And…

Of the 11 people in American history who have been charged with espionage for leaking classified information, eight of them have been charged under Obama, who ran for president in 2008 vowing to restore our civil liberties after the abuses of the Bush Administration.

Risen’s story didn’t jeopardize national security; it just embarrassed the CIA.

The logic for the CIA is that the two are the same.  Getting back to the initial question in this story…

Why is President Obama’s Justice Department threatening a Pulitzer Prize-wining New York Times reporter with jail over a story that embarrassed the CIA during the George W. Bush administration?

Because Obama is not your friend on this one?

Incidentally, this same issue of In These Times features a curious article from Michael Atkinson, “Waiting for Anyone But Superman” which manages to make the claim that “like it or not”, what with our superhero blockbuster movies, the twentieth century has our culture worshiping superheroes of the X-Men and Iron Man in the same way that Ancient Greeks worshiped all those gods, and all I can say to that is… That’s an insane comparison.

“Look Up.  Chem-trails.  Mind Controlling the Population.  Look Up.”

Random graffiti spotted.  Reported at this blog for no real reason.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s associated with this thing round about here.  Not all nuts are terrorists, though some terrorists are nuts…

There was a man walking around, at a spot near some prominent gay clubs… a spot that is going to be tacked off for “Gay Pride” events this weekend…

He was holding a sign saying “I Am An Ex-Gay”.

To which I can only think, “Yeah, good luck with that one.”

The one curious item in the race where David Brat defeated Eric Cantor…

No doubt hoping that conservative voters would bail on Brat’s candidacy, Cantor labeled him a “liberal college professor,” which FactCheck determined was inaccurate. The site asked conservative economist Richard Rahn for his assessment of Brat and was told that “he always portrayed himself to me as very conservative.”

Liberal.  College.  Professor.  AND…

His academic curriculum vitae indicates the he is currently working on a book project titled “Ethics as Leading Economic Indicator? What went Wrong? Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition and Human Reason.”
He has previously published works titled “God and Advanced Mammon – Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?” and “An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand.”
“It’s not about David Brat winning tonight, it’s about returning the country to its principles,” Brat said during his victory speech.

Maybe Eric Cantor’s loss should be seen as a referendum on insulting people intelligence by thinking you can just toss “liberal college professor” for some weird “Movement Conservative Anti-Intellectualism?

In other primary night news… the person who has some political identity won the Democratic Primary in South Carolina over the person who has no political identity… unlike last time around… now going to lose to Lindsey Graham.

Okay, so there’s talk of Elizabeth Warren getting drafted for a Presidential run… even though she pretty well categorically nixes the idea.  The Progressive magazine has a pretty horribly written article where the author begins with a premise that there’s some lull in young women activists’ enthusiasm for the prospective nominee Hillary Clinton, and some gravitation for Elizabeth Warren, and proceeds to fit her talks into this framework…

Bernie Sanders is making the rounds, never disavowing the talk of a presidential run, and indeed openly “testing the waters”.  The question than becomes: as what?  Nader insists as a Democrat, ironically for him… the big “Socialist Alternative” Seattle council member trumps up for her “Socialist Alternative” party to galvanize that third party…

And who is the Nation proposing…

Jerry Brown????  Just to add fuel to that “Golden Girls” crack some Republican wag made, I suppose.

The temporary portapotties at the grocery store are right next to the flowers to alleviate the smell.

Looking over the results of the Mississippi Senate Primary between “Establishment” Republican Incumbent Thad Cochran and “Tea Party” “Insurgent” radio shock jock figure Christopher McDaniel…

McDaniel … 49.46%
Cochran … 49.02%
Thomas Carey … 1.53%

And who the heck is the “third wheel” that poked the race into a run-off?

“I’m not really in favor of a runoff, but if it brings millions of dollars into the state, that’s good for Mississippi,” Carey said. “If groups spend money on TV stations and ads that generate revenue for those stations and the surrounding areas.… Who knows, maybe the money will help them hire another person or two.”

And …

“I haven’t received any response from people here because, as you know, no one knows who the hell I am,” Carey said with a chuckle, followed by a quick, “Excuse the language.”

Typical one of those candidates.

And it was an awfully close race, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and…

The logic of the primary run-offs is always that the “more conservative” will slide into the advantage, due to a smaller turnout margin.  I find it hard to see Cochran scrambling to win, unless McDaniel says something that makes the Republican electorate think “OMG.  The Democrats might beat him”… and then, it’d probably take him saying another thing in the general election for that to actually happen…

And after this is settled, “gaming” the General election…

Yes, Childers could run as a Thad Cochran Democrat — except he wouldn’t be saddled with the need to appease an ideology that has to pretend federal spending doesn’t benefit anybody, least of all the people of Mississippi.

Yes.  It’s that “ugh”y, the whole scenarios.  It is interesting for Childers, who I suppose had the logical theory “Want to get back into politics, and this is the best chance”… should he lose “respectably” I guess he’ll have a door open for a gubernatorial bid?

I was reminded of this bit from an old review of a New York Times Review of a musical stage play adaptation of the movie “Heathers“…

This means — and how strange is this? — that “Heathers: The Musical” is nostalgic for a more innocent time, when a plot about killing off high school royalty wasn’t quite so sick a sick joke. This show also evokes a pre-”Hunger Games” era when fantasies about teenage revenge could be smaller and didn’t have to involve apocalyptic maneuvers.

… when I heard some excerpts from the “Manifesto” of the mass murderer at UCSB who… is the son of the film maker for the movie “Hunger Games”.  My thought upon hearing these excerpts was “Wow.  That’s… lame.”  Or… “if I were a mass murderer” of this sort, I would be embarrassed to claim this as my reason… even if you wouldn’t be able to hide it as something to be read in a Freudian subtext.

The spilling out and search for a reason takes its usual turns.  One person at slate tries to fit it into his own experiences, and my sense is the irony is that in the end his reason for the mass killing adds up to … he wants masses of people to read his pain and suffering and understand his pain and suffering.  Had he not had any reason to believe this would be hashed through the media I think he would ended up just killing himself.

And it takes me a moment to think this cartoon comes off one of the responses to this particular tragedy.  (At least I think it’s supposed to.)  I find the “hashtag Not All Males” versus “hashtag Yes All Women” line a little tedious and beside the point… two separate things… Plenty of male victims in this guy’s personal “War on Women” for it to fit.

DOWN GOES DIANE SARE!!!

Roy Cho 91.15 percent
Diane Sare 8.85 percent

Cho will face Scott Garrett (R-5th Dist.) in this North Jersey district come November. Although Cho faces an uphill battle, he won headlines last year when rap star Ghostface Killah, a member of the legendary Wu Tang Clan,” endorsed his candidacy on Twitter.

Diane Sare faced two major hurdles toward election.  One of them… her demands for any possible campaign workers and volunteers.

Sare was first exposed to the LaRouche philosophy while she was still a student at New England Conservatory, where she studied music education and trombone performance. A random run-in at Boston’s Logan airport with campaigners set her in the direction of a follower. In her political career as a LaRouche campaign organizer, her passion for music has continued. She ran adult and children’s choirs in both New Jersey and in Washington, D.C. Anyone who works with her gets drafted into a choir too. For her, music is a part of politics.  “I consider everything political. There is no outside of politics,” said Sare.

The other major issue.  She did some last minute campaigning in the wrong state.  Still, she picked up her supporters… though… I’m not sure how she can be considered a “Youth Candidate“.

But the campaign continues.  Art Murphy and Chris Sare, from Bogota, N.J., said their goal is to visit every congressional district.

Lyndon LaRouche. Now there’s a creepy blast from the past!
Oh, and congratulations to everyone who did sign the petitions. You just put yourselves on the Lyndon LaRouche mailing list. Hahahahaha!

DOWN GOES KESHA ROGERS!

With results like these on the county by county “Did anyone out there vote in this thing?”… In Jack County, Democrat David M. Alameel running for United States senator won with 12 votes over his opponent Kesha Rogers who received 5 votes. Statewide, David Alameel won with 70 percent of the votes.  (A fuller list of county by county results here.)

Despite the last minute endorsement by Sean Stone… you know… the man who brought Larouche in to Alex Jones (according to the interview session with Jeffry Steinberg and Sean Stone.)

Time to go into the weeds with this one… Wherefore art Kesha Rogers Country?

However, while Dr. Alameel won by a wide margin, there is room for improvement. In 34 Texas counties, Texas Democrats did not get the memo that one of the Democratic candidates for US Senate wanted to impeach President Obama and held other extreme views that did not reflect the party’s core values. These kinds of results can always be fixed with better, more engaged organizing at the local level, and the first step to that correction is identifying where the problem is today. Check below the jump to make sure your home county’s Democrats did not vote to impeach President Obama!

It looks like Jefferson County is the only one with thousands of Democratic voters, and Gregg County and Calhoun County are the only ones with hundreds of Democratic voters.  It looks like Kesha Rogers should attempt to become lord of Menard County, where she trounced Alameel by a margin of 2 to 0.

Anyway, we see marisol chime in there, and herschel kurstofsky chime in here with an odd bitterness.

Still 20 percent plus is… notably more than received by Bruce Todd and Diane Sare, so we get the usual “so what does this signify” queries...

This is an insult to Hitler Mustaches!(5+ / 0-)
That look is coming back, just as sure as Lyndon LaRouche’s political career!
She’s appealing to voters (10+ / 0-)
who believe that if she wins she’ll keep Obama from running for reelection. In situations like this “low information voter” is a kind euphemism for “dumbs as a box of rocks.” Unfortunately Texas is full of rocks.
Remember when one confronted Barney Frank (2+ / 0-)
in a townhall and he said something like they had all the brains but not the usefulness of a kitchen chair or something to that extent. It was great !! He handed them well.
My first impression (0+ / 0-)
I was at an election night party in 1980. I noticed a discussion going on around a guy who was pretty passionate and argumentative. I asked someone about him and was told he was a follower of LaRouche, who had run for President.
Later I attended a Texas state Democratic convention and sat through a speech that predicted a cataclysmic economic disaster. Yes, an apocalypse.
From time to time I see LaRouche tables and converse with the crew just for the hell of it. Once a guy predicted the collapse of the Euro. I said the Euro was exchanging at $1.39. He walked away. End of discussion: entitled to his own facts.

AND further from the right…
During the 1980’s, I was involved with the Larouche movement for a few years, and I got to know it quite well. After which, I disassociated myself from it for several reasons:
1) Larouche says a lot of things that are true (Bilderbergers, NWO, etc), but the things that he says that are not true made me very uneasy.
2) His followers view him as some sort of messiah, that if only the world would adopt his point of view, then it would automatically become some sort of paradise. This is clearly an impossibility, even if everything he says is true, which I cannot accept.
3) His methods for dealing with his followers are the same ones used by the cults. For example, in 1985 or 1986 (forgot exact date), Larouche’s newspaper had a banner headline that went something like this: “NUCLEAR WAR IN 90 DAYS”. After seeing this, it became clear to me that his methods were to attempt to keep his followers “on fire” for him by making them believe that the world was coming to an end in short order unless and only he was elected President of the United States. Doomsday predictions are the order of the day in his organization. While I might even agree that some Doomsday predictions are valid, being a Bible believing Christian, I cannot accept his version of Doomsday, such as the false prediction of nuclear war in 90 days, which was utterly ridiculous.
Ye don’t say…  (Is Bitcoin the new Gold?)

Whatever the case… this one is off…

Bad day for America, why can’t you find your druthers to vote for Sanity with Kesha on even one clear day in Texas?? Are you just sitting waiting for POT to be legalized? Or just afeerd of that David Alameel Money to silence your intellect. I hope this changes by tonight.

We know it’s not a pro-pot vote, because the one advocate of legalized marijuana on the ballot — Kinky Friedman — lost to Jim Hogan.  All of them… quirky?

The defeated Rogers ran the quirkiest of several quirky races. Democratic Party ads said that she was not a “real Democrat” but was instead a follower of Lyndon LaRouche, possibly the national king of quirkiness on the Democratic side.

DOWN GOES BRUCE TODD!

Aimee Belgard  83.5 percent
Howard Kelinhendler  11.6 percent
Bruce Todd  4.8 percent

DOWN GOES MICHAEL STEGER!

Nancy Pelosi  (Democrat)   73.2 percent
John Dennis (Republican)  12.4 percent
Barry Hermanson (Green)  5.5 percent
David Peterson (Democrat) 3.6 percent
Frank Lara (Peace and Freedom)  1.9 percent
Michael Stegar (“Democrat”)  1.4 percent
Desmond Thorsson (No Party) 1.2 percent
Jim Welles (No Party)  0.8 percent

Interesting, Michael Steger has some people confused on whether the Larouche Movement had given way to a new Steger Movement…

“IMPEACH OBAMA” – When I was a Lad, We had LaRouchies, But Now We have the “Michael Steger for Congress” People.
I tell you, they sure look like LaRouchies, you know, from a distance.
I seen them on Fell, Clement, and now above the 101.
Where will they turn up next?

At least he was campaigning in the right district and state.

Then there’s this comedy gold…

POINT:  Why is the GREEN Party concerned with this? Why not focus on more important environmental issues such as human relocation and terraformation of Mars?
COUNTERPOINT:  Concerned Larouchie Citizen Nathan Norman,

NEXT ELECTION Possibility:  Michigan

Though… John Dingell endorses … not Bill Roberts.  So… probably not.  This doesn’t look like 2012, when Bill Roberts racked up over 40 percent of the primary vote in a campaign the Democrats didn’t think they had any reason to run.

Obviously, a lot of the challenges they get are from wingnuts and inexperienced hyper–partisans—not just tea partiers, but LaRouchies and … I think this is in respect to the Republicans, which begs the question… why didn’t Bill Lauten run for anything?

Other election results bring out the Larouche comparisons.  Its going to be hard for The Midget to campaign from inside federal prison like Lyndon LaRouche did! Another Fine Day in Compton.
……………………………

Wait.  What?  It’s an article in the Nation from Bob Dreyfuss, where he makes this citation of a NY Times Review of Books article, and does so in agreeance.  And…

This book was published in English by Lyndon LaRouche’s magazine Executive Intelligence Review with a preface by LaRouche. Today Executive Intelligence Review echoes Kremlin propaganda, spreading the word in English that Ukrainian protesters have carried out a Nazi coup and started a civil war.

No further comment necessary.

Wading into some more politics round about there…

President Putin’s media Trojan Horse, the Russia Today TV station, presents as commentators Nazis from Germany and the UK, and people involved in the far-right LaRouche cult group without explaining who they really are.

Curiously enough, the figure cited here…

At the same time, Borotba has been cooperating with the so-called “Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine”. Its leader, Natalya Vitrenko, is a long-time associate of LaRouche.

Yeah… Well…

In other Larouche comparisons…

In a 2011 Radio Free Europe column, Ahmari characterized the MEK as “a mostly irrelevant group as ideologically coherent as Lyndon Larouche’s cult…

AND… Because I gotta say I’ve heard more plausible bollocks from the Larouchies. Maybe you could throw in something about hedgehogs, crop-circles and chemtrails…

Like when you see LaRouchies, who draw Hitler mustaches on everything and are a walking Godwin’s Law violation because they’re mostly really serious, and really dumb. Because there’s analogies and there’s bloody stupid.