Were you aware that North Korea now has a youtube channel?  The channel consists of what you might expect it to consist of.  There is also now a North Korea facebook page, and a North Korea twitter account.

Reportedly, the content of the page is meant to praise and honor North Korea, as well as condemn and ridicule South Korea and the U.S. Officials in South Korea are currently investigating the page to determine if it’s actually run by the government. If they do determine that the North Korean government is behind the page, South Koreans will be blocked from viewing the page (as they are currently blocked from North Korea’s Twitter page).

Well, it gives some people an excuse to jump to the file photo:

Where we see Kim Jong Il inventing the Internet.  Or, leading the Youth on the March.

There is something odd working here.  Back when Bill Clinton negotiated the release of those American hostages, I looked to google images for the photo ops — typing “Clinton” and “Kim Jong Il”.  It happened to be in the brief amount of time this became news and before the photographs became widely available.  So, when I looked up “Clinton” and “Kim Jong Il” in google, what showed up in the #2 slot?  An image from this website from an earlier Hillary Clinton quip about Kim Jong Il.

In the case of the narrative regarding the President — whoever that president might be — it’s always a little odd to see the same general poses, reusable for a little date.  At once the moment is trapped in time at a specific date, but if so — why can the photograph be pulled back up for the next time someone has need for a photograph to make a point of reference — say, a 44 percent approval rating and the President “At a moment of Uncertainty”, or —

Really, if not for the graying hair that comes with the job, I would think the President could just spend the first week in office throwing up a bunch of photographs for later use for the Press — expressions that match the natural narratives that follow “Decisions” and “Travails” and “Triumphs” and “Defeats”.  That being put aside, he (or she) would no longer have any use to be photographed.

Things become a little more interesting.  Yesterday I saw the classic Obama under Halo (seal of the president) image I’d become so familiar with ( a minor obsession of mine during the Bush Administration) — for a story about the rising percentage of Americans believing Obama a Muslim.

Noted from Lloyd Dangle’s “Troubletown”.  And noted from the Obama Protest in Seattle this week:  That’s Linden LaRouche eyes.  I assume that’s an homage to the thing about “Shark’s Eyes” and not to “Bette Davis Eyes”.  (This “Larouche Piano Player” can surely play that song.)

Solving the question of where the org gets its money — apparently from the Aerospace Industry and from a Kathy Magraw.  The money goes to… well, make a chart and see if it flows right.
$3,142,142 was paid to LaRouche Youth. This is not child support (LaRouche is said to have a rather comprehensive prescriptive abortion program) – it’s the cadre of young LaRouche followers, known as LaRouchies, who are instructed and who instruct in the teachings of LaRouche. The LaRouche Youth group has been compared to a cult. Photos show that members of the group wear pajamas in public.
Maybe the can hit Ed Asner up again?  Disatisfaction is growing, and for all we know he might be a late Hillary supporter:
He demanded I give them $10. I explained to him that I was a college student (probably a mistake based on what I read today online after this happened!) and that I couldn’t give much. I eventually gave him $2 just to shut him up. He also took my name, address, and e-mail (I refused to give out my phone number) and gave me a bunch of bogus literature–this old issue of a Scientific American wannabe magazine and these flyers he suggested I give to my local congressman (whom I know, and I know he would dismiss them as being garbage–Britain is our enemy and needs to be wiped out?!? Yeah right, and if that’s true, Al Gore may as well be a supporter of dino oil over green alternatives). The dude told me to invite everyone to come so he could raise $1000.
I bolted from that place as soon as I could. I lost $2, but it’s better than losing $10. Then I got home and looked up LaRouche, whose name was on some of these flyers. The more I read the less I wanted to know. I wrote to Mr. King, who runs a site detailing the evilness of these activities, to get some answers about what to do from here.
Mr. King told me not to panic and that the worst they’d probably do is call. Considering I never gave them my phone number, this seems likely. Junk mail doesn’t bother me, as it just goes in the recycling bin, and junk e-mail is even easier to filter. However, I’m still concerned about these guys–what if they come to my door or something?

Interesting…

The only really controversial bunch was a handful of people waving signs for the loony activist Lyndon LaRouche. I’m loathe to even show them, because they represent no actual constituency or ideology; their biggest interest is in drawing Hitler mustaches on people and handing out leaflets filled with conspiracy theories. They can be reliably expected to show up to any rally held for whatever reason in Seattle. But for the sake of completeness…

According to the Lloyd Dangle cartoon, the “Vocational Right” is hiring.

Chester A Arthur with a Hitler mustache.  Get on it now!

Some observations.  Summer Sheilds had a total of one media mention this week.  This is one more than Kesha Rogers.  Meanwhile, Rachel Brown Mania is sweeping — and we should note that she’s changed her middle name.

The new Ipsofacto poll has come out.  Rachel Brown is now heading straight on a collision course with destiny — bolting ahead to a 60 to 40 lead over Barney Frank.  Reports are, some are saying, that Bareny Frank is already working on his concession speech, and will shortly make it available on the website www.concessionspeechtothatladyIreferredtoasadiningroomtable.com.  Barney Frank will then follow the career trajectory of Jerry Vorhiss, who spent his life after his 1946 Congressional loss to Richard Nixon writing anti-Nixon books, and write periodic books blasting dining room tables.

The primary contest now just a mere formality, attention turns to Rachel Brown’s general election campaign against Republican Joel Pollack (No… he’s running in Illinois.).– or maybe Sean Hannity favorite Sean Bielet.  Reports are, some are saying, that the Republican campaigns are keeping a close eye on the upcoming Weenie Roost, which as of the 19th has mysteriously disappeared from the Rachel Brown campaign website listing of upcoming events.  They ready themselves to file a frivolous complaint to the FEC, should the hot dogs not properly be itemized in the filing report.

Interesting to note as we approach the one year anniversary of the speech that propelled Rachel Brown’s candidacy, from the book “That’s Not an Angry Mob, that’s My Mom”:
Chief among the trash talkers is Congressman Barney Frank.  During the health care debate he “quipped” (a word the press uses for remarks that are supposed to be jokes but aren’t actually funny) that being among tea party protesters was “like being trapped in a furniture warehouse.”  This echoed an insult he hurled at a constituent during a townhall meeting.  “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.”
Granted, the target of that second insult was a Lyndon Larouche kook, but she was a citizen.  Why not just tell her, “I disagree with you” and politely move on to a more sane questioner. — Michael Graham, p 103
The book also contains a prominently placed blurb from Glenn Beck, who recently promised that after his radio tv and other media gigs go away, he will be keeping up the fight by yelling jeremiads against Woodrow Wilson to passing cars.

Wait.  Is this person calling it all a scam?

If Rachel Brown is as wily as I expect she is (or maybe I’m just cynical from having seen too much precedent), she’s not looking to win — but to run a controversial campaign that titillates national hard-right groups into sending their carpetbagging money, in their dream of unseating Barney Frank. Add a shrewd accountant, and there’s potential to build up some nice benefits even as the campaign loses.Follow the money. To me, this looks like the Westboro Baptist Church (of Kansas) — causing controversy and offense for profit.  […]
Now that I’ve been to the web site, I take it all back. Rachel Brown is a Lyndon LaRouche supporter, described (I think accurately) as ‘one of the strangest political groups in American history’.I got as far as Rachel rambling on in a video on her site about mining sources of Helium(3) on the moon that can be used as a power source for fusion nuclear reactors, and quantizing light waves …. I’m done.

He might be glad to hear that:

Meanwhile, a group has has been formed to oppose Brown and her tactics.  I believe they’ve registered under the name Everyone.

Meantime, reports are — some are saying — that trouble is brewing with the Summer Shields write-in campaign.  It comes from a rumored break of support from radio commentator Michael Savage.  It has not gone unnoticed that Mr. Savage has failed to mention the Shields campaign for months now.  Speculation has arisen that Michael Savage has grown angry over the lack of mention in the campaign literature and campaign appearances of Mr. Shields.  The Ipsofacto exit poll for the Primary showed a full 63 percent of the zero votes that Summer Shields received in the primary contest against Nancy Pelosi came as a direct result of the Savage word of Endorsement, and the lack of reciprocality has angered the radio host.  Alternate speculations rest on the idea that perhaps Michael Savage has simply forgotten about the whole monolouge, and moved back to his generic spiel about how all ther residents of the city he lives in and loathes with a passion are a bunch of sausages.  One other possibility is that he disagrees with this Big Bad Government.

Armed with posters showing Democratic leaders with Hitler moustaches, two San Francisco women took to Red Bluff streets Wednesday, setting up just outside the Post Office on Walnut Street.
Campaigning on behalf of Lyndon LaRouche and LaRouche-backed congressional candidate Summer Shields, Tiffiny W and Joelle W, both of whom declined to give their last names, called for greater infrastructure spending and President Barack Obama’s impeachment.

Has gained one Republican supporter, you see at the end of the article.  We await to see if he takes the time to write his name on the ballot.

At the time of Kesha Rogers’s primary victory in March, I was informed that this is “huge”, huger than Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts — and watch out for that “other” Brown in Massachusetts.  Name dropping is kind of cool. Regionally, we turn to a neighboring state of Texas — where Oklahoma Democrats have nominated a Rogers of their own!
A man who runs for office nearly every election year but doesn’t formally campaign is the Democratic nominee to take on U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., this year.
Jim Rogers, a colorful perennial candidate, walked away the winner of the Democratic primary Tuesday with 65 percent of the vote over an Oklahoma City lawyer with an extensive career in business.
Name recognition and a well-known last name in Oklahoma fueled Rogers’ vote totals. The former college professor, who refuses to say where he taught, received 157,926 votes. His opponent, Mark Myles, who worked for IBM for 20 years before he went to law school, got 83,709 votes.
“Names matter,” said Ben Odom, a lawyer who is a longtime political consultant. “If you’re going to run for office in Oklahoma, you can’t have a better name than Rogers.”

Kesha Rogers has amped up her campaign rhetoric.

“Obama is clinically insane. The deep personality flaws of an obsessively self-obsessed President Obama, driving him to destroy the United States, are of the same failed quality as the Emperor Nero who destroyed Rome, and the Adolf Hitler who destroyed Germany (and much of Europe, too).
“Real patriots won’t sit around complaining about how Obama is going to murder the country; knowing his personality and intentions, they will act now, to force him out of office before the crime is committed. Anyone who doesn’t join my campaign, and demand that President Obama be impeached or resign now, has proven themselves to be just as insane, or as much of a traitor as Barack Obama is.”

Meh.  What does Jim Rogers have to say about this?

In other election news, Ron Paulite favorite Peter Schiff — who ran on a campaign “if elected, Doom; if not elected, Doom” — lost the Connecticut Republican Primary for Senate.  How is this relevant?  I don’t know — you tell me.

It could be worse.

Those who have tended to compromise themselves by doubting this forecast during the past weeks, should think back to Aug 15, 1971, just 39 years ago today. Remember how Lyndon LaRouche stood alone against the whole world then, with just a tiny handful of friends, and fully and precisely forecast that epoch-making point of inflection. Every known economist stood on the other side; not only did they mock LaRouche and deny his forecast,— they even proved that it was a scientific impossibility, or so they claimed. In those days, LaRouche had relatively almost none of the international influence that he enjoys today. But he not only stuck to his egregious forecast; he loudly and abrasively insisted upon it, fully confident in the true scientific method of human creativity, of which we know so much more today than we did then. […]

This military-cum-scientific leadership role of ours has required successive scientific breakthroughs throughout, but even qualitatively much more so today, when LaRouche’s collaboration with “the Basement” has quite transformed this function.

Why is this tagged with “neo-con”?

The Jonathan Chait book “The Big Con”, makes a good mention of Lyndon Larouche — blames someone one degree of separation, maybe two, for Economic Disaster.  Jude Wanninski.  The upshot is that liberals called him a crackpot from back to the 1980s on, and conservatives called him a crackpot from the 1990s on, and one item of evidence presented is … y’know.  Was she the chief person behind that widely believed claim that Hussein never gassed the Kurds?  Somethings were annoying — sitting there in the “Now Saddam Hussein is not a nice guy, But” alongside some people who wouldn’t even accept that much..

This week’s banished sock puppet is  Hanë qen qimedredhur.  I have not translated it to know its meaning.  I assume it’s very clever.

Elections in Australia!  I’ll be sure to note the results.

These things come down the pike in perpetuity.

What was once rebellious is now mainstream and inescapable; what was once suggestive is now graphically explicit — and, most worryingly of all, it’s being aimed at a fan base that is getting younger and younger.

Mike Stock (one third of the legendary pop factory Stock, Aitken and Waterman) has publicly attacked pop culture for prematurely ‘sexualising’ today’s children. He believes it’s all gone too far: ‘These days you can’t watch modern stars — such as Britney Spears or Lady Gaga — with a two-year-old.

‘Now, 99 per cent of the charts is R&B and 99 per cent of that is pornography.’

Granted, the linked source has bigger issues to fry regarding Lady Gaga.

Statistically, “kids today” are engaging in less sex than “kids yesterday”.  Maybe it’s about to explode,and perhaps a sudden new wave of sexual commodification has lent different affects in de-sensitizing the generations.

The thing is, I don’t think there is any up-tik.  No, I have no parenting suggestions on raising your kids in the long since plateu-ed mass pop culture.  And I say “plateu”.  At some point in the past thirty or more years, we reached the point where the innuendo became blatant, double entendres became less double, and have been at that point ever since.  Mind you, the word “rock and roll” is a euphemism itelf.

Give me the lyrics to this song — an Instant Stripper classic I’m sure, and I will not be able to tell you which of the past few decades it came from.  Looks like Vintage 80s Motley Crue?

Actually, the message of the song — all things considered — is much better than this song, which is played within a two hour radius of this minute on your local “Classic Rock” radio station.

From the Halls of Respectable and clean, the boy band of the early 1990s, a group that my mother (who, in car trips on vacation would flick the station between NPR and to something that’d ad blurb with “No Hard No Hard, No Rap”) bought from the CD Club — Boyz 2 Men — came a Middle School dance staple which largely posed the question — “All at once or one a time?”

I skip back to fifth grade, and I’m somewhat taken aback to remember a smart and aware girl talking to the teacher about such things, surrounded by — absurdly enough — “I’m Too Sexy for My Shirt”.  Surely George Michael or Madonna put out something more notable at the time, right?

The low point in terms these matters — and we’ve had nothing as bad as this — your various teen sexpots marketed in part as jailbait does not approach the depths of depravity as this song from 1971 — this song.
… Interestingly enough, she may have  had it both ways on meaning.

But regarding our depraved culture — here you see just how young we’re hitting at everyone.

As of this posting, you still have something over an hour in the state of Washington to hand in your ballot.

And, before the night passes away, it is worth taking .  Obama broke the Sound Barrier — or something like that — to get over to Seattle to ensure that Patty Murray doesn’t somehow slip through the cracks in Washington’s lame “Top Two” Primary — that apathy doesn’t somehow produce a “Democratic” candidate along the lines of Oklahoma’s Jim Rogers — as has been wont to happen this cycle.
We await to see if what has been wont to happen on the Republican side happens — that come if Clint Didier beating out Dino Rossi.

But, for the local color and celebration of American Democracy where Everyone gets onto the ballot — and Jim Rogers continues on to the November ballot if a state party is apathetic enough — here are several candidates that you’ll never hear from again.
Until the invariably run again in two years.

Will Baker who prefers the “Reform Party”, a political party I’d thought had passed into the nethers of Ross Perot’s closet.  He’s taking forward with Perot’s old platform ideas, and is running against the Conspiracy.

Fact: Secretary of State Sam Reed and several County Auditors are manipulating the 2010 U.S. Senate election. How?Fact: Reed has cancelled the entire 2010 printed Washington State Primary Voters’ Pamphlet and is hiding information about how to appear in some counties local Voters’ Pamphlet from some candidates.
He’s also running against Barack Obama’s strong arm election tactics in his 1996 Illinois legislator race.  Interestingly enough, Obama’s campaign ran with that, supporters telling people that it shows that he is indeed “tough”.

Goodspaceguy is running.  I say let his voters pamphlet information speak for itself.

Elected Experience:
Ten times, voters rejected Goodspaceguy’s economic program!

Prediction: he will never pull a Jim Rogers.  Name is not right.

Dear fellow sheeple, you are the flim-flammed, manipulated power base. Please think of your Earth as a beautiful spaceship, traveling around your Sun in your solar system. Please think of yourselves as crewmembers, helping to operate and improve Spaceship Earth (for even the homeless.)

It is your destiny to start the orbital space colonization of your solar system. You have already spent the money! Consequently you should already have more than 200 habitats orbiting your Earth, Moon, Sun, and Mars.  But you don’t! Why? Because your wasteful leaders have not studied orbital space colonization. Instead, yearly, they routinely waste billions and billions of your dollars.

Mike Latimer is running as a Theocrat.

My name is Mike Latimer, and I am running for US Senate. It’s not an accident that our nation is having so many problems at this time. God is trying to get our attention and if He doesn’t get it soonour nation’s woes can get a lot worse. God has the answer for all our problems, but first He wants to correct our attitude as a nation. I believe the best way to do that is for us to understand His heart. His desire is to bless our nation to the point of making the rest of the world envies of the blessings He is bestowing on us. The catch is, we are tying his hands by our actions. We have kicked God out of our schools, out of our government and out of many of our churches along with His laws. So how do we fix it? Invite him back in to give Him the honor He is so richly due and set our laws to match His. Stop the abortions, stop the homosexual agenda being pushed forward as an acceptable lifestyle, put restrictions on the pornography that is invading our lives, and give the Bible, prayer, and Jesus their rightful place in our schools. We need leaders that hear God’s voice and will follow His direction to set our nation on His course and find His blessings for us.

William Edward Chovil is a perennial.

What kind of America do Americans want? The one our founders planned for us? The one America’s anti-founders are giving us now?

Skipping to the Fourth Congressional District.  This is going to be a bit loopy, I suspect.

What you need to know here is that there is a candidate who prefers the “Tea Party“– who says:

Return this country to the rule of Common Law, as the Constitution requires (Common Law only has two precepts: “Do all you have agreed to do,” the basis of all contracts, and “Do not diminish the life, liberty, or property of another.” Following those two simple rules would eliminate the need for more than 90% of the often unconstitutional statutes currently encumbering our law books to the point of insanity).

Thank you, Thomas Jefferson.
And there’s a Constitution Party candidate.

Also, Gordon Allen Pross… somehow didn’t make the ballot.  Though he once upon a time intended on it.  This marks the first time since he started running in 1998.

, and

According to Richard Viguerie, the transition team had not even returned Jerry Falwell’s telephone calls since the election.  “Never mind who supported Reagan in 1980,” Viguerie said.  “Who supported him for fifteen years before 1980?”

This was revisionism.  Falwell and the Moral Majority had indeed organized significant registration drives in the churches that by Falwell’s estimate had “Registered four million new voters who voted for the first time in their lives” and “activated another 10 million or so” who had been registered but sat out the past few elections “because of frustration.”  But the religious right had not settled on Reagan until 1979.  The New Right had never done much for Reagan and continued to complain about him, all the while insisting that it had catpulted him to power.  Within a month of the inauguration, Conservative Digest had denounced the president’s appointment of James Baker as Chief of Staff, Nixon-Ford “retreads”, Kissinger proteges, and even veterans of the Carter Administration.  It complained about the shortage of “Reaganites in the Reagan Administration.”

The first year of Reagan’s administration brought conservatives other disappointments.  Reagan’s 1981 tax cut was quite popular with supply siders, as well as members of the New Right and the Religious Right, thought it was not as large as they had hoped.  But then the president fulfilled a campaign promise to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court designed to reassure women of his commitment to gender equality.  Conservatives rightly suspected that Sandra Day O’Connor would not provide a secure vote against abortion.  Her nomination reflected the WHite House’s “growing attitude of indifference” to New Right and Religious Right objectives, they complianed.  […] And Reagan’s own Secretary of the Interior, conservative Icon James Watt, declared the Sagebrush Rebellion over: “I couldn’t afford to have what I’d helped create eat me.” […]

Had Reagan turned into another Nixon?  Forty-five conservative leaders gathered in Washington to evaluate the administration’s first year and signed a statement drafted by M Stanton Evans.  “Co-signers range across the broad spectrum of conservativsm — from New Right to neo-conservative to Old Right,” a White House aide wrote James Baker.  “Their theme is one of deep disappointment with the Administration’s recent performance in virtually all areas — economy, foreign affairs, defense, social issues, and personnel matters.” […]

Nineteen eighty-two brought fresh wounds.  Reagan’s State Department talked of curtailing arms sales to Taiwan.  The Presidents responded to budgetary deficits that supply-side skeptics had predicted by promoting an enormous tax increase that scaled back his 1981 tax cut.  Though Reagan called for overturning Roe V Wade when he was warned that “we are in a critical moment in the relationship between the President and Prolife activists,” his appeal went nowhere.  He also proposed legislation that would deny tax exemptions to private schools that practiced racial discrimination.  White House staffers reported that the right’s Senate stalwarts, Orrin Hatch and Strom Thurmond were “livid” about the school legislation and the situation fued “the fires of those who claim that the non-Reaganites have taken control of things.”  Even National Review became uneasy.

“Has Ronald Reagan deserted Conservatives?”  Conservative Digest asked an assortment of neoconservative, conservative, New Right, religious right, and supply-side leaders.  Most condemned the president’s record on economic policy and his failure to address family issues and wanted him to take a stronger stance against the Soviet Union.  Richard Viguerie sent the president a copy of the issue.  “He tried to write in sorrow, not anger about my betrayal of the Conservative Cause,” Reagan noted in his diary.  “He used crocodile tears for ink.” […]

What had Reagan accomplished in his eight years?  Viguerie asked.  As president “he proclaimed the passing of the ‘evil empire’ … picked supporters of detente for the cabinet … bailed out Soviet agriculture … bailed out international banks that lent money to anti-American countries … and approved some of the biggest taxes in history.”  (The White House was just as contemptuous of the New Right:  One aide called Viguerie and Paul Weyrich “professional bellyachers” who had given up on Reagan “the day after he was inagurated.”  Neoconservative Irving Kristol professed not to be disappointed because he had never had high expectations in an op-ed entitled “The Reagan Revolution that Never Was.”

Right Star Rising 1974-1980, pgs 364-366, Laura Kalman

An extended comparison between Regan and FDR reveals a deeper aspect of political alignment that is usually not captured in the simple model of one party replacing another as the majority.  Each man took on his own party and by degrees successfully transformed it, while at the same time frustrating and deflecting the course of the rival party.

This process occurred slowly and against much resistance.  Like conservatives in the Reagan era, liberals during FDR’s time were often frustrated with him and thought the New Deal fell far short of what it should accomplish.  The New Republic lamented in 1940 “the slackening of pace in the New Deal,” and also that “the New Deal has been disappointing in its second phase.”  The philosopher John Dewey and Minnesota’s Democratic governor Floyd Olson (really?  He’s going to drag Floyd Olson as FDR’s critic into this?  Then again, who the hell is Jerry Falwell?  Of course, these matters are what makes any comparison to the current President fall apart a tad), among others, complained that the New Deal hadn’t gone far enough to abolish the profit motive as the fundamental organizing principle of the economy, and Socialist Party standard-bearer Norman Thomas scorned FDR’s “pale pink pills.”  Historian Watler Millis wrote in 1938 that the New Deal had “been reduced to a movement with no program, no popular party strength behind it, and with no candidate.”  Much the same kind of thing was said of Reagan at the end of his second term.  Midge Decter wrote in Commentary:  “There was no Reagan Revolution, not even a skeleton of one to hange in George Bush’s closet.”  “In the end,” concurred William Niskanen, chairman of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, “There was no Reagan Revolution.”

Liberal ideolouges who despaired over the limits of the New Deal overlooked that FDR had to carry along a number of Democrats who opposed the New Deal.  Reagan similarly had to carry along [etc. etc]

Steven F Haywood  The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution 1980-1989

An interesting case study of the political fallout of Ethics Charges.  A political party does not accrue any credit for a process of “Draining the Swamp”.  Your Tom Delay situation — Ethics Committee jammed up — is equal to your Charlie Rangel situation — brought forward.  Annoyingly enough, this suggests the political impetus is kind of non-existent.
So, Charlie Rangel’s floor speech… Entertaining.  But he looks guilty.  Maxine Waters on the other hand — looks like much ado about nothing.  Look into it yourownself.

I post that basically because I’m wandering into the somewhat tired “equivalency” partisan school a little, and I wanted to offset it with some non-equivalency.  As always for these matters, the real problems in the elected government are things just legal and unquestioned understood.

A couple of years ago, there was some discussion about a poll of elementary school children — name 5 non-presidents in American history.  It might have been limited to the nineteenth century, but I don’t quite recall.  It’s a good simple poll which measures a certain zietgiest.  The answers terrified a certain segment of Conservatives in the William Buckley “Why have I never heard of this Harriet Tubman?” manner — too many March of the Rights, not enough Wright Brothers and the Inventive American Ingenuity and Expansion of America.  Why, wait five decades and I bet you Harvey Milk will appear on the list!

So, now quick!  Name the 50 Greatest Monsters in American History!  Or maybe 25…

Evidently Jimmy Carter is number one.
Frankly, this is embarrassing. Putting the Clintons, Pelosi, Reid, Gore, Sharpton, and other contemporary Democrats ahead of someone like Nathan Bedford Forest who was at least partly responsible for creating the KKK after the Civil War and spent his spare nights riding around the countryside whipping, lynching, and burning at the stake innocent African Americans demonstrates an extraordinary ignorance of American history.
Surely they could play the game of “Democrats were the Segregationists and Jim Crowists!” and put up the long list of Ben Tillman, et als.

The thing about this is that if you floated the question over to, say “Democratic Underground”, I have little doubt you’d get a similar effect.  It’s the “101 People Who Are Screwing up America” and its liberal rebuttal “101 People Who Are Really Screwing Up America“.  It’s “Liberal Fascism” and its perhaps more accurate on the continuum but tedious rebuttal.
Note on kos: the blog remains in my rss feed.  Something that popped in my mind recently — Kos actually doesn’t write anything in that blog that’s terribly interesting — anything worth reading is from other contributors.

Moving over into the fringe.  I’ve been watching prisonplanet extoll the virtues of Rand Paul.  Apparently the “Mainstream Media” has been discredited because the “Aqua Buddha” college days kidnapping story somehow or other turned out to have UNRAVELLED with its mischaracterization EXPOSED.  Apparently too the media has been exposed for its HYPOCRISY what with the lack of coverage paid to Gore and Clinton sexual assault and rape accusers.  Fox News trumpeted Juanita Broadwork until the cows came home.  Al Gore received his long spot-light in the gloom, probably overshadowing news of his legal vindication.  The Rand Paul story was treated, even by Paul’s destractors, wtih the “This isn’t the most serious of things, But…” caveat.  You see what you want to see in terms of media conspiracy.

I was curious to see if this story would be jumped on — Florida state legislator candidate calls for Internment Camp in Middle of Country for Illegal Immigrants.  Certainly the first part of the equation falls into the far right paranoid nugget of the past half century adopted by Jones.  The second part kind of doesn’t.  It was put up, though not on par with supporting Rand Paul.  The comments section veer toward the crowd voting for the candidate and favoring her Internment Camps.  I guess their paranoia can’t jump from the logic of “First they came for” over them.

Try this one for both Ideological Presentism and lack of balance.
“The contempt for ordinary Americans displayed by the ruling class is reaching critical mass. There may never have been a time in American history when the governing, academic, cultural, and media elites have been more manifestly disdainful of the country’s values, traditions, principles, and people.”
You know, absent knowing this came from the National Review, and particularly stopping at the end of the first sentence, I could swear this would veer into the territory covered here — where our acceptable high employment has become a bargaining chip.  No.  Mostly this is cultural claptrap.

Take the Muslim Community Center.  It’s being built at the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory some blocks away from the spot where a group of Muslims killed a whole heck of a lot of Christians, Jews (never mind the anti-semitic conspiracy theory that the state of Israel let them know), Atheists, Muslims, etc.
Well, this is stupid.

History will long marvel at the whirlwind of activities that brought Dennis Kucinich into the Presidency.  It remains unclear if the dual resignation of President Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden with the sudden and unexpected uprising vote from the Democratic Caucus to unseat Nancy Pelosi as Speaker in favor of Dennis Kucinich was coordinated, or two coincidental happenings.

President Dennis Kucinich wasted no time, and announced that he was tripling the current number of military personel in Afghanistan.  Moving onto domestic matters, President Kucinich announced plans to curtail the National Government and the creeping Socialism he’s been eyeing.

When asked about the increasing voices of distrust from many historically supportive Kucinich supporters, White House Secretary Mark Penn huffed, “These people wouldn’t be happy if Ralph Nader were President.”
And Robert Gibbs just laughed.

Nixon, of course, had plans for Connally that went beyond the 1972 ticket if they could be arranged.  Erlichman recalled much later:  “Ond eay the President, Connally, and I were discussing our legislative problems.  Nixon remarked that over the years we had created a working coalition of Congressional Conservatives and Moderates which had in it as many Democrats as Republicans.  Nixon and Connally speculated that Nixon had the support of millions of conservative Democratic voters too.  Looking ahead . . . Nixon and Connally began daydreaming about forming a new political party which might attract voters all across the middle and right of the political spectrum.  They could realign Congress too. . . . We tossed out some names, borrowed from other countries.  We talked about the true meaning of the labels “Liberal” and “Conservative”.

“Nixon speculated that he could get the new party started by calling a convention of the political leaders of the Center and Right.  The Nixon people in each state could be formed into nuclei to create state parties.  Nixon and Connally would be elected president and vice president in 1972 by the new coalition party and could bring in with them a majority in both houses of Congress.  Both Nixon and Connally had been in politics long enough to realize the near impossibility of quickly creating such a re-alignment,  but they were sufficiently intrigued with the notion that they wanted to have more thought given to it. . . . I learned later that there had been a conversation between Nixon and Connally at which they agreed to wait until after the 1972 election to consider the new party further.  But as far as they were concerned, it remained a possibility.  I wonder if 1974 might have seen the birth of a coalition party of everyone but the damn liberals had Watergate not intervened.”

According to neutral observer, Robert Sam Anson, in his book about Nixon in Exile, Nixon finally concluded that Connally could reach the presidency by running for it himself as a Republican, after which the “Republican Party would be abolished four years later.”  In its place, Anson wrote, a “new party would be formed along British political lines. . . . Though Connally, as president, would be the party’s titular head, Nixon planned a major role for himself in its shaping and running.  From his operatives in every state would come the party nucleus; from him personally would come its guiding principles.  He also would direct the process of creating the assembly of its first convention, the mode and manner of its operation, and, he was certain, its eventual domination of the American political scene.”

— Jules Witcover, Very Strange Bedfellows (Nixon and Agnew), 209-210

Large excerpt from Ehrichman Witness to Power 259-260

Why should the dream die?  We should all get to work to create a Nixon Party, under the Guiding priciples and political philosophy of Richard Nixon.

.,………………………………

Mr. Roosevelt’s hope to free the Democratic Party from its dependence upon the solid South is based upon his confidence in the New Deal control of such states as Pennsylvania.  He is too astute a politician to believe that 1940 will repeat the sweep of 1936.  But I think he believes that in a number of so-called “crucial” states — Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, California, his 1932, 1934, and 1936 election victories have brough the Democratic organization to unprecedented political strenght.  The organization in these states, having received its great impetus because of Mr. Roosevelt is, and doubtless will remain dependably New Deal.  If it can remain strong enough to continue to carry those states for the party then — obviously — there is much less need than in the past to worry about the Solid South.

Moreover, Mr. Roosevelt knows that if he manages to keep control of the Democratic organization, he will keep the party name.  If he keeps the party name it is is obvious, because of the momentum of habit and tradition — that the party will continue to carry a large part of the South. […]

There is, of course, another possibility in the political upheaval which is appearing in the wake of Mr. Roosevelt’s second New Deal.  It is possible — though, as yet, hardly probable — that the New Deal may be oliged to throw over the Democratic Party, lock, stock, and barrel.  I do not think that Mr. Roosevelt would relish any such move — regardless of how confident he might be that he could make it successful.  He is versed, as few men, in the history of party politics in the United States and he knows the odds against third party movements.  If the New Deal becomes, in effect, a third party movement, it will not be because that was Mr. Roosevelt’s first choice.

Roosevelt and Then?  Stanley High, 1937, 277-279.  Actually the most interesting chapter of this book is about the young turks — Maury Maverick and others, due to the question “What became of the?”  Pretty much voted out of office in the coming decade.