My father, my brother, and I are in Seattle.

My father is telling my brother a story. He went to a local jeweler to have some of mom’s rings re-sized.

The next day, he received a call. The store was suddenly closing on Friday. Come pick up your rings. And, everyone there is being laid off.

Unrelated, I mumble a bumper-sticker I see. “Hm. ‘Impeach Bush’.”

Dad: Is that a political statement?
Me: Well, it’s a political bumper-sticker…

We know that New York City Mayor Bloomberg is offering visiting protesters tot he RNC Convention swathy perks such as discounted tickets to Broadway shows, and free food from participating restaurants.

It’s no fun to protest on an empty stomach.

The price is that you need to play by their rules… all their rules, and you have this pin of some sort. It’s state-sanctioned protest vs. state-discouraged protest, befitting the attitude “This is a privilege” that the state grants the people, you see.

I don’t think the “Black Blocks” — the “Anarchists” — the “Radical Feeders” — are going to cash in on this. I’ll have to check NYC’s indymedia page at the time to see if anyone posts reviews of Rent amongs the sea of scary robo-cop photographs.

I’m curious, though. Could somebody go to NYC, get the stupid pin, and use that to get free food and discounted broadway shows? Or do you actually have to attend a goddamned protest?

Because I’m sure you want to know what was said on Clyde Lewis’s paranormalpolitical radio program.

Alex Jones: This election reminds me of a line from a new movie that’s out, Alien Versus Predator.

Clyde Lewis: That’s right! Exactly!

Alex Jones, Clyde Lewis jumps in at the mid-point: “No matter who wins — YOU LOSE!”

(Amusing line, at least.)

……….

Clyde Lewis: I have this liberal friend — interested in environmental matters… he regularly attends meetings for moveon.org, and he’s lately said that the meetings have become rather lame. Giant Kerry worship surfaces, he calls them.

(The question as to how a person interfaces with a political party. For the Republicans, the giant poster of Eisenhower became a bit stale. The giant Republican posters in between — presidents Nixon and Ford and Bush I, and the more respected loser Goldwater, only briefly got played, Nixon’s poster torn down after Watergate and Ford’s poster torn down after his loss. Reagan now gets a giant poster for the Republicans to bow down before. Bush I gets a smaller poster, though the poster made nary an appearance until the 2000 election-cycle. The hope is that Bush II ‘s poster can replace, or be placed side by side, with the giant Reagan poster.

The Democratic poster of Kennedy was, by necessity, flown right into the 1992 election cycle. The Johnson Poster was supersized in 1964, but torn down completely in 1968. The Carter poster has slowly resurfaced and dusted off, a bit smallish. The McGovern poster was incinerated immediately. The Dukakis poster was immediately incinerated, and the ashes then incenerated again for good measure. Today, the Clinton poster is being blown up to a swelling size. We await to see what happens to the Kerry poster…)

Enough of that. Vote for John Kerry President 2004. Chuck Hagel 2008. We’ll see where we go from there.

……

THX 1138 is coming out on video. Watch for the signs.

http://www.clydelewis.com/dis/endemic/endemic.shtml

Enter Bob Dole. Patching up the lagging neo-version of the Committee to RE Elect the President — obfuscate a little more before the coming fog-drift clears it all up, because, as Tom Oliphant puts it: My own guess is that the higher the profile of this mess the more it looks like the smear it is, and the more it risks boomeranging on the president.

Bob Dole’s role is akin to that of Colin Powell’s when he delivered before the UN the, quote-in-quote, “Adlai Stevenson Moment” for the Iraq War. ‘Cause he’s respected, you see…

But, before he developed his persona as a respected pragmatic Republican, busy getting things done and a professional all the way, and before he reinvigorated that stalid image as a professional pragmatic conservative politico with Viagra ads and Pepsi ads with Britney Spears and self effacing humour– he was an attack dog. Most famously, his incomprehensible attack on “Democrat Wars” during the 1976 vice-presidential debate, but there are prior squealings showing him as loyal to a fault.

One interesting thing about his loyalty is that it wasn’t always recipocated: back in 1972, while he was in charge Republican National Committee and electing Senate candidates, Dick Nixon didn’t bother sharing many of his resouces — creepy or otherwise — to Dole. In the year of Nixon’s 49-state landslide re-election, the Republican Party lost two senate seats. (on the other hand, that is also a testament to the Democratic Party hierarchy abondoning a sinking ship in McGovern mid-election.)

From his 1988 campaign autobiography, stolen from John Micah Marshal:

As we approached the enemy, there was a brief exchange of gunfire. I took a grenade in hand, pulled the pin, and tossed it in the direction of the farmhouse. It wasn’t a very good pitch (remember, I was used to catching passes, not throwing them). In the darkness, the grenade must have struck a tree and bounced off. It exploded nearby, sending a sliver of metal into my leg–the sort of injury the Army patched up with Mercurochrome and a Purple Heart.

Which brings us to another angle on this whole contrived controversy, an indictment on the government exploring the real purpose of awarding medals:

Smedley Butler, will you do the honors?

Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share — at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn’t bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn’t.

So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it.

While I’m at it, that wacky Liberal Newscreed, the Murdoch owned Bill Kristol edited Weekly Standard, has this to say of the current controversy:

But now Republican activists are forcing on the campaign obsessions of their own–almost a mirror image of the Democrats’ desperate overcompensation. The dissonance and frustration this year’s election rouses in the mind of the dedicated Republican cannot be underestimated. Conservatives actually do revere the military, without reservation. It is not their inclination to debunk combat heroes. Some Republicans, when they drink enough beer, really do wonder whether civilian control of the military is such a great idea. For them, it was never plausible that our boys in Vietnam had “personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads . . . cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians,” and so on, as young John Kerry testified they did.

Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn’t really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry’s record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam in the first place.

Actually, that tells us exactly why the Republican Party needs to bring Bob Dole into the picture, as they transition their way from the discredited medal controversy (muddled in the public conciousness) to the issue of Kerry’s Vietnam War Protest years. It could come to pass that the actual fly-by-night organization “Vietnam Veterans for Truth” have now served their purpose, and their actual mendacity just no longer matters to the upcoming attack on Kerry’s Vietnam War protesting.

Welcome to the intricacies of CREEP II. At this point in time, we can only hope that CREEP II will do to Bush what CREEP I did to Nixon — only without the two year lag time.

From the post regarding the literature on Skull and Bones, we get a Kevin Messerschmidt rushing in to defend the precious Skulls and the precious Bones.

Wow, talk about tinfoil hat. Pretty stupid “video”. I wonder how they compare to the tap night photos.

http://www.yale.edu/rumpus/tap/slideshow/html/12.htm
Hey, is that the Satanic master of ceremonies out in public with his costume? Oooh, the evil of it all.
🙂

I can only assume that the photograph that he has brought up is of Skull and Bones, and not of any of the other Yale Societies, such as Butts and Boners.

At any rate, here’s George Bush playing around with John Kerry. Look for this technique for prisoners after the US invades India…

QUICK UPDATE: This is not “Skull and Bones”. This is (and I’m not making this up) “Spade and Grave“. Well, the porn is nice, at least.

(This post has its unofficial message board thread over here.)

If they can get the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” affair into a matter of “he said / he said” muddled waters, they win.

Never mind it’s more a matter of “He said / forget what he said, ’cause the he who said that said this back then, and the records said” matter.

I had thought that the matter would end up not penetrating beyond the conciousness of the true-believer, the Newsmax reader. See: in their worldview “Kerry opened this up by having his tour in Vietnam such a central part of his campaing.” I fail to understand. Kerry opened himself up to a pile of sick lies and innuendo because he’s using Vietnam as part of his campaign? If they can say that Kerry threw a grenade at himself to earn a medal, can I say that during Bush’s absense from the Texas National Guard that he had a gay lover in Alabama?

Nonetheless, it’s had an effect in the polls. The only way Bush is going to win…

How do these things work? How do you respond to these items without dignifying them?

McCain was torpedoed in South Carolina, as Bush operatives suggested that McCain’s time as a POW turned him into a loose-cannon. John Micah Marshal is correct: Kerry’s second ad response, with the footage of McCain addressing Bush on his sleazy campaign tactics, is better than the first one. But, it’s a week late. Kerry needed to pick up on McCain’s statement “This is the same thing they did to me”, and run with it as the essential truth of the smear.

(The unfortunate by-product there being that it props up McCain for a likely 2008 race… he being in a perfect position to pick up the pieces of the Republican Party when Bush implodes whether in 2004 or 2006… I think I prefer Chuck Hagel, who’s already expressed his intention on running, for the Republican nomination, and to help fumigate the worst parts of the Republican Party out. McCain is overrated. As for doing away with the worst parts of the Democratic Party… ie: John Kerry’s foreign policy is going to hemmed in from Joseph Lieberman and his co-leadership in ‘Committee on Present Danger’ III — who knows what that would take?)

Part of the effect seems to come from the “Alan Colmes Rule”. I heard him on the radio the other day, condemning the Moveon.org response to the “Swift Boat Vets”… as if the two were the same thing. He’s playing with the White House talking points, and accepting them in an effort for supposed balanced. Needless to say, his counterpoint partner, Sean Hannity does not feel the need to go along with this. The center of gravity and understanding shifts awkwardly.

Go back to the rise of Joseph McCarthy. I need to look it up to see who, precisely, but either Bobby Kennedy or Hubert Humphrey were instrumental in aiding McCarthy’s rise to prominence. This makes a good deal of sense: Cold War Liberalism and the Bi-Partisan concensus. Harry Truman red-baited the Henry Wallace crowd during his 1948 run, or rather his surrogates did.

Flash forward to Watergate. Here, I’m reading from an old Walter Karp essay, where he looks back at the reporting of Watergate and finds it all disappointing: the problem being that the Media was pretty much dragged into covering it all, and did a great deal of equivocating reportage… and tended to settle on the storyline of “Donkeys versus Elephants”. (As a cynical aside: it can be pointed out, Watergate was / is par for the course to the powers that be.)

The question is: how do you throw the final death-knell on this annoyance, with the same burst and explosion that was seen when McCarthy was eventually destroyed? As Nixon’s crimes were eventually exposed? (I don’t know who defends Nixon these days — McCarthy gets his fair share of accolades from Ann Coulter, Mike Savage, and the John Birch Society.)

Woke up in a Astra/Purgatory World…..many groups of men in fatigues fighting, many wounded, a blind Lt. giving orders, pulling rank, he got relieved………..the pope hiding statue of infant Jesus, runing to hid with fellow religious from the battle……

Ave Maria
george/john
cub reporter
Time Traveler
ps remember, John the baptist, tellin religious ones of his day, that the gutter sluts and other outcasts were entering, ‘the kingdom of GOD’ and the religious ones where wallowing in the the mire and Mary Magdalene, with her $ billions $ [sort of a mix of Diana/Jackie O] becoming the great apostle of the love of the Resurrection…..dont mean to sound to ‘white’…lol

Make of it what you wish. There’s more on this thread. Example:

Your some Cookie, Ms darkraven…you and view’s of few others aren’t whole site….dont know if Vopel remark to me or others i mentioned…..so cutie…remember, i droped the rock of Peter on you…and Mon trumped you with the 13 yo stufff…here with the teenage Madonna/Mary…..peace to Marias friends, you are in H-e-l-l with Hillary/Oprah to the others ……and all the men who never loved a Woman to folly, its cause she saved the best for her girlfriends and never let you……to the others who have, lol

Just thought you needed to know.

I nominate that Air America Radio pick up Ray Taliaferro. Keep him in the overnight spot, for all I care, replacing the repeats of Franken or Randi Rhodes. Perhaps, as suggested here, he’s not exactly at the pinacle of intellectual debate, and queasily a bit too in league with the DNC hierarchy, but talk radio is entertainment and the right-wing hosts have transformed the medium into a clearinghouse of partisan yahooism anyways — if Air America turns into nothing more than clearinghouses for DNC talking points, it’s just a mirror image of the relationship the RNC has with its elaborate echo-chamber and message amplifier…

He’s on at 1 in the morning beamed from San Francisco’s 810 AM. This is one of those stations that pumps up its frequency during the night to bounce all over the ionosphere, so there’s a good chance that just about anyone on the West Coast will be able to pick it up.

He’s chirpy. Ridiculously chirpy, strumming together whatever collection of favorable Kerry news and unfavorable Bush news that he can assimilate.

“America Waking up” he begins the broadcast, “and it feels good.”

The phrase has shifted slightly within the past week, though to… “America is now AWAKE!”

It’s the theme of his show.

In a literal sense, this is untrue… it’s the graveyard shift, but nevermind. He continues on.

More impressively, and more entertainingly, is how he responds to opposing callers. An example goes like this:

Caller: Hi. I just want to know what the format change of your show will like if Bush wins the election? Will you still be bashing the president, or will you be supporting him?

Ray: Let me ask you this…

Caller: No. You always answer a question with a question.

Ray: Sir. Let me ask you a question.

Caller: No. I need to know if you’ll be supporting the president or what the format of your show will be if he wins re-election.

Ray: Sir… Sir…

(Continues like this, shifts slightly as we approach a hard, pre-set -commercial break to “We can carry this over to the other side of the break, but if we had been able to discourse intelligibly, you’d have my answer by now.”

Comes back from the break.

Ray: Now, the caller is gone, but the question remains: Would you be support Adolf Hitler, because he was duly elected? I do not support leaders just because they were elected.

On the other hand it’s good to know that you support John Kerry, because you believe in supporting presidents that were elected — and therefor cannot support George Bush who was not elected — who was selected.

See… this Republican is supporting John Kerry. America is Waking Up!

…

Or, we get something like this:

Caller: How can anyone support John Kerry. He himself admitted that he committed war crimes.

Ray: So, you’re saying that John Kerry told the truth.

Caller: Yes, that he committed war crimes!

Ray: So, you’re saying that since John Kerry told the truth that you are supporting John Kerry! America is waking up! We’re throwing the LIARS out and replacing them with the truth-tellers!

John Kerry… he told the truth.

And, on and on it goes… unsure whether I’m nodding in agreement or laughing at the phony self-aware distortions of whatever point of reference the caller is coming from.