#1:  That stupid hot dog eating competition, sponsored by someone who I don’t care to remember that deals in hot dogs, shown on ESPN 2 or thereabouts.

#2:  The most jingoistic movie of the last decade and a half: Independence Day.  There is much to be said about this movie — how it was basically billed as a huge budget B-Movie and you have to suspend disbelief in the multitude plot holes and leaps of faith the audience is supposed to make, but what I will say is that it is a fun movie to watch with a foreigner, who won’t help but get a little mad at some of the relentless panderings to American.

I already celebrated Canada Day, so I think I’m fully covered for Independence Day.   When’s Bastille Day?

Viewing some uptiks in his poll number, as well collapses and general humming hooing toward the Republican standard-bearers generating no particular excitement, I see a chance, and I do not know how large it is and I do not know if I would really be willing to bet on it, that Ron Paul might win or do very well in the Iowa Caucuses and/or the New Hamshire Primary.

And that would be the end of it. Ron Paul would get no further than that, until I guess he signs up for the Libertarian Party nomination.
Ticking off the precedents of Primary upsets, which includes Estes Kefauver against Harry Truman in 1952 and Eugene McCarthy against Lyndon Johnson in 1968 — the former a victory, the latter one of those “exceeded expectations”.

The more meaningful precedents for my quasi-prediction with Ron Paul are 1988’s victory by Pat Robertson in the Washington state caucuses and the New Hampshire quasi-victory and 1996 actual victory of Pat Buchanan. These were victories by a dedicated core of supporters, not altogether aligned with the Republican Party but there nonetheless, with a crowded group of candidates of poblematic natures.

I can’t say which one is more likely. Given the nature of the state of New Hampshire and the nature of caucuses, I think that if New Hampshire held caucuses I may just suggest putting money down. As it were, only if the odds makers give weak enough odds, and only if you are playing a game of horseshoes.

I had a queasy and sickening feeling in my gut when I heard the news that Bush had commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence.  Maybe part of it was that I had simply not eaten dinner yet.  But it was this feeling that goes beyond my loathing of the George Bush presidency and the basic piling up of one item after another.

There is something off with the American political system.  It cannot seem to handle and sort out and destroy Pure BS.  I say this thinking that I need to pull together some Nixon era and Watergate era material for a future post regarding The Weary.  The writing was on the wall when every one of the Republican presidential candidates said that Scooter Libby ought be pardoned, chief cheerleader being Fred Thompson, the better to pander to a narrow part of the Republican base — the 29 percent of the American voters who support Bush.  The writing was on the wall when Lawyers of the Right, including would be Supreme Court Justice Bork, mind you, defended Scooter Libby. The writing was further on the wall when the David Broders of the world waxed on the pleasantness of Scooter Libby personally.  Or if you go further into the Movement Conservative ranks, the storyline that the National Review and the Weekly Standard and Fox News commentators have which flips the entire course of events on its head.

I have a reaction is “OH, COME ON!” Once upon a time I mocked the oh-so-sensible and serious Joseph Biden for giving a statement like that to one of the Bush Administration’s perfidies, but it dawns on me where Biden is coming from.  To react in proper order to the Bush Administration is to come out with drastic measures that will slide you into the role of fierce partisan.  It is the Flaw of the American system, why anybody seeking the Republican Nomination has to have that funny-vision view of Libby as Victim, and why if I stick around long enough someone might throw the example of my low opinion of Joseph Lieberman as hypocrisy, which adds to this weariness.
It is one more item of a barrel of insults, in its truest essence an item of “Obstruction of Justice”, the continued blocking of Fitzgerald’s vision of that game he is umpiring, commuted so that he will be pardoned when Bush gets ready to leave office.  Frankly, seeing as how Bush is at his low ebb in public esteem, and has nothing much to lose really, I think Bush oughta go ahead and Pardon Scooter Libby today.

Japan’s defense minister resigned on Tuesday over remarks that appeared to accept the 1945 atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, dealing a fresh blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ruling camp ahead of a national election this month.

[…]

Kyuma’s decision to quit came after a prominent lawmaker in the ruling coalition’s junior partner had said he should “decide his own course,” a phrase that is often code for urging a politician to quit.

Abe had attempted to quell the furor by reprimanding Kyuma, who said on Saturday that he thought the atomic bombings “could not be helped.”

But opposition parties, keen to press their advantage ahead of the election, had refused to let up pressure for him to resign.

I find this story interesting as a means of comparison between the sort of accepted terms of what an American is supposed to think of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be in the mainstream and what a Japanese is supposed to think.

Flip the accepted opinion from America of “We(tm) had to do it.  Damned right we dropped the bomb.  They started it!” to a Japanese politician murmuring in a “gaffe” (the definition of a gaffe is often just a politically unpleasant truth) of “Maybe they have a point.”

A dozen years ago, there was this furor over the opening up of a Hiroshima and Nagasaki Exhibit, full of acrimony that relatively banal statements on the number of deaths of Japanese civilians gave too much credence to any lingering questions of that impenetrable fortress of “Damned right we dropped the bomb!”  This is the opposite of that Japanese politician’s “gaffe”, though probably not as fully as that exhibit never really questioned the use of the bombs — just simply maintained that it had some rather unpleasant and unsettling effects — but an American politician wouldn’t say anything beyond that because she or he would meet up with the same fate and furor of that Japanese politician.
In college, a professor assigned the class a paper on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more or less wanting “Pro” or “Con”.  I wrote a “pro” paper based on a bit of psychology that the David Horowitzes of the world would eschew in flailing on about Left Wing Professors– oftentimes a college professor will give more leeway in grading if it argues against their worldview.  The only thing I will say is that Harry Truman and The Pentagon lied with their initial statements that “We Have struck a Japanese Military Base”.  And yes, it is a telling lie.

I saw, posted to a side wall of Fred Meyers, a note saying to the effect of:

Need some Drug Free Urine?
Call (phone #)
We’ll hook You Up!

I am fairly positive that when I go to Fred Meyers again tomorrow this slip of paper will be taken down.  I suppose there is a market for drug free urine, and it is a type of thing you cannot promote in the Yellow Pages, so you have to reach that market somehow or other.

………………………

I’ve noticed this ad placement at Yahoo.  I’m weary of posting the image to the ad, though you more than likely have seen it and passed by without a second’s thought.  I guess I’ll just shrug and say “Well… Free advertisement for that company!”

The thing about that question is that I really don’t know who is searching for me, but I really doubt that it is the woman pictured.

At least it is somewhat better than this one ad for some other internet company I won’t name which showed a woman in her bed waving her fingers to come toward her.

I suppose I should wander into the field of Larouche nuttiness again.

Two articles of note were published. The New Republic had a small and pointless article about Larouche discussing an interview with him, which I see is mentioned a small bit in the blogosphere, generally to the effect of “Lyndon Larouche. Huh. I forgot about that nut!” (Here. Here. Here.)

A few points to be made: maybe Larouche is running for president, maybe he isn’t. I wonder if I were to look through the rules of what point a presidential candidate receives federal matching funds if I would see a bar that a Larouche organization that is not on par with its past version cannot reach — meaning the fantasy world view that he is deeply allied with the Clintons will have to work. On the other hand, his coy rhetoric certainly created the framework for a supposed “reluctant” run — a direction for his cult to take for an election cycle. If it enables him to get those federal matching funds.
The article sits next to an article about Dennis Kucinich — the two articles entitled “The Crazy that is Running” and “The Crazy that is Not Running”. It is unfair to Dennis Kucinich, who I don’t think is a terribly serious politician — and my misgivings about Kucinich goes beyond his politics– who — I will say — does not operate a cult. To deviate from the topic and take a quick gander at this Kucinich article, past the obnoxious title — the phrase that his campaign throws him to a “Pacifica Archipelago” is an apt observation. Actually I do see method to Kucinich’s madness, and it is simply that he is building his national base composed of the average Pacifica listener.

The other article answers that old assertion from a Larouchie that I was taking Nick Benton’s article on Larouche’s internal memos as gospel. (Go over here.) Here, I suppose, is what the Larouchie was jabbing her stick at, the information I was supposed to have learned that would have showed me the truth about Nick Benton and his motives. Larouchies despise ex-Larouchies.
Beyond that, a copy of odds and ends:

Recordings from a “9/11 Truth” conference (conspiracy theorists on 9/11.)

Friday’s keynote speaker was Webster Tarpley (pictured), a historian who used to be involved with the Lyndon LaRouche org, and co-author of The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush [Sr.]. I actually read excerpts of this a few years ago. Tarpley looks and sounds somewhat like Mr. Lebowski, but has a killer vocab and a wicked sense of humor: An exceptional speaker.

Okay. Webster Tarpley. He is a fraudulent ex-member, meaning that he is a member who is more helpful to the cause if he claims not to be connected with Larouche nowadays. I know this because the discussion at factnet shows that he spoke on behalf of Larouche in Russia. I would post the exchange if I could find it right off the bat.
I think this is how Larouche has his hands in the “9/11 Truth Movement”, something the “9/11 Truthers” are weary of, something that I end up shrugging at thinking that they sort of deserve each other.

One last item from factnet of interest:

For those who were born before the Fall of the Berlin wall and were campaigning against the Soviet nuclear Armageddon… just this info I read at the time:
Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB defector, revealed (I quote) that during a November 1983 NATO exercise, to enable the Western alliance to practice its nuclear release procedures, the Soviets responded to the manuever by going into an “ill-founded panic,” since they believed that “belligerent imperialist circles in the U.S.A. are getting ready for war, and are preparing new weapons systems which could render a sudden attack feasible.” (ie the march ’83 Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative”, SDI aka “Star wars”) As a result of this “panic,” Gordievsky claims, on or about Nov. 8-9 (1983), the world “really passed through a war danger.”
I cannot help not to think that these “belligerent imperialist circles in the U.S.A.” associated to the SDI, were also connected to ours. We were all over the place at the time, officially invited to speak about the Reagan/Larouche’s SDI.
But in August that year, irresponsible larouche wrote an Open letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov: “YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO PLUNGE THE WORLD INTO WAR”, because of his rejection of Reagan’s sdi proposal. Then, in November these NATO maneuvres took place and were perceived by the Soviet KGB as a possible cover or preparation for a US military offensive…
Later we were attacked in the Soviet press as imperialist nazis connected to Reagan etc
So larouche played a very dangerous and irresponsible game then, as unofficial spokesman for Reagan’s “parallel diplomacy”. A “war of words” similar to Iran’s or North Korea’s today.
Maybe that motivitated the US authorities to get his mouth shut (that is : the 1986 FBI raid in Leesburg)

AND That should do it for this topic for a week. Unless something comes up.

(Additional: I cannot pass this up, from the very prolific xlcrer, after discussing the sales technique for the Pro-life magazine and the Fusion magazine, Larouche hidden until the end– AND:

When we call up subscribers for everything we sold they would ask why they have not recieved a magazine or why it is 6 months late. Wearing a Lyn dunce cap makes it easy for you to beleive the story appearing in the briefing about how Henry Kissinger or some new evil start up has sabatoged the Post Office from mailing out the materials. Instead of noticing that we are raising huge sums of money, 5 bucks a day is going towards labor and money for postage has been diverted, our people believe that some incredible and mysterious force which wants Lyn assasinated to unleash a New Dark Age has blocked us from paying our postage bills. […]

What the yutes should notice is how many of the slugs in the briefing written by Jeff and his friends have this twist where some unamed source tells us “I like the material but I think your boss is crazy”. Jeff is busy running his own end game around Lyn and lining up his pieces for a post Lyn world. Lyn is so delusional that he has not caught on after spending years in prison and giving some crazy figure like 11 million to scam artists that Jeff and Paul are the ones who bring in these grifters. Go through the ranks of security and you find quite a collection of people who are “out” but ‘in” with Jeff.

A decent enough answer for my weird little question of “What happens when Larouche dies?”