Grade school kid draws this stick figure cross figure.  The teacher sends the kid to the school psychiaritrist, seeing it as a kid burdened with a Persecution Complex swarming with resentments.  The father throws out a gripe of Religious Persecution — the kid drew Jesus on the Cross, for Pete’s Sake!

It is one of those stories that I can’t help but note and pause for a second.  I haven’t quite a handle on this.  Why would this be enough to warrent a psychological evaluation?  If isolated, I can’t think it fits, if part of a larger pattern of sudden shifts into severe despondency — maybe.

So the easy answer is to suggest that everyone over-reacted slightly, and regret the fact that this has riven its way into a small amount of national conciousness — I mean, this is a diversionary story from what we should be following by way of the Culture Wars: every shift and turn in the “Meep Ban” story –  and that the father looks the most inane — see this quotation:  “It hurts me that they did this to my kid,” Chester Johnson, the boy’s father, told the Globe. “They can’t mess with our religion; they owe us a small lump sum for this.”  You will forgive me for wondering about his real motivation — the “relgious persecution” angle is dissipating — it is enough to make me line up and demand Tort Reform against Frivulous lawsuits.

The thing becomes a little bit muddled.  A middle school art teacher once told me the story of how she wearily forbid her class from depictions of killing dead people in an art assignments, only to regret doing so because it gave her demented students the idea of handing in an armful of mutilated animal depictions.  But that becomes a problem of crudity — there was no particular imagination in the middle school students’ tormentations to her teacher. In the grade school students’ case and his either persecution complex or Jesusy way — with his money grubbing father — I would prefer some allowance for an expression in art along the lines of John Lennon’s Beatles lyrics ” Christ you know it ain’t easy, you know how hard it can be.  The way things are going They’re going to crucify me.” Though, I suppose nothing works in a vacuum, and the teacher will be scratching his or her head wondering who’s doing the persecution.  Maybe better to go the “You load sixteen tons an’ what do you get?  Another day older and deeper in debt.” route as a statement against homework.

After all the hub and ub, the Obama Administration, the 60 seat Democratic Senate, and the 40 some Democratic Congressional Majority margin is about to pass…

Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts state Health Care bill from a few years’ back.  This is where Joseph Lieberman’s desire to subtract has gotten us — back over to individual mandates with welfare subsidies at the lower income range and sans any cost levelling device (what the “Government Mandate” was supposed to be), or expansion of Medicare (with a high deductable).  Two things to recall from Romney’s great adventure: first, Ted Kennedy was standing right next to him on that one, and secondly — well, Romney represented the right-edge of a Republican bullwark against a liberal Democratic Massachusetts legislator — I don’t quite know what to express Obama as in relation to his Congress.

… Maybe somewhere in the Obama / Emanuel / Lieberman axis of Legislative Political Effect against Policy?

A few points need to be made on Lieberman’s place in the Lieberman – Landrieu – Lincoln – Nelson group.  In addition to the “Spite” angle, and the “Keep myself relevant” angle of Lieberman’s motivations, there is something in the breakdown of the party system, as against — say — Licoln.  Blanche Lincoln has a self preservation interest in a successful Obama presidency — even if the other part of her equation, separate herself from him — is at odds and undermines that interest.  It is the act of swimming in a electorate stream for re-election with an Obama at a 40 percent approval rating in Arkansas as against an Obama at a 30 percent approval rating.  Lieberman, meanwhile, has a self interest in a failed Obama presidency — a Republican president elected in 2012 would tap him into his cabinet, and he can continue grand-standing in the Zell Miller tradition.

That is the problem of relaying on a process of 60 votes to pass through anything.  In a previous blog post, I  Monday Morning quarterbacked the Democrats to could have should have (would have?) changed the rule at the start of 2007 — when the effect was in the distance and beyond immediate fights.  Though, then we may just see Conservative Dems come out of the woodwork to do what it currently takes all of one Lieberman to do — curb the liberals to get the “only thing non-negotiable” is to sign something.

There we see the other end of the Case against the Political Ideolouges of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul — fighting as they do for narrowly defined principles as against narrowly defined political effect.  Funny thing here — as we see Howard Dean bleat about, having argured for passing what parts can be passed through this process and some parts passed through Reconciliation (which, I guess, would require some gimmick to seperate it in the minds of the 60 vote requirers) — and who knows what the effectiveness of the Dean strategum would have been — but he would represent the center point against the Obama / Emanuel / Lieberman political effect versus Ron Paul / Dennis Kucinich Ideologue hunter… though, at this point, everything gets drowned from him down to “Kill the Bill”.  Then again, Dean has other priorities of policy than Obama.

I am not being original here in echoing out Joseph Lieberman’s perdifidy.  (And if you want to know why I insist on using a mis-spelling and comical exaggeration of the word, look at the google search.)  I mean to say not perfidy to the cause of Liberal or Progressive or Democratic Policy, but to consistency of principles of policy.

The sentence that irks a bit is this one said on the Sunday Morning talk-haze.:

“We’ve got to stop adding to the bill. We’ve got to start subtracting some controversial things.”

Followed by the call for bi-partisanship — and this next sentence is kind of non-sensical —  I think the only way to get this done before Christmas is to bring in some Republicans who are open-minded on this, like Olympia Snowe.  — in large part because Olympia Snowe is the only name that one can possibly come up with here.

The problem is the subtracted the “Public Option” (which, at the point it came to the Senate, was not worth defending anyways), and then added the “Medicare Buy-in”, with the reasonable guess that it could pass Joseph Lieberman’s muster.  What might lead a person to reasonably conclude it could?  Because of previous proposals from Joseph Lieberman.

The video presents the puzzling case of media malfeasance, as shown in this round out of a tv appearance yesterday.

And, answering the most widespread criticism of late–that he switched stances on the Medicare buy-in provision, which he supported during the 2000 presidential campaign.

That… can not be the “most widespread criticism”.  Can it?  I am more concnerned from his switched psoition from 3 months ago — which, incidentally, he has since addressed in part by parsing the differences of the moment and the political feasibles of what can be stopped — and in part by pointing out that Anthony Weiner and other liberals liked the new policy.

The principles of the man blow me away.

Igor Panarin.

The last you heard from Igor Panarin — maybe? — was a year ago, when a long held prediction of America’s disintegration came into mainstream news clippages.  (A better way to put that: the last time I thought about Igor Panarin.)   Like giving credence to David Icke for correctly having forecast the color of the universe, the dire economic situation was thrusting Panarin into the limelight for having even more dire economic debacles coming down the pike.

Well, the story of America’s disintegration continues at a break-neck pace.  Once we have the story set, it’s hard to deviate from it.

Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued orders to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to “begin immediately” increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

According to these reports, Obama has had over these past weeks “numerous” meetings with his war council about how best to manage the expected implosion of his Nations banking system while at the same time attempting to keep the United States military hegemony over the World in what Russian Military Analysts state is a “last ditch gambit” whose success is “far from certain”. […]

To the fears of Obama over the United States erupting into civil war once the full extent of the rape and pillaging of these peoples by their banks and government becomes known to them, grim evidence now shows the likelihood of this occurring much sooner than later, especially in new poll figures showing that Obama’s approval rating among white Americans has now fallen to 39%. A number made more significant when one realizes that the white population of the United States comprises 74% of their estimated 398 million citizens, or put more ominously in these reports as “over 220 million American people armed to the teeth and ready to explode”.
And so fearful has the white population of the United States become that upon the election of Obama to the Presidency he was named as the “Gun Salesman of the Year” by the Outdoor Wire, the US’s largest daily electronic news service for the outdoor industry, who report “panic buying” of weapons and ammunition by those fearful of the destruction of their country at the hands of man they believe is not even an American citizen and had been foisted upon them by their elite classes seeking to enslave them.
Though the coming civil war in the United States is being virtually ignored by their propaganda media, the same cannot be said of Russia, where leading Russian political analyst, Professor Igor Panarin has long warned that the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the US is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

He predicted it for 2010, and it’s coming in 2010, goddamnnedit!

What remains to be seen, and these reports do not speculate upon, is if the citizen-soldiers of the United States will fire upon and kill their fellow countrymen during the coming conflict, but if history is to be our guide clearly shows this will be the case as the once great American Nation continues its headlong plunge into the abyss of history. May God have mercy upon all of them.

It’s worth putting Igor Panarin into context.

Russian elites tend to think about the United States today through direct analogies with the Soviet experience of the late 1980s. Many in Russia are ready to read America’s difficulties in Afghanistan as a repetition of the failure of Soviet occupation of that country and to judge the political consequences of the decline of Wall Street as similar to the effect the fall of the Berlin Wall had on Soviet global influence.

Indeed, here’s Mikhail Gorbachev from last year.  Igor Panarin is on the expanded outer edge of this popular opinion.  “Russia Today” is pulling in guests validating various items — liberal radio host Thom Hartmann has become a weeklly guest to lay out pessimistic opinions on Afghanistan (and suggest American popular discontent).  I see that conspiratorial radio host Alex Jones has made a few appearances on the show, and I don’t know if this is being transmuted to widespread American popular opinion.  But this makes for Igor Panarin to be pulled into this whirlwind:

Today, no fewer than 60,000 Web sites serve up predictions of Igor Panarin, a respected Russian academic, who says of the United States: “There’s a 55 to 45 percent chance right now that disintegration will occur.”

And into the comments section.:

Even a mentatlity of idiot could see Obama is an enemy of God and of Christians and Americans…
He will not and cannot win…It is written..whether you believe it or not..He will not win…
Jesus said, I beheld satan as lighting (means Barack) FALL from heaven…Isn’t it strange that one of the fallen angels was named BARACKiel…
AND STRANGER STILL. GOD SAID HE SENDS EVIL ANGELS AMONG PEOPLE FOR JUDGEMENT..

These Russian sources don’t have a good track record for accuracy. Also, a hungry man will do anything for food. Including killing former friends. Food is much more powerful than bullets. And he who controls food controls the people. Want to stay independent? Grow your own food. Otherwise you will do what your told. You will join the soup lines. You will obey. If the military controls the food centers with tank and helicopter support, do you think a rifle will gain you anything? No. Hunting? You and every other person. That will dry up quick. Move up into the hills away from the cities, build a greenhouse and help those around you to do the same. Feed yourself, your family, and those who escape the cities. Cities are easy to cordon off. Get out now while you still can. Civil war may or may not happen this next year. But get ready to help people. Food is the best way.

It’s official.   All the media reports are declaring that the city of Houston, Texas has elected the first openly gay mayor of a major United States city.

What? Does being the “largest market with only one major league sports franchise?” not quite cut it?  Portland is a Top 25 Market.  When Sam Adams was elected, he was declared by the news media as being “the first openly gay mayor of a major American city.”  Have we restricted the defintion further just to make new news copy?  If New York City or Los Angeles elect someone, will it be defined narrower still such that Houston will not be major enough any more?

On the other hand, the gay and lesbian (LGBT or GLBT) community may just as well desire a quick fresh start in the trailblazing ways of “firsts”.  Better to put Annise Parker there than have to bring up Sam Adams, right?

Well, it’s over.  All this time the nation has been infiltrated and encroached and controlled by a massive Fascist Movement — weaving into the fabrif of this nation and this world from all directions.  But so long as we’ve had a single effecitve bullwark — one Alex Constantine — posting various news article to his blog — we have had a single sliver of hope that a small mite might be compounded into a giant log that will jam up the Great Cylindar of Fascism.

So it is that Alex Constantine has thrown in the towel for a year, and will cease to fight Fascism.  This means, of course, that Fascism now has a full year to advance, unmolested by Constantine’s impediments.  This last week, he posted:

On January 1, I will go offline for a year to protest citizen stupidity in the face of obvious fascist usurpation of power over the United States.

Anyone of objective mind and cursory knowledge of real history who bothers to look at the facts at all closely has to face the repulsive truths that I live with every day. But somehow I remain in my own niche, and 99.999 percent of the writers in this country have something better to do than live up to their civic responsibilities.

So it is over.  99.999 percent of the writers in this country are not writing what he’s writing.  Fascism has seized the day.

the fascists have little opposition – and time and again the proles take the next step in fascist imposition grinning like brain-damaged Presbytarians, joyously repeating the latest programmed, self-aggrandizing lies. Reality is driven underground.

It’s all over.  The only possible hope comes in the fact that this message was deleted, and is no longer on his blog, suggesting that maybe the Anti-Fascist Crusader will continue to stave off Fascism.  Because if he doesn’t… it’s all over.  Because no body is posting stories from his vantage point… no body… no body.