Earthquake.  Chile.  Massive destruction.

One thing that pops into my mind…

I would like to know what Pat Robertson has to say on the Chile Earthquake.

We’ll be sure to hear in the days ahead.  For whatever reason.

A friend of mine is reading up on biographies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.  It somehow strikes me as a flimsy selection, though an obvious and important point of historical fissure and conflict to read up on — both of them.  I half want to ask if this was spurred by, quote-in-quote, “black history month.”

Which gets me to this perennial reminiscence.

I was going to post an entry on February 28th (I guess I still could) entitled “Black History Month K-12 Educational Simulation”, wherein I post a link to a wikipedia article about black soldiers in the Civil War, and thus make fun of the tokenism that greeted me with Black History Month through my public schooling. That goes back to my Freshman year of high school, where on the final day of February the teacher showed us… a film about black soldiers in the civil war… and it was a last minute schedule change on the part of the teacher, who evidentally had a “Holy Crap! This is Black History Month!” moment. A test that students may or may not have studied for was thusly delayed.

to finish that sentence: “A test that students may or may not have studied for was thusly delayed until March” — I think past the February ending weekend.

It’s fashionable to mock the way “Black History Month” works out.  Things could be worse.

I don’t know what it says that a 1991 clip of Dennis Miller on the David Letterman show (promoting a future late night talk show — and there you see that Miller is doomed if Letterman is promoting supposed future competition — unless, maybe you think Miller is going to end up being place closer to Jay in terms of time-slots) —

I don’t know what it means that this 1991 clip of Dennis Miller on Late Night with David Letterman garners a debate from a Chomsky-fan and a 9/11 Truther.

They burned each other with their insults.

Every large-scale movement has disparate forces and peripheral players that are not central to the causes and concerns of most activists. While they deserve some mention, journalists should also maintain a sense of perspective so that readers are properly informed about overall tone and direction of the political forces at work. […] Tea Party Activists Interlinked with Aryan Nation, John Birchers, Lyndon LaRouche.

As too:
Lately people have been appearing at meetings with posters of Obama as Hitler. Some of these posters came from the followers of Lyndon LaRouche. One can only wonder who gave the cash-strapped LaRouche movement money for the vile signs. The inclusion of the LaRouchists in the rightist anti-Obama coalition underscores a decision to draw more upon the growing far-right fringe groups.
Not really a decision on their part.  The Larouchists I mean.  To dispute, and arguably the thrust is about the same but with a different political viewpoint.
The left has a political interest in defining the broad backlash against expanded government as identical to the worst elements of the Tea Party movement — birthers and Birchers, militias and nativists, racists and conspiracy theorists, acolytes of Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Lyndon LaRouche.
You know, Ron Paul did just win the CPAC presidential straw poll.  Also, I can’t categorize “Ron Paul” as wholly negative an element.  Tom Tancredo addressed the Tea Party convention.  What do you want from me?  I guess the only real demand on me is to differentiate a cult from a, quote-in-quote “cult”.  See Bill Maher, look the video up for this transcript — key reference in script:
[slide of Obama with Hitler mustache.].

Onward!

LaRoucheisright Says:  February 24th, 2010 at 8:32 pm Lyndon Larouche is the only one who knows what to do now. Check the vids on my channel, or go straigt to the LaRouche youth movement news page larouchepacdotcom and read the breaking developements, or listen to one of the webcasts.

All right.  Activitate.  Taking on the Haiti tragedy:

During the question and answer period, LaRouche PAC representative Shannon Chew, intervened into what had otherwise been an attempt by the relevant panelist, Rev. Thomas Streit, to cover over the immense biological disaster befalling disaster stricken Haiti, now. Chew forcefully introduced the reasons why Lyndon LaRouche’s Army Corps of Engineers-style relocation and evacuation of lower-elevation city denizens, is absolutely necessary to avert a potential biological holocaust. This met with initial speechlessness and shock from the crowd, and the panelists, too, who decided to take it as a statement for the record.

They sat there, speechless.  Shocked and stunned.  FANTASTIC!
Mostly they just have some things to write out on the placard dropping from their card-tables to confuse stray passerbyers that this might be a Haiti Aid project, incurring stray donations.  They resemble nothing so much as the Scientologists in exploiting these tragedies, and internalizing stories about action.

As Lyndon LaRouche emphasized on Wednesday, there is currently a concatenation of events which must merge to force the impeachment or resignation under threat of impeachment of President Barack Obama within a matter of the next two or three weeks if civilization is to have any chance of surviving. LaRouche’s own call for Obama’s impeachment is the crucial initiative necessary to bring the growing revolt against Obama’s policies to the necessary deliberate conclusion in time.

As LaRouche has said, we need a great U-turn. As long as Obama is still President, nothing will be capable of being done to save this country or civilization.

Yesterday’s so-called Health Summit was a case in point. A new CNN poll shows that at most 25 percent of the US population supports the Obama Senate bill. And yet Obama remains completely committed to ramming this fascist bill through using the so-called reconciliation process in the Senate, despite the fact that to do so violates the fundamental Constitutional principle of the mass strike underway in the U.S. today—the principle that all legislation is only legitimate if it receives the consent of the governed.

Suppose it’s true.  Suppose the president passes through the Congress a policy that is the most hated and reviled policy in the history of Human Civilization, against a backdrop of protests that represent the fervant desires of 80 percent of the public.  Unpopularity and Unpopular Policies is not grounds for Impeachment, lest we end up jettisoning every single president in American history.  It is a stringing attachment to a fringe and incoherent political position.

Suppose, also, that we follow through with Impeachment for the following reason.

Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) vowed earlier this week to fight for Constellation in Congress as the FY11 budget works its way through the House. “Congress is going to challenge this plan,” the Houston Chronicle quotes Olson as saying at a meeting Wednesday. However, that’s mild compared to what one potential Democratic challenger says should be done. “If you want to save NASA, call for the impeachment of Obama,” said Kesha Rogers, a candidate in the Democratic primary in the 22nd district, which Olson now represents. Rogers is linked to Lyndon LaRouche, who made a similar call for the president’s impeachment because of his NASA policy earlier this month.

Suppose the Republicans in Congress decide that they will now, at this date, make their focal electoral and political strategy the Impeachment of President Barack Obama based on Obama’s short-changing  the NASA budget and cutting a mission…

… as the principle item of Impeachment — Cutting the NASA budget…

Do you have any idea what would happen?  Mitch McConnell goes on the Sunday talk shows and hammers home the NASA related Impeachment plans.  Every Republican Congressional candidates puts this at the very top of their proposal lists.  Do you know what the result would be?
Basically, the Democrats — right now poised to lose a boatful of seats in the November mid-term election, would win.  Every seat, basically.  And I mean that.

The situation is on a very short political fuse. Many will get caught up in the predicates and balk at the necessary action. (Indeed.)  Our job is to kick against the pricks of pragmatism and provide the necessary leadership. Impeach Obama now!

The question for this story.

thatone says: February 22, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Why even give serious journalistic coverage to these loons? Followers of Lyndon Larouche? Really?!?! These Hitler comparisons are so offensive I don’t even know where to start. What in anything Obama has ever done suggests he is going to gas millions of men, women, and children to create a master race? Before you sign a petition like that, do some research. Is anyone paying attention to facts anymore? Stop getting sound bites from entertainers pretending to be newscasters.

Which tends to dove-tail into this perenial commentary.

But I expect that if this page and this article had a comments section, it would attract a call for Obama’s Impeachment and call for Larouche’s phony “4 Power Alliance”.

You know, now that I think about it… sparred from this comment:

On no Mr. T in DC, you’re wrong. They were out there trying to convince the public Pres. Obama is the one true descendant of Hitler. Notice the physical similarities? LOL!

… I’m tempted to ask how far that would get in a congressional campaign, but I guess that is the purpose and test of the congressional campaigns of Rachel Brown, Keesha Rogers, and Summer Shields.  That and to give these people something to do or other.    (NO!  Here’s your “Summer Shields for Congress” Campaign staff at work!)

Or to get a sentence or two into stories like this, and compete against this:

There was a spike of eye-brow garnering attention when Scott Brown became one amongst five Republican Senators to vote “yes” for a “Jobs Bill”.  This garnered a whole mass of anger from his conservative to tea party supporters, and it’s not too hard to search for the frustrating facebook twitter blasts.

On this score, I always had to give Glenn Beck credit for expressing “distrust”.  Scott Brown’s political record was “to the left” of the political record of Dede Scozzafava, the New York Congressional candidate the “Tea Party” and assorted Republican activists threw overboard leading to a Democratic pick-up in the special election.  Not that it is too big a fuss in a short-term: his election threw Obama and the Democrats’ painstaking 60 vote strategium into tatters in one big strike, and also — hey!  He’s a huge fan of Torture!  I’d say that’s a good trade off for them.

He wasn’t exactly the “Candidate of the Tea Partiers”.  If he was, he would have lost that election.  It’s up to those activists to decide if this was a good trade-off for them.  Actually, Brown’s election resembles nothing so much less than various special election victories Democrats scored in the Bush Era — in deep red districts, winning congressional candidates apt to disappoint at any moment and throw your political schematic into tumult.  They’re not “The Netroot’s” candidate either.

I see that there are new enterprises interested in relocating to the state.

Mullet’s group said they don’t expect any conflict with people in Grant County.

“This is a good fit with the values here,” he said. They said members would do community service projects and patrol the streets, making it safer for the residents who live here. They also contended their group would bring money to the economy by drawing more supporters to visit and live here.

“Coming here would help the county immensely,” Mullet said.

Hm.  I gather Oregon should close whatever tax benefits are grabbing the Aaryan Nations from out of Idaho.

I’m skeptical about Hank Paulson and his promises of the wonders of Major League Soccer in Portland, but I’d pursue that one first.

Looking up on comments on Joan Rivers’s career in 1986, because I guess I like to know things about things, I tapped the conemporanious news accounts of the feuding between Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson, and the “Late night talk show” battle that ensued from… one late night talk show host on the oldest television network availabe to 100 percent of the public versus against the host of a talk show available to 80 percent of the public on stations under a sprinking wall of static, by definition the fourth most financially lucrative television station in each market, floating in a programming island.

A review in the Los Angeles Times:

Rivers quit as permanent substitute host for “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” on NBC to head her own hour talk show with the new Fox Broadcasting Co.  Johnny got mad. Joan pouted. It was all over the papers and TV, with the media building this late-night clash between Carson and Rivers into a Godzilla grrrrrrudge match. In Los Angeles and most cities, though, she airs at 11 where her only talk show competition is David Brenner’s new half-hour “Nightlife” (on KCOP), and she overlaps only the first 30 minutes of Carson. […]

The ever-mugging David Lee, Cher, Elton and Pee-wee Herman, a sort of third- rate Ed Grimley who’s become this season’s tiptoeing Tiny Tim, had nothing much to say, but said it anyway. They were there to be stars, not make sense, and they fulfilled their roles.

It seemed as if we were watching a meeting of retired accountants. There was just nothing happening.

I guess that’s a point to Joan Rivers… I guess?

Joan Rivers’s replacement for “Permanent Tonight Show Guest Host” was, of course, Jay Leno.  And here it is, an explanation from NBC upon signing him for “Future Projects” on what they intended on doing with him… from back in 1986.

NBC had good news and bad news Wednesday.

The good was that comedian Jay Leno has signed a long-term contract with the network and may have his own prime-time comedy-variety series in the fall of 1987.

The bad was that “Miami Vice” co-star Don Johnson, seeking more money in his new contract, has missed several days of filming this week on the first episode of the hit series’ third season on NBC. […]

Later, John Agoglia, NBC’s executive vice president for business affairs, said that Johnson’s dispute actually is with Universal Studios, which produces the series for NBC, and said he hoped that it would be “resolved before the end of this week.”

Tartikoff seemed visibly more comfortable announcing the exclusive signing of Leno, who has been almost a regular on NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman” and also has appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and was acclaimed for his cable-TV special “Jay Leno and the American Dream.”

He said that NBC, taking a leaf from the old Hollywood studio days, will do all it can to build Leno up as a major NBC personality “for possibly (starring in) a comedy-variety series” in prime time next year.

In doing this, Tartikoff said, NBC hopes “we can once and for all crack that void that seems to exist in the field of comedy-variety,”* a reference to the lack of that once-popular form in today’s prime-time television.

The lantern-jawed Leno, introduced to the visiting TV writers, said, “I’m going to, hopefully, use tried-and-true premises and jokes and ideas that have worked on the road and put ’em on TV.”

That is the worst programming idea ever.  It’s a good thing NBC nixed it.

( * Any particular reason why?)

Question of the day:

What level of arrogance does it take to believe the Dalai Lama should opine on Tiger Woods?

If, at this exact moment, someone were to spontaneously announce: “In three minutes, you’ll meet the Dalai Lama.  Maybe you’ll get to ask him a question or two” —

— Would you ask him about Tiger Woods?

Why?  I guess he’s Buddhist (or “Buddhist”, as the case might be), as Brit Hume pointed out when he urged him to convert to Christianity.   But that’s the oddsest clustering of the “assuming a tall black man can play basketball” variety.  But maybe when you get down to it there aren’t really any questions worth asking the Dalai Lama, so you might as well turn to American sports pop culture fluff.

Could the question at least have been about what matters most for Tiger Woods, how he could maximize, salvage, and recoup lucrative commercial endorsements?