go on the attack against Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

So the “World Rejects Obama” meme is dead.  I could never understand the point of that line anyways.  And, just to add insult to my general sense of loathing, the National Democratic Party is referencing that debris with “Republicans are siding with the Taliban”, a marker that has me yelling, “Oh, Go to Hell!”

Obama, meanwhile, is a little embarrassed by the win, and if left to his duthers would prefer not to have won it.  It contemplates his road ahead.  But this is the Nobel Prize Committee’s attempt to put pressure on him, and Obama does not get to control external events and decide the world environment with which he works. One upside, Obama now has a ready excuse — meet with a fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner — to meet with the Dalai Lama that he can offer to Hu.

Apparently Leatherstocking has never heard of Webster Tarpley.  Tarpley fans want to strip Tarpley from the roster of Larouche related posts.  Leave Tarpley on it.
In other news, Leatherstocking wants to downplay the most important political work where he’s had a tangibly notable effect on society at large, such as the AIDS crusades, in favor of up-playing his tangibly non-notable Economic Doomsday Cult Forecasts — referenced by hard to figure out what they are foreign sources.  He also wants Jeremiah Duggan to be stripped from the roster of related items, and demands sourcing for proof that Jeremiah Duggan was a member.  And Leatherstocking has submitted the Kenneth Kronberg entry for the second time for consideration of deletion — where the consensus is “Keep” — and, sure enough, he also wanted to delete “Jeemiah Duggan“.

All of this is important in the sense that Wikipedia citations by lay people matter.
…

You want to know something?  I kind of hate this New Republic article about Alex Jones.  I deem too much misdiagnoses with it.  I don’t know if maybe I’m having a problem with the New Republic when it ventures into these fringe political figures — certainly I have to say my problem with this article on Jones is different than my problem with Conor Clarke’s Larouche puff piece of a couple years’ back.  There certainly is a thematic connection to be made between Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, and there are things to be explained on the relationship between Alex Jones and more mainstream politics, but this article fails to do so.  Maybe I’m suffering a problem of vantage points.  Michelle Goldberg apparently heard Alex Jones, or knew of Alex Jones, and thought “Hey!  He sounds like Glenn Beck!”  On the most recent turn of Glenn Beck, I thought “Hey!  He’s moving toward Alex Jones territory.”
Incidentally, the first time I heard Glenn Beck, around 2002, I thought “Rush Limbaugh on ADD”, and “Almost certainly comes from FM morning radio.”  I didn’t have enough interest to look into it, but sure enough, salon recently profiled his biography, and threw this clip out into wider circulation.

“I fear a Reichstag Moment.” — Beck

That fear goes around, swirls around.  Every stupid tragedy becomes that moment.  It is something the Lyndon Larouche organization has an intuitive understanding, and while I take the Larouche organization’s constant references to the Reichstag fire to be something of a (Fantasy, mind you) “Human Cookbook” thing, it does bind into general paranoia hysteria.  Take the path the 9/11 Truth Movement takes with PNAC’s document “Rebuilding American Forces or somehting or other”.

Back around March, the Alex Jones website (I look at prisonplanet on a daily basis) was publishing — seemingly a campaign — on the New Eugenic Program.  Apparently the Global Elite met at their annual Bilderberg meeting, where they discussed plans on wiping out half the Earth’s population.  This is the direction our puppet masters have decided to take.  This line easily submerged into the most paranoid (and auto-pilot) of the opposition to Health Care policies.  Notable too that the National Review had a cover article on “Creeping Eugenics”, and it’s a testament to how hard it is to discuss matters of death that Time had its stupid headline “The Case for Pulling the Plug on Grandma”.

It’s about there that I start with the case that this suppostion of Sigh here — back to Max Blumenthal’s article — is wrong.
Back in August, in The Daily Beast, Max Blumenthal revealed that the Hitler/Obama meme got its impetus from the Lyndon Larouche organization, who began to develop it during the debate over the stimulus package.
I’m just guessing, but I imagine the first Obama Hitler came from about when Obama hit the national stage from an Alan Keyes supporter.  As for where the Obama Anti-Christ came from — I don’t know… From wherever this comes from.

Though, to the degree that it has some validity to it — Lyndon Larouche did nothing.  The brains of the operation seems to be around about Anton Chaitkin.  And you know something a bit odd about Chaitkin?  He occasionally can get out from underneath the “Lyndon Larouche associate” in various media.  I noted that when The Guardian referenced him as just the latest “Right-wing Commentator” to compare the British Health System with Hitler.  No allusion to Larouche.  Funny, huh?  That harks back to the days of, round about 1973, when the New York Times covered his mayoral run (straight-faced) and the Labor Committee’s odd little “Papa Doc Fascism” of the alliance betwwen the Haitian Leader and the White Oppositon’s coalition partnership to divide New York City amongst racial lines so as to keep keep the Working Class down… or thereabouts.  With no reference to Larouche.

Or, to the first Bush administration, and the second Bush Administration, and that book which gets some play — co written by Webster Tarpley (whom Leatherstocking has never heard of).   (Flipping right and left with Bush.)   For what it’s worth.   Warrior Society Radio, an Alex Jones proto Internet radio program: Must-see Video Interview of Historian Anton Chaitkin. Being supervised by Prince Charles. Liverpool Care Pathway overseen by British National Health Service. Head of it is now in US working with AARP and HMO’s .

But I don’t really know what Chaitkin’s agenda is.  Webster Tarpley gets to float his boat on the Alex Jones program.  Chaitkin gets to be mentioned sans reference to Larouche in The Guardian.  And together, they get mentioned on Democratic Underground over the past eight years for writing a book of “revelations” about Bush — the passages that swerve into how Larouche is a “political prisoner” of this Prescott Bush Program conveniently ignored and mentally clipped away.

Larouche?  Other than being compared to whomever the current fringe dweller of the day is for the past four decades, having his followers make attempts at wikipedia to float him as Internationally Respected Economist and downplay more pertinent history, Why, he seems to be mentioned by Keith Olbermann a bit as of late, as I see in searching transcripts for such utterances — for purpose of an attack at Rush Limbaugh:

Runner up, Boss Limbaugh, once again reducing the world to cliches he and dumb people like and can easily understand. The subject this time, the Olympic vote. “Obama cannot win in a fair vote. The only thing missing in that vote over there today was Acorn. If had a Acorn representation stuffing ballot boxes , registering fake IOC members, then maybe Chicago would have had a chance. Obama couldn`t do that. Couldn`t get Acorn over there. See, Obama doesn`t debate people. He clears the field.” Do you know anything about the Olympics? About the fact that the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee have had more disputes between them than, say, we do with Fox News, that we may not see the U.S. get the games again in our lifetime over fights over TV rights and marketing fees that would still be there even if Lyndon Larouche were president?
I`m tempted to ask you, sir, not to talk about things you don`t understand, but if I did that, your show would be three hours of silence.

Interesting to note, to tell some part of the population exactly what they want to hear — seemingly just to keep their 50 Youth members in line — this is supposedly an Impeachable Offense. (Godlikeproductions went on to cover the October Doomsday prediction.  The economy is bad enough that the 100 Youth Members can be sold some bill of good, I suspect.) [The reference to 100 members caught by xlcer at factnet.)

Wait.  He’s running in 2012? (open secrets link regarding presidential pacs to be posted there when I get some time.) Whatever, This probably explains about half his votes.

In other news:

Quirk #1: For complete whack-a-doos, they’re surprisingly polite. This is not my experience, but whatever.
It almost took me aback the first time I passed by the LaRouche movement’s booth, and spoke with one of their supporters for the first time. While trying all sneaky-like to snap these covert pictures for the True/Slant post I instantly knew I wanted to write, one of the young men handing out information stopped me and asked — with a completely straight face and warm tone of voice — if I had heard our President’s agenda was slowly transforming into that of Adolf Hitler. And that I was welcome to take all the pictures I wanted.

Who are these people? I appreciate your allocation of your valuable time to read this with an open mind. Once you have reviewed this information please let me know, is this likely what I suspect it to be? That is part of the over all British plan for mass murder?

Answer: the same people as these, whether they know it or not.

Back to Glenn Beck to Alex Jones to Lyndon Larouche.  Lyndon Larouche referenced Jones as a g’damned “populist”.  And Jones references Beck as a tool of the Oligarchy, Gate-keeper for the Neo-Cons.  Make of the thematic connections what you will.

There is this tradition of changing some line or other of an old song to new effect.  Once upon a time, a cover of a Don Henley song was on radio play-lists, and it misfired slightly.  Alanis Morisette now sings, in concert, an altered version of her song “Ironic” to cover same sex marriage — which is still no closer to being Irony.

Some days ago — Saturday or Sunday, two people were singing on a street corner.  the song “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.  Nothing terribly noteworthy.  But they changed the lyrics.  “Four Dead in Af-Ghan-Istan.”  It wasn’t a terribly good refit, syllable wise — “Istan” doesn’t match “O”.  It also suffers that “Boys of Summer cover” problem — the song’s meaning in contemporary times does not match, and we still have the out of place reference to President Nixon.  Evidentally, the duo was proud of themselves, though, doing “Four Dead in Af-ghan-istan” four times whence the old song played it twice.

Like third graders playing Recess Soccer.  There is a ball out there, it’s being chased and kicked around, it’s generally rolling in the right direction, but the structures of the game are haphazard. What is like this game?

The celebration and hullabo about Obama’s fight to win the Olympic Games for Chicago.  The contortions of Obama’s Republican opposition to fit the unsuccessful sell into a broader narrative about a failed presidency.  This is, to use Charles Krauthammer’s phrase for the last administration, “Obama Derangement Syndrome” at work. That being said, the liberal reaction to the right’s transparent political posturing is off as well.  The taunts do not quite up.  They’re rooting against America.  I do not like the word “Un-American”.

There are several reasons we don’t particularly want the Olympic Games — I suspect the benefit is a bit lower for Chicago and the costs a bit higher than for Rio.  Some problems as expressed by “The Left“.  Some problems expressed by some Libertarians.  There was a Weekly Standard blog post or other which expressed the most crucial part: the Olympic Games should be put in various spots around the globe — the continent South America has yet to have one.  Of course, a liberal blogger charged in and decried some ideological hypocrisy: “Isn’t that a little redistributive?“  Which I found unfair: from a purely business concern, it makes sense for an organization whose image is based on being International to throw themselves into “Emerging Markets”, and I don’t think that’s intellectually inconsistent — unless we’re playing a stupid game of loosely structured Playground Soccer.

I also think Joe Scarborough is playing a bit of a game in his role as “Conservative Critic of the Conservative Movement”.  This strikes me as reaching for the low hanging fruit.  He is free from the testy things of Contrarianism.  I just ducked over to Member of Congress Joseph Cao’s page to see if he posted on it — no, but he did “reach for the low hanging fruit” with posting a press release defending Obama’s right to talk to school children — another recent game of Not Terribly Structured Playground Soccer. A tempest in a teapot.  The real story from that trip to Coppenhagen was that Obama had a long conversation with General General McChrystal about Afghanistan.  That is going to have a bigger impact on US policy than a push for the Olympic Games, and I hope Obama got some other things done on the plane ride to and back as well.