The “52 Year Rule” for the Republican Party — things go haywire every 52 years — 1912, 1964, and now 2016…

And what to expect in a contested convention, which was par for the course not too long ago in our history.  (Of course, it produced presidents such as … James Garfield… men who had not much interest in being president.  Maybe we can end up with something like that this time around?)

More likely, because “contested convention” is now synonymous with “party chaos”, and how can you trust a party in power after all the chaos — watch for the November Thumping from Hillary Clinton.  [Somehow Trump has to win with no woman voting for him, and no Latino voting for him.  Basically.]

Just a few weeks ago Priebus said the odds that there would not be a brokered convention were “85, 90 percent.” However, the launch of the website suggests the RNC is beginning to prepare for the reality that there could be one.

In a sense, this is good.  If Politics are to be an appendage of the Entertainment Industry — what, with a Reality TV Star the front-runner of a political party — might as well make what had become a boring block of dreck “entertaining”.  (Of course, it’ll be glossed over in parliamentary procedures designed for the purpose of tediousness.  Watch to see recalibrations of “Stop Ron Paul” for “Stop Donald Trump“.)

As for the “52” designation — it’s possible this a pattern search — sure, a mid-point between 1912 and the Taft — Roosevelt split (two political insiders, worth pointing out) and the Trump ascension in the Republican Party happens to be a historical fight / conservative ascendancy.  But was 1952 and Eisenhower — Taft any less eventful or dramatic?

With the Democrats — the years that hang over everything as chaotic and divisive markers are 1860, 1896, 1924 and 1968.  Splinters come about in 1948, which reverberate from 1860, but that one produced a winning candidate, so it falls apart in the same way 1952 does.

Small boy: “For the rest of my life, I’m just going to read Tintin.”
Mom (I’m guessing):  “I guess you’re not going to grow up to be an English Major, then.”
Boy:  What’s an English Major?”

Yeah.  Good question, kid.

Interesting “hm” tossed out here, in this anti-Trump editorial…

It is a way by which we can bring together in one concentrated image the way people in a given social environment organize and give meaning and direction to their lives.” Think of Chief Seattle, Rosa Parks, Rachel Carson, Cesar Chavez or John Lewis. Yet obdurate traits of a people can also be exemplified (and stoked) by demagogues. Think of Andrew Jackson, George Wallace or Donald Trump.

Think of Andrew Jackson, George Wallace, Donald Trump…

And so the historical vantage-point of Andrew Jackson has ebbed to a low point.  Once Harry Truman’s favorite president.  Sometime ago adapted as a positive virtue by the Weekly Standard to lift up Sarah Palin.  (Hitchens knocks about with some bite on that “Bryan” part of the equation — and it is worth pointing out where he was at the famed 1924 Democratic Convention as probed in a recent New Yorker — fighting the good pro-McAdoo pro-Klan forces in the platform committee)  Now Jackson sits in historical disgrace, with standard line holding him as did John Quincy Adams sneering at the unruly mob of yee-hangers running into the White House to eat Andrew Jackson’s wheels of cheese.

And so Jackson. So Trump.

Rebut:  I might as well as add my two cents. No 19th century figure could survive a comparison with our refined moral attitude. Andrew Jackson was BAD because he was a slaveholder, he had a prickly sense of honor, he believed in hard money, and was against a central bank. Yet, he was elected president twice and reflected a changed political sensibility.

Rebut the Rebut:  It is the easiest thing in the world to say that we can’t judge them by our standards, but an entire party of Americans – the National Republicans and then the Whigs – judged him by their own standards and found him wanting on moral as well as political grounds.

And then there’s… Andrew Jackson took on the Banksters and defeated them. Trump is doing the same thing – which is why they are so angry and afraid. GO TRUMP!

Well.  Jackson has a complicated legacy at that.

Reportedly, this missing persons report from Leesburg, Virginia has turned out for the worst.  My condolences to loved ones, and anyone else who he knows or has touched in life.

And here I’m in an odd position.  Google his name, and right at the top… you get a page from this blog, out of the Larouche Challenge.  After this I do become a little glib in dropping his name for generalized crankiness — in much the same manner I might with, oh, Bill Kristol.  It’s fair to say I have my political disagreements with him.  What can one say when a simple google search finds that his most read piece of work appears to be an article entitled “The Satanic Origins of Rock”?

But that’s one noteworthy thing on Don Phau.  I can identify him cleanly and clearly with a contentious domestic political cause — a cause here molded a bit too much to the fit the pillars of Larouche’s ideology [and sure, I’m being generous] — I suppose carrying out of its Marxian roots the War against Bourgeois Culture and on into various permetations of an axis fitting small “c” conservative “soccer mom” “It Takes a Village” / “Raising PG Kids in an R Rated World” concerns to a more right wing Moral Majority banner… which, for that matter, taps into a strain of youth angst — the corrupting of American Youth through Mass Popular Culture.  In the 80s, he wrote and made spot media and legislative appearances to decry the theatrics of heavy metal, and launches from there to the myriad of moral panics of youth.  (The Beastialization of Man?  The Beatl-ization of Man!)  As the 90s pass and we enter a new millennium, the conern over school shootings collides with searching violent video games as a chief cause.  Which, for better or worse, slides him right into right into a spittoon for online gamer culture when his writings slide into the edge of the mainstream (or, for that matter, when they don’t) — though, Helga Zepp remained a more visible focus.

I suppose it’s to his credit that I can identify a political angle off of Don Phau, beyond “Larouche”.  But regardless of everything, (and I’m not sugar-coating what he did in the cult, see here for Don Phau circa 1972) condolences.

Tom Coburn floats in as possible third party candidate for desperate “Not Voting For Trump” Republicans…

  Don’t know if you can call this one good or not, just as I’m not sure you can say the original series was either… but there it is.  No, it is different in many ways to the 1970s rendition…

  Leaving aside the shift in gender of the young presidential candidate, I ponder the nature of the Native American FBI director under Prez Rickard — in the same way I found myself thinking “hm” when I walked past what was a Village People Tribute about to enter into a gay club and seeing the Indian — no.  That wouldn’t fly today unless it were identified as coming from then…

Beyond that, I suppose there might be a subtext in the “vampire in the white house” plot line, but ultimately it does land in… oh… they’re getting a little silly and not bothering too much with social commentary.

The art for the new series bugs me — not really a fan of it.  As per modern day political commentary — well, there’s a hacktivist collective in the Guy Fawkes masks, the industry honchos with faces in symbols — in that ugly but I suppose necessary computer infographic style.  But I have to suspend some disbelief in believing (even for the purpose of satire) that this youtube video of her at work in a state of disarray to become “corndog girl” would become viral…

… And, as always, if you think the tv and movie industries are always cycling about to recycle old concepts… try the comic book industry.  And… wait a minute.  One question:  Why?

  The nature of the comic book publisher “Boom”, which publishes… er… the new adventures of the Peanuts gang.

The problem with this comic book is… I guess you can say it harkens back to the television cartoon — and in Bill and Ted history there are the movies, the Saturday morning cartoon, and the comic book from (“never even watched the movies, and I was a cynical angry punk rocker who had to learn to love the two happy metal heads”) Evan Dorkin.  So… I suppose this comic book would be what the Bill and Ted comic book would have been had it ended up as Dorkin’s vehicle?