“I’m going to lose weight this year.  I’m tired of being plump.”

She is thinner from when I first met her (comb through this blog and you’d find a recounting of such).  She’s said any number of things such as this before, and I’ve elected to say “Hm”, or to grunt.  Desiring to say something more substantial, I think for a second, before saying,

“I think I’m going to try to gain weight this year, and see if I can become morbidly obese.”

Ba De… um… Dum?

MORNING BRIEFING
Sunday, December 16, 2007

{The following briefings were given by Jeffrey Steinberg and Nick Walsh on December 15. The NEC would like to draw special attention to the following comment by Nick towards the end of his report, as an example to be followed: “Seattle has the right idea. They’re planning a week of action. Now, what’s their week for the week of action? It’s Christmas Eve, Dec. 24th, through New Year’s Day. And they’ve recruited all the members there who were planning on going home, not to. So there are going to be a lot of upset mothers, but that’s good. When you’re creating a revolution, Moms tend to get upset.”

… Hm.  Lucky Seattle.

“We have two weeks before Christmas, and we should really not let down, and we should not get into this totally insane Christmas mood and have “MySpace under the Christmas Tree” fantasies: But we should understand that this period is the one which really determines the future of humanity for a long time to come. So we should really go into the biggest mobilization and put all other considerations around, because we have to get a breakthrough” 

Bah Humbug.

The headlines start out with “Only We Can Win — They Can Only Bring Down the Human Race”.  So we know what we’re fighting, and what is at stake.  Or we get something like:

The Jackson Lie and the Current Crisis

Every year, Democratic Party leaders stage an ugly ritual known as “Jefferson-Jackson Day.”

They give this name to fund-raising events, to boast that their party continues a political tradition inherited from the early U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

This fraud is designed to bury the legacy of the most famous and revered Democratic President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and to declare the party’s allegiance to a political philosophy directly opposed to Roosevelt’s…

Hm.  I thought they called it the “Jefferson – Jackson” Dinner in honor of the founder of the Democratic Party, Jefferson, and the first president to call himself a “Democrat”, Jackson (which, depending on how you would want to frame history might also be an origin point for the political party — though here you might want to honor the Great Political Hack in the history of Political Hackdom, Martin Van Buren.)  But that would be crazy.

In other news…

On the heels of his mention in the Chinese state media as “distinguished American economist” (and on back to hosting the defense of Sudan’s genocidal government). That Benjamin Franklin hoax speech is a classic in hoaxery.  But now that I think about it, in the grand tradition of “when he says British, what he means is…” idea that your Larouchite will hunker into and call ridiculous… is this another meaning behind the claiming of Benjamin Franklin, fooled somewhere beyond the obvious “Americanism” he represented when Larouche switched from Marxism?  Surely these things aren’t accidental… there are no coincidences.

It dawned on me that the Republican nomination race looks something like this last College Football season. The rule of thumb is attrition — you stand at number one because somebody else has fallen.  John McCain is said to be making some kind of headway right about now.  His campaign had been in the tank previously, but the problem is nobody else looked good, and thus his resurrection, of sorts.

McCain is Ohio State. Lost to Illinois. Fell down and looked out of the national Championship picture.  But then everyone else lost, and …

I had thought that Huckabee might be the Republicans’ best chance.  But that was based on some vaguities that he might be able to fudge a bit, and also based on an assumption that his Evangelistic Right Wing Christianity wasn’t as far in that direction as it has turned out to have been — which he is playing to a greater hilt than I thought he might.  Now that I think about it, McCain probably remains “Most Electable” — the falling out based on his wrapping himself in the Bush Mantle in a manner that looked awkward and stunted — along with the Immigration Bit alienating the Republican base too a greater degree than is not insufferable, but upon reflection this is probably easily enough brushed aside for him to emerge back to that Media Darling and Mr. Sensible everyone loved when he was running in 2000, as well that there “Reform” of “McCain / Feingold”. No one’s paying attention; do-overs are possible.

Air falling out of that famous blimp they have… 

Best-selling author and Bilderberg sleuth Daniel Estulin says he has received information from sources inside the U.S. intelligence community which suggests that people from the highest levels of the U.S. government are considering an assassination attempt against Congressman Ron Paul because they are threatened by his burgeoning popularity.

And lest you don’t believe the Inner Core of the nation’s Elites could do such a thing, we’re not just talking ANY Inner Core here…

Estulin, author of the global bestseller The True Story of the Bilderberg Group described the concept as a “trial balloon from the inner core within the inner core – it hasn’t gone beyond that but it is obviously on the table because I think needless to say they are very much concerned,” he added.

It’s the “INNER CORE OF THE INNER CORE”.  We’re peeling the Onions here to reveal more peeled onions, folks!

In a June appearance on The Alex Jones Show, Congressman Paul acknowledged that such a threat is “real,” agreeing with a number of historical examples where leaders were killed or attacked for successfully standing up to the system. “That’s right. They’ll do it,” Paul said, making reference with Alex Jones to upstarts like Andrew Jackson, “The Kingfish” Huey Long, Bobby Kennedy, George Washington and even George Wallace.

Huey Long and Ron Paul…

Incidentally, I cannot say I’m terribly impressed by the prediction cited:

Over 18 months ago Estulin correctly made the call that the Iran war had been delayed and was probably off the table, which is looking to be exactly the case after the release of the recent National Intelligence Estimate.

An outcome which wouldn’t take much in the way of inside sources or tinfoil hats to summise.

I am sitting at a business I won’t name but is fairly easily summized if you know your Portland businesses.  Somebody has abandoned an untapped bottle of Kombucha Tea — I suppose bought for an hour of wi-fi access?  I grab the bottle to take a look at the typical spiel of this drink.  From out of the Himalayans, this cured the man’s mom’s cancer, now the elixir is bottled for your purchase.

I don’t know if I should bother with it.  I can basically guarantee I will not like it, but there is a science experiment here.  Compare this quote in quote “raw” Kombucha with what I encountered in one of its various mythical spots of origin — Kargasok, 15 hours up the Ob River from Novisibirsk — under the name “Kargasok Tea”, the home-made fungi fermented in a musky water.  Surviving to become centurians they do, so I hear — though  if they indeed do it may come from the creative way they stuff fish into dishes you never imagined fish could fit into.  Anytime I have shown anyone a photograph of the musty bottle of Kargasok Tea, the reaction was either “That looks disgusting” or “You … drunk … that?”  Also, one man’s ords of wisdom alon the lines of “Don’t drink the water” (when in a quasi-remote place on the globe… probably more to the point, when somewhere you must dart off to an outhouse to do your business).

Since the bottle is clear, meaning one can see the liquid, and something that elicits the reaction of “You drunk that?” is not terribly marketable, even if one cynically thinks something from the far-splung corners of the globe with a natural tinge can be exoticized — the relative “raw”ness of “Raw” Kombucha is something I have to question.

The problem is a science experiment falls apart.  It has nearly been a decade.  I have no real basis for comparison.  It surely is more or less sanitized, but beyond that I’ve got nothing.  There is no point in drinking this.  Leave it there, a product of romanticized Orientalism, as well an odd remnant of an accidental location.

……………………

A few days later, I watch a “Crystal Stroker”, the type I imagine this drink’s appeal fits the wheelhouse for, is drinking it, while laying out a batch of tarot cards to read some people’s fortunes.  I trust she is a believer in the power of the Kombucha, and all that represents.  I would like to mind-meld with her just enough to transport my impressions of Kargasok, one of the origin points of that which she is drinking.  I imagine she holds no romantic notion of, say for example, Dix, Nebraska , meaning I wouldn’t see why she would end up with a similar romantic notion of that town in Siberia… Never mind that her drink is all natural and herbal, and I don’t believe it would change her worldview (which is innocuous enough, and seems pleasant), and it’s far from central to anything here, but maybe it’s a small splinter in a small splinter of the picture worth grounding.

Who isn’t a fan of Steroid Abuse, I mean really? Steroids Saved Baseball! You had the strike in 1994, you had fans declaring they would never come back, you had — in particular — two superstars inject themselves with Steroids, and then you had the fans come back in droves. Yay Steroids!

I would be suspicious of a professional sports team where I knew that there were no users. We need victories, after all. The thing about the Mitchell Report… compile an all – star team made up of the players Mitchell has named. Have the players in their post-steroid usage play themselves from the season before they individually injected crap into their asses.  One team would beat the other team every which way past Sunday, and the Greek Gods of Olde will smile down on them.  Case in point, this man… who, reportedly, started with the Steroids in 1997, stopped, then started with the Steroids — I haven’t scanned the reports, but judging by the stats I’d guess — 2003?

WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE PITCHING?

In other repercussions in the world of sports… I hope George W Bush focuses on the issue of Steroids exclusively in his final State of the Union Address, and dedicates his final year in office to nothing else besides cleaning up professional baseball of Steroids. It beats anything else he might want to do with the office.

For the record, Jesus and the Devil are brothers.  Aren’t we all supposed to be Jesus’s brother?

I hate to dredge this thing up, because looking specifically for this item I see it framed this way by the illuminating news sources of Fox News and Newsmax, but…

A new CBS/New York Times national poll out Tuesday shows that 44 percent of Democratic primary voters say they were more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton because of her husband. But only 1 percent said they were more likely to vote for Barack Obama because of his supporter, Oprah Winfrey.

I suspect the “Oprah Effect” is a tad under-represented, and the “Bill Clinton” effect is over-represented since it’s already factored into Hillary Clinton’s support.  The problem is that, like it or not, and to some degree it is true and to some degree it is false, a Hillary Clinton presidency is viewed as a restoration of the previous presidency.  But then again, it would be amusing to see Bill Clinton endorse someone else.

I do not understand the Oprah Winfrey detractors — But 80 percent percent of those polled in the CBS/New York Times survey said the Oprah factor made no difference for Obama’s chances, and 14 percent even said she made them less likely to vote for him. — or, maybe I can understand it, but I don’t sympathize with it — Oprah Winfrey is at worst an innocuous figure so I’d be more along the lines of those 80 percent.

Anyway, it’s a comparison between apples and oranges, and this ledger of polls becomes meaningless.  Trudge up a different “Celebrity Endorser” and then see where it gets us.