Archive for May, 2011

the liberal media exposed

Friday, May 13th, 2011

 

This article, about the retirement of Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl, when it was posted in the mid-day, finished with the sentence “Then put up the Republican stuff”.  This is obviously a prompt for him to remember to put up Republican stuff before posting.  I believe he put up the “Republican stuff” before he posted the item (prompt included), though, as I did not notice any new “Republican stuff” in the article.

When I refreshed the article, this was removed.  Since then, he has posted a list of Democratic Senators retiring — which I suppose qualifies as “Democrat stuff”.  Or maybe, as they all represent possible GOP pick-ups, it is Republican stuff?  Who can say, with the opaqueness of Carl Hulse’s agenda and hustlings?

 

Meantime, the fallout from the John Ensign corruption revelations brings to question…

… if Oklahoma could do a redo on that last election between Tom Coburn and — or, if this had come out doing the election — would Jim Rogers have been able to exploit it to a Senate seat?

Newt Gingrich — the symbol of French Resistance

Thursday, May 12th, 2011

“In particular, Gingrich is a devotee of the historian Arnold J Toynbee, who meditated on the concept of ‘departure and return’ — the idea that great leaders have to leave (or be banished from) their kingdoms before they can better themselves and return as conquering heroes. One of Newt’s heroes, the French general and statesman Charles de Gaulle, embodies just this kind of romantic narrative, having spent 12 years out of power before returning to lead his country. So does Ronald Reagan, who travelled the country after losing his bid for the Republican nomination in 1976, then came roaring back to win it all four years later.

You know who also was obsessed with Charles de Gaulle?

This reminds me of Hubert Humphrey congratulating Richard Nixon on the telephone on Election night.  Richard Nixon ends by suggesting that Hubert Humphrey come back for another presidential run, like Churchill managed to become Prime Minister at the age of 69.  Humphrey quips, “We Minnesotans have a bad reputation for running too often.”

Of course, Humphrey made himself “available” in 1976, though he didn’t run — only grudgingly waving out with a declaration that he can count in regards to the number of delegates Carter had accumulated.  This was probably the last time a presidential candidate was floated about seriously in the “standing by for brokered convention, if called upon” vein.

Newsmax skips over the de Gaulle angle and heads straight to Reagan.  But that’s okay, as Gingrich’s press releases skipped over Nixon in describing his planned “triumphant return”.

Watching yourself watching yourself watching yourself

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

Y’know…

… I understand watching yourself on the television.  I really do.  It would be a surprise if he didn’t watch himself.  What I don’t understand is video-taping yourself watching yourself on the television.  I suppose there might be some surveillance purpose to having the camera on yourself, but I imagine the value of the video is rather short-lived.  Better to keep the footage tv broadcasts of you and watch them endlessly, right?

But I guess Osama will want to watch himself watch himself on television.  A few more loops to the infinity cover.

In related Osama Bin Laden news, Clyde Lewis disappoints.

Osama bin laden, one of the C.I.A’s greatest assets has finally been reported dead, a convenient distraction from the firestorm of controversy about Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Bah.  Birtherism.  The most transparent stupid of the conspiracy junkets.  Already slashed before the Osama killing.  Unless Obama is trying to build up on having “dealt with Birtherism politically”, that realm of thought doesn’t even make sense.

I think “Freedom 970” (and Alpha have just snatched up, or moved from the defunct fm station, the call letters “KUFO”) might no longer have Phil Hendrie at night (it seemed he wasn’t on last night), so I ended up at Clyde Lewis for a couple ten minute juants.  So we’ve the questions along the lines of: What is wrong with the electrical plug? f.

Barack Hussein Obama and Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Two Men who Lyndon Larouche has Called “Hitler”.

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

You thought you knew what riding in a motorcycle club was all about….but you’ve never met Douche LaRouche.
No, but… Maybe you —
have repeatedly harrassed Lyndon Larouchies at card table setups in airports and public spaces. Does that mean I know the heart of darkness when I see it?

Point:
“Frankly, (reporters) are a distraction to us,” one of the sign holders said. The guy also refused to answer any questions about the LaRouche organization.
“Well, you know, I’ve noticed over the years that the media lies,” the man said. […]
This encounter with the LaRouche minions mirrors what happened the last time we tried to learn more about the LaRouche protestors and their stance.
Rather than stand behind their free speech, they scurry into the proverbial shadows, like cockroaches, when questioned.

And Counterpoint: Actually, this isn’t all that interesting, really.  In the end it fills its “Life’s passing parade of Just background images” fuction.  I do sympathize with the “another politician” guys — and jump to 12:34 for the Larouchies explaining Larouche’s prison sentence.  That’s kind of interesting, maybe?  Skip to 24:54, for the reaction to the ultimate question, “anyway you can donate a few dollars?”

This is better:
“Military of Ideas” was sitting at the table, taking a break from the action. Feeling feisty, I put the stroller in park, pulled down the canopy to block the boy’s view—just in case things got nasty—and smiled, hoping to elicit another catchy slogan. Thinking she had a live one, she blurted out in a pissy voice, “What are you doing to stop the war?” Prepared for a question like this, I responded in an affected voice, “Well, what are you doing to stop the war?” I could have easily said, “I know you are but what am I?” “Voting for LaRouche!” she sassed back. Without missing a beat, I responded, “Voting is stupid.” My old anarchist days were resurfacing and I was ready for a fight. Circle the “A” motherfuckers, I’m back!

Though, the youtube video has a man complaining about all the self-described Anarchists swayed by the Cult of Personality of Obama. So, point / counterpoint there.

Thinking back to his conversation with Alex Jones, slipping out his story — he was an FDR Democrat, saw things change under Truman.  A fuller story is told in LPAC’s documentary of 2008 — “1932:  Speak Not of Parties But of Universal Principles” — to this effect:

The 1932 USA Presidential election was a crucial turning point in USA and world history.  London and Wall Street were prepared to implement a version of the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini in the United States itself, and they were making great efforts to control the Democratic Party and stop Roosevelt’s nomination.  Obviously, against tremendous odds, Roosevelt succeeded, but out of what tradition did such a man as FDR emerge?

We’ve got this guy.  The “official LaRouche arm of the California Democratic Party” is called the “Franklin Delano Roosevelt Legacy Democratic Club”.  And it goes on and on for this org.
According to a book I read, the tradition that such a man FDR emerged from was the Hitler tradition.  Um…
Roosevelt’s fascist-flavored monetist approach to the “bank holiday” and other features of his administration are clear instances of evil motivations serving special interests at the expense of the vital interests of the United States.  Otherwise, especially in respect to Roosevelt’s persistence with an economic recovery program whose pre-ordained failure would be ABC to any competent economist, the Roosevelt administration was predominantly, sincerely stupid.

The US electorate never understood the Roosevelt administration in any actually relevant detail; rather, they blindly trusted it, as a child trusts the fact of his particular parents, as more or less ‘the way things are decreed to be.’  Nothing yet had developed to disturb the controlling self-delusions of more than a relative handful.

The breakdown of the monetary order during 1929-1931, and the immediate economic sequence of the monetary failure broke the will of America to continue to resist the fascist impulse.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, beginning in 1933, attempted to exploit the shock-effects of the social crisis to attempt to introduce consciously fascist policies and obtained instead a compromise, a thinly disguised corporatism politely termed the “New Deal”.

It must be emphasized that the Wall Street backing of Roosevelt’s first election and the installation of Hitler were complementary efforts.  Hitler could have been pulled down — possibly without war — by the United States at any time prior to the 1938 Munich agreements.  The US could have sent the French army — two or three divisions would have sufficed — into the Rhineland in 1936, and Hitler would have collapsed.  The economic and monetary power of the United States respecting Britain and France would have sufficed to prevent the 1938 Munich agreement and could have induced the Tukachevsky Plan if we had wished.  Although the US capacity for political and related action was admittedly deliminited by the internal political situation inside the US, it is obscenely false to profess that a Roosevelt administration did not consciously refrain from employing those preventative measures within the existing discretionary capabilities of the government.  Shattered as the US was by the Depression, we had the power to determine, marginally by crucially, the policies of England and France in such respects.

Nor can Roosevelt defenders argue that he was either uninformed of the implications of the Nazi regime, or profess that public opinion prevented him from taking preventative actions otherwise within the means.  The 1934-1945 period — refining the use of the press as a “brainwashing” tool against the US population and Roosevelt himself was the “confidence man’s confidence man.”

Not only was Roosevelt’s administration pro-fascist in foreign policy, but also in domestic policy.  General Hugh Johnson and the National Recovery Act left no doubt of that.  With the defeat of the NRA and Congressional and Supreme Court resistance and foot-dragging on other legislation, executive actions, and labor struggles to the same effect, Roosevelt’s administration was compelled politically to a compromise, semi-fascist policy, called the “New Deal.”  Such direct imitations of the Hitler regime’s labor-intensive Arbeitsdienst measures and BdM institutions as the Works Project Administration (WPA), Public Works Administration (WPA), and the Civilian Conservation Corp were not only imitations of the Nazi regime, but consciously so.  The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was another fascist “zero growth” oriented atrocity of the same genre.  On the inevitable re-organization after the Bank Holiday, his approach paralleled Schacht’s reorganization of the Nazi economy in method if not in detailed form.

Roosevelt by using corporatist methods — eg, the NRA — and by emulating the Hitler regime’s Arbeitsdienst in forms such as the WPA, CCC, and so forth, took credit for the autocannibalistic process of modest recovery of 1933-1937, and called the whole unwholesome mass the “New Deal.”  It is a wretched delusion to imagine that Roosevelt’s policies in any significant way contributed to an economic recovery during the middle of the 1930s.

Since Gerald Ford backed down in face of a monstrous election fraud on the morning of November 3, 1976, amid blackmailing rumors from Rockefellar circles concerning Ford’s alleged “KCIA taint,” and since others predominantly, wishfully refused to believe up through December 13, 1976 US Labor Party warnings of what a Carter administration in a chain of horror-stories going back through Kennedy, Roosevelt, Wilson, Buchanan, Van Buren, and Andrew Jackson — with Republicans Theodore Roosevelt and Taft properly thrown into the collection.  Unless forces are mustered adequate to change US nominal policy now, the result may well the physical extinction of our nation this year or next.

The same consistent expressions of American Toryism run through Beard, Arnold, Williams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and the Carter administration.  These people are not Americans, but the grotesque reflections of an alien social disease of heteronomy which has poisoned the body politic.  It is within the same context that the philosophically fascist film Roots is to be appreciated.

After the events of the Kennedy administration, and the increasingly savage assault upon those institutions and principles which were our nation’s heritage and conscience, the Rockefeller – linked and other financier elites represented in the Kennedy administration project stripped much of our nation’s youth — and most of all themselves — of the last shards of a credible self-image of intellectual integrity.

The Kennedy administration represents a first attempt to launch the kind of intentionally-decisive successive confrontations with the Soviet leadership, along lines outlined in Henry Kissinger’s earlier brinkmanship doctrinal piece, for which the present Carter Administration is an inflated parody, down to Jimmy Carter’s cultivation of a “Kennedy coiffure”.

Hitler Mustaches on both of them! (go to MISCELLANEOUS, 2:46 pm)

……………

Y’know.  dumping these passages and paragraphs and smashing them together (if you want to set them apart, feel free to just go to the index page under “Roosevelt”), from The Case of Walter Lippmann, I am surprised.  I somehow imagined that the org evaded this in the jump from “Beyond Marxism” (no need to discuss Roosevelt except in terms of continuity) to — “Beyond Skousenism” (who’d trash Roosevelt).  A couple more lines of import:

To make this point clear, we should briefly consider how the writer, as President of the United States would regard revenues of production and personal income.
Long paragraph follows–
Roosevelt, monstrously compounding Colonel House’s offenses, did the exact opposite.

Skip to page 152.
We repudiate the Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt doctrines respecting the notion of conditional sovereignty as exemplified in their practice for the cases of Mexico and the Soviet Union.
Wasn’t Henry Wallace going to continue the Roosevelt legacy, but Truman got in the way?

“The Case of Walter Lippman” endorses retroactively, an Austerity “Shock Doctrine” for Great Britain.  Just to make the British suffer, I suppose as punishment for World War II.  Rothschild is blamed for assassinating Lincoln — wait a few years and they’ll get around to blaming him for Kennedy.  On page 45-46, does that old deed of having Felix Rohatyn endorse the Holocaust.  The book ends by coming out for the destruction of representative democracy by having the electoral college break away from the vote the states’ popular vote gave to Carter.

Hm… US Labor Party warnings of what a Carter administration in a chain of horror-stories going back through Kennedy, Roosevelt, Wilson, Buchanan, Van Buren, and Andrew Jackson — with Republicans Theodore Roosevelt and Taft properly thrown into the collection — Where’s Truman?  And Grover Cleveland isn’t even in the index page!

Tracing the evolution on FDR to just a few years’ forward, in 1980 they fail to mention Roosevelt in their diatribes against Carter, as they’re letting loose a forward like this one:

There are two different species among those Americans who accept the label of “conservative.”  The two are as different from one another as people differ from radialarian ooze.  The one variety is an unwholesome breed of pot-puffing fops, thugs, and faggots, of the sort one might expect to find at any convening of New York’s East Side Conservative Club.  From William Buckley, Roy Cohn, William Safire on, a nastier, more debase lot of loyal scoundrels for Her Majesty the Queen would be hard to discover.
The more numerous, opposing species of “conservative” is a continuation of what was formerly hated by the British Aristocracy, and named “American Nationalists”.  General Douglas MacArthur is usually prominent on the list of heroes for such talk.  The more literate among them are distinguished by fairly detailed knowledge of the treasonous character of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, “Bilderbergers” and the Trilateral Commission.  Most of the inner kernal among the second set of patriotic conservatives reads the Spotlight, and a fair proportion have also read W Cleon Skousen’s The Naked Capitalist, as well as despising the pot-puffing Yale fop William F Buckley.  This kernal is, so to speak, the “Gideon’s Army” of American nationalism today, up to a quarter-million more influential persons who are the opinion leaders for a similarly inclined population, more than a scorefold larger.

Someone will have to point me to the first lionization of Franklin Roosevelt, around the turn of the 1980s I suppose.  I guess this works out okay — Ronald Reagan made good use of FDR rhetorically, and besides, in a world where Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith were Communists — well, the Liberty Lobbyists and the Skousenites (Hey!  Everything old is new again!) needed to be educated on what’s what. If a few years previously, Larouche was “Beyond Marxism”, he is now “Beyond Skousenism”, and so the oddness Regardless of what one may think of Mr. Jones’ or Mr. LaRouche’s unabashedly libertarian political rhetoric. — it’s — wait, he warned against the Cult of Libertarian Jefferson?  Had the book been published today, the Hitler mustache would have been affixed to that cover of Jefferson.

In a sense, Farah and his WorldNet(Nut)Daily seem to be filling a role once played by Lyndon LaRouche and his National Caucus of Labor Committees organization, later known as the U.S. Labor Party, back in the ’70′s and ’80′s.  LaRouche made strong rhetorical appeals to the extreme populist right and extolled views that on the surface appeared to coincided with Conservatives, all the while highly critical of the Reagan Administration.  Often described in the media as a hard right winger, he was actually a Stalinist.

This is the relative document to understand what was going on, and how the org manuevered around political movements.  I have another idea: define Roosevelt as Fascist.  Lay out the characteristics that make Roosevelt Fascist.  Then declare yourself an FDR Democrat.  (Besides, you need a storyline of some sort to sell your ‘Democratic bonafides” in skipping from the third party apparatus of the “Labor Party” to the Democratic Party primaries.  The only wikipedia edit of note this week is  NCdave says that “not recognized by Party leaders” is weasel words, this sort of caveat is never applied in Wikipedia to embarrassing Republicans.“  Do what you must, but I suppose we’ll get lost in the fog of examples — the David Duke article is full of examples, and I would hesitate in making the Larouche article longer.)

Was this guy in the org bashing Roosevelt?

And so it goes:  they tried to crash the TEA party I organized
After seeing that, made me think of the Lyndon LaRouche supporters that have their little converted Hot Dog stands outside the Post Office to sell LaRouche literature.  Though they only have Hitler mustaches on Barry, nothing about UFOs.

has made a career out of  inexplicable politics (he feels everyone’s personality should be stripped away so they can think like him)
Anyone go to see Diane Sare’s Emergency Meeting?

really?  He became rich and famous and big under Bush?
To associate the skeptics of climate change with the repudiators of the link between AIDS and the HIV virus and the conspiracy theories of 9/11 and the “Larouche delusions,” shows clearly that professor Clive Hamilton rests his case on an intellectually very weak reed.

I suppose the Tonkin Gulf Incident was real, and anyone who suggests otherwise is in the same category as David Ickes and Lyndon LaRouche. I suppose Woodrow Wilson was right to lock up all those deluded conspiracists who said WWI was a“rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”
I think Lyndon LaRouche is a screaming nutjob, thank you very much, BUT he used to harp about something he called “hysterical flight forward” which really seems appropriate much of the time in discussing leadership issues in the US.
I see it [British Royal Family] as a political cult (like the LaRouchies) with it own unique set of doctrines that bear only a casual or incidental relationship to anything from the conventional right.
Let’s help those people. All of them. Even the ones still writing in the name of Lyndon LaRouche on their ballots.
I’m a total cult junkie. I went to school near DC where there’s a big Moonie presence and Lyndon Larouche (a leader of a political cult) has a lot of his base in the Maryland area. I will definitely see this movie. There is something so fascinating them. They’re horrid and scary, but still fascinating.
Like Ayn Rand
This is at least as distasteful as the Tea Party’s marking of the Royal Wedding by repeating Lyndon LaRouche’s claims about the Queen and the Royal Family. Except that the Tea Party and Lyndon LaRouche do not constitute the only electoral options in the United States.
just read the latest IAM flyer regarding the gutting of scope and I thought at first this was meant to be a satirical piece. As I read further however I realized this is the typical blather and misdirection that this group uses to communicate its political message. When reading these missives lately I always half expect an ad from Lyndon LaRouche screaming “Let’s colonize Mars because it’s good for the economy!”

Tipster, did you really just post an article from the Lyndon LaRouche Intelligence Review?  LOL… you are nuttier than I thought. […] Sorry tipster, anyone who associates in any way with Lyndon larouche is a supreme ass@hole. This is the guy who has his followers walk around with posters of Obama as hitler […]
Every Democratic president since 1940 has been challenged in the primaries, except for possibly 1996. It depends if Lyndon LaRouche can be considered a credible challenger to Bill Clinton.

This will also be a good chance to explain to them some of the facts of political life, such as “those loud people with the sign of Obama as the Joker are called LaRouchies, and if you ever join up with them you will be deprogrammed” and “those people are political consultants — don’t look directly into their eyes!”

Perhaps a few members of the basically irrelevant Communist Party USA attached themselves to the event, just as Lyndon La Rouche followers do to Tea Party gatherings. Virtually no one cares about these historical relics
Enough of the LaRouche movement has always been raving mad, but now when I was on their website this evening, I found a new record high in bisarrism.  It has even cut up an image in which Paul has a bridal veil on its next president
I, like Webster, am a former labor committee member. I must say it is refreshing that he was not co-opted by the oligarchy, as so many others have been. Bravo. (Uwe Parpart, Criton Zoakis, David Goldman, to name but a few…)
No Compromise with —
What do the anonymous comments signify?
Which candidate do you support for President in 2012?
Obama, a slew of Republican hopefuls, Lyndon Larouche candidate, Green Party candidate.

Get me off this mailing list. Sheesh — I join up on one cause, and the next thing you know…

…………………………………

The Larouche Cryonics Movement has a head of its own.

I’ve been emailing him questions and comments since November 2010, astonished at how he has found holes in Larouche’s choice projects, like NAWAPA and fusion.

But waiting for the Apocalypse:

I’ve been reading about the coming ice on Rolf Witzsche’s site. He makes a good argument that the coming ice age is going to wipe us out if we don’t act now.

Is the Lyndon Larouche Cryonics Movement about to become — the Rolf Witzsche Cryonics Movement?

Witzsche takes Larouche a few steps farther into deep reality by pointing out the failure of fusion (Larouche’s favorite idea) and the oncoming ice age (which Laoruche is pretty much ignoring). Witzsche is my new Larouche but we haven’t thrown Larouche economics out.

But… if the earth is going to be wiped out — what’s the point of —

[+] In my quest to live forever, physically and literally, I try a lot of different types of supplements to retard and reverse aging, make me smarter and faster thinking etc. Nothing has worked so far, but you never know what might turn up next. Today it’s QHdrate. I’ll report on results back here once I’ve drunk the whole bottle.

………………………………

You will be excited to see the Larouchies wade into the Osama tank.  He knew what happened just minutes after 9/11, you will remember.  Join with us — Israel’s CIA.  Or… something — Dutch something or others.

This seems relevant to — what was that about falling hair somewhere?

Are we supposed to believe that a devil worshipper can serve at the highest levels of the military industrial security complex? Can such claims be credible?
View the video Michael Aquino, Satanic Mind-Control Cults and the Aquino NSA connection to enrich your confidence in the work of the intelligence communities.
Bizarre at the least, but Jeffrey Steinberg of Executive Intelligence Review sheds light on From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory in How Military PsyOps Plan to Control your Mind.

It’s only a matter of time before Princess Kate learns about the Drug Running operation.   Will she be Di-ed?  Perhaps this can help fill brush you up on House of Windsor. (Good work by “One of LaRouche’s trusted analysts, Mr. Tannenbaum”, correlating Princess Di Conspiracy theories.)

Wrap up a few birther things — the LYM made a joke about nobody showing “who released the sperm”.   I guess someone from the contingent of “PUMA”s is still about theres

La Rouche: “if Barack Obama Sr. was the real father it was purely a coincidence.” (The birth certificate tells us who the mother was. But if the mother was playing the field, then the assertion that Barack Sr. was the father is at best

Funny thing.  In the videos we see the Larouchies still selling their Hillary.  It’s amused me that larouchepub is listed off of the “PUMA” directory.   Does Hillary know that they didn’t catch the “REAL” masterminds behind 9/11?  Is that why she has her hand over her mouth?

Hm.  Ron Paul gets a huge crowd reaction in coming out for the legalization of Heroin.  I don’t stand for that, but — is he a dupe of the Queen of England?

………….

Iran’s Press TV has had on Lawrence Freeman,   Bill Jones, twice, Jeff Steinberg, twice.  But that’s the “Executive Intelligence Review Watch”, not the Lyndon Larouche Watch — I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.

Turn in your ballot by May 15

Saturday, May 7th, 2011

There are several local elections coming up — bring in your ballots by May 15 to any of several drop-off locations.  Maybe you can’t keep up with these elections and don’t know who to vote for?  Being the immediacy of the positions, they are in a way more important than the big ticket offices up higher on the ballot covered on the front pages and in the 24 hour news stations.
I have taken it upon myself to make some recommendations, just by leafing through the Voter’s Pamphlet.  These suggestions come from taking into account various guidelines — not hard and fast rules —

City of Gresham Council Position 3
I urge voting for Brad A League instead of Karylinn Echols.  Echols is a former City Council member who is endorsed by the mayor.  My number one rule is to always vote against the person endorsed by the mayor, as this endorsement is highly suggestive of contemptible wheelings and dealings.  Do we really need another lackey for the contemptible Shane T Bemis Machine?

Mount Hood Community College Director, Position 6
James Zurdich over Diane C Noriega.  Read Zurdich’s final sentence here: My campaign has not accepted any endorsements or contributions with the goal of remaining impartial and independent. Compare that to Noriega — and — surely if your goal is to stop Shane T Bemis the only thing you can do is vote for Zurdich.

Portland Community College Director, Zone 2
Michael (Micro) Durrow offers up a line which recommends him.  “PCC is an integral part of my life, and I owe the college and its people a debt I will never fully repay.”  What we have here is a sentiment many a college student relates to.  Meantime, one look at the jackasses who endorse William (Al) Peterson and you see how he will be just another wheel doing the bidding of the Columbia County Commission and the St Helens City Council, and licking St Helens Mayor Randy Peterson’s boots.

Corbet School District, Position 1
Brian James should get your vote over Annette Calcagno.  Just check out this line, a sentiment I have always had.  I have a personal long term goal “make sure the first day of school looks and feels like the last day of school”. It has always been my contention that the first day of Kindergarten should have the same feel as the last day of 12th grade.

Dave Douglas School District Director Position 4
I urge a vote for Mike Centoni over Shemia (Mia) Fagan.  The reason is because Shemia Fagan’s pamphlet includes a quotation from a Fourth grade teacher.  I hated my fourth grade teacher.

Dave Douglas School District Director Position 5
A vote for Jane Doyle over Mike Price.  Mike Price asks the question “Who is Mike Price?” Jane Doyle is certain enough of herself to not have to ask the question, “Who is Jane Doyle?”

Gresham – Barlow School District, Director 7
Nance Cedar has an item which puts her ahead of Don Chriestenson and Stuart Palmiter.  Nance Cedar was the “Finance Team Lead for global organization ‘Can’t Stop the Serenity’ for 2010“, showing her valiant struggle to keep the Serenity flowing forward.  Of course, if you are anti-serenity, you could always vote for Christenson — but what do you have against Serenity?

Lake Oswego School District Position 5
Vote for Audrey Monroe.  Bob Barman is endorsed by Allen Alby, and it is not clear from this list what or who Allen Alby exactly is.  In addition, he’s endorsed by Lake Oswego’s mayor, and if that’s not enough the diabolical Lacrosse Association is apparently putting him up there.

Lake Oswego School District Position 1
I don’t know who you should write in, but find someone to write in.  The candidate, Patti Zebrowski, has the galls to give the spiel that “our difficult economy brings big challenges” — Memo to Ms. Zebrowksi: You’re in Lake Oswego.

Portland School District Zone 2
I don’t have it in me to say anything the perennial hobby candidacy of John Sweeney. I can’t decide whether to dock Matt Mortson for Tom Potter’s endorsement.  I suppose if he’s carrying forward the Tom Potter legacy, Mortson will promise that if elected, he will look into starting a study on how to begin to tackle the problem.  The other candidate is Maggie Brister-Mashia.  It is interesting that nobody’s touting any endorsement from Sam Adams.

Pleasant Home Water District
William Dodds deserve your vote.  For one, his opponent — KRISTIN COOK — couldn’t even be bothered to put her item in the pamphlet, and still Dodds has no truck with her, saying, “My opponent is a fine person. I have no argument with her.”
Secondly, he will make sure that no Japanese Nuclear Meltdown happens in Pleasant Home on his watch.
Not unlike the Japanese citizens in their the nuclear disaster who knew little of their nuclear situation before hand, Pleasant Home Water’s Citizen’s need to know more.

 

Republicans debate in South Carolina. If a tree fell in the forest –???

Friday, May 6th, 2011

I suspect that if the Republican debate of yesterday had been held at some other time, it would have swirled and focused a bit more on this line of argument:

As it were, they were stuck hemming and hawing a bit at Obama in relation to Osama.  Not that that’s the be all and done all– but from an accumulation of 270 electoral votes the American electorate past the ringer of a smaller electorate of delegation accumulation — the gut doesn’t figure that well.  Though, the backlash for the Obama’s Photo Op uses will grow and creep into the body politick — so they have that going for them.

The domestic issue and scary Joker fell down sometime in the debate.

A question about some coverage of the big debate, though…

While candidates in presidential debates often need no introduction, the participants who filed onto the stage at the Peace Center for the Performing Arts offered an exception to that rule. There were two former governors, a member of Congress, a former senator and the former chief executive of a chain of pizza restaurants — all of whom round out the lower rung of an unsettled Republican field.

Fine.  And…

Tim Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota who was among the best-known of the candidates on hand, dropped bits of his own biography into many of his answers in an effort to introduce himself to voters beyond the normal collection of early-voting states.

Tim Pawlenty is cited as the best known of the five.  If I had to rank them by name recognition, I think I would go with Ron Paul at number one, Rick Santorum at number two, and then… ?

Purple Prose Watch

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

Item.  France.

The world’s most wanted terrorist made the mistake of thinking that when the Americans are struck hard, they end up discouraged.

The thousands of Americans who gathered together spontaneously until the early hours of the morning in front of the White House in Washington, or at ground zero in New York, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood before Sept. 11, 2001, all had the same feeling. The stars and stripes that were waved proudly and the chants of “God Bless America” in unison all had the same meaning: After nine years and eight months of mourning and humiliation, the culprit behind one of the greatest tragedies and one of the biggest provocations in U.S. history was finally out of action and no longer able to harm. Americans retrieved old notions of vengeful and speedy justice that they had never completely lost since the conquest of the West. “We got him,” proclaimed banners, in response to Barack Obama’s own words announcing that U.S. commandos had killed Osama bin Laden. “Justice has been done,” the president said simply. […]

It was perhaps during this period that the idea originated in the perverse mind of the terrorist leader not only to attack U.S. interests in Islamic countries such as the bombings in Riyadh and Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, but also to aim for the heart of the American “super Satan” — the place where its dazzling success was most outwardly visible — New York [City’s] business district.

Yet, bin Laden’s variant of the “paper tiger” theory proved to be false. America did not give up. And this is the very reason why it celebrated its victory with such fervor on May 2. Proud America was back. Despite the investigation taking a long time, and despite the manhunt beginning at the start of one president’s first term, and ending only two years and three months into his successor’s term, George Bush’s promise was not forgotten: We’ll get bin Laden “dead or alive,” he swore. Obama kept his word.

Item.  Australia.

Assassination is illegal under international law. And the United States  of America claims to be above political assassination. But here it is. He’s cut down and millions of his devotees weep. Zealots and apprentices who would lay down their lives in his defence are now looking for a new leader.

In those moments at night when he lay sleepless, the moonlight playing on his ceiling and one of his wives snoring next to him while his scalp sweated and itched under his obligatory headwear, he must have known his enemies were closing in. He must have known he was on borrowed time. He must have felt the breath of Obama on his back. Sooner or later America would strike with all the injurious curios a Great Satan carries in the trunk of its Cadillac. Sooner or later the CIA would emerge from the miasma of its own paranoia, give up on making tourists remove their boots to board the Circle Line Ferry for a moment, and zero in and do what it does best.

And now some snitch, some stool-pigeon from the back streets of Abbotabad in Pakistan, has taken the CIA’s forty pieces of silver. And Donald Trump’s candidacy is over. A conceivably great leader is assassinated before he can walk his high hair into the Oval Office. Damn. It could have been fun.

Trump will rant and rave and demand to see Bin Laden’s Death Certificate and boast that anyone could’ve licked him. And what the hell took Obama so long anyway? But his rage won’t wash any gloss off the thing the forty-fourth President has done.  Barack Obama has found and trounced his Argentina. In the nick of time. With debt mounting at home and the greenback looking spineless and Afghanistan entering another fighting season… Barack Obama has made himself into Maggie Thatcher and snatched back The Falklands. Go home, Donald. Nothing to see here. Except the smoking wreck of your political dream.

See the flag-waving thousands shimmying up and down Pennsylvania Avenue when the news broke? See the dudes climbing trees outside the White House? Those are American voters. Some of them newly-minted, never-been kissed-before voters. Americans who don’t come out to vote don’t come out to wave flags. And these voters were out waving flags for Obama. Churlish and off-colour not to give the man another term now, after this. Un-American.

A gifted conspiracy-theorist, a dark-thinker with a knack for joining dots, will be able to see an Islamist plot behind this. “That crazy fellow Trump just announced he was going to re-invade Iraq. Not even the usual spiel about doing it to help the people. Just said he’d take the oil.  ‘To the victor the spoils…’ Ohh, Mohammed, I don’t like the cut of this fellow’s jib. He comes off like a real hard-ass. I think Obama is our candidate now. I think we better give Osama to Obama.”

The gifted conspiracy-theorist I’m talking about will be a Republican. Probably from a lower state. Certainly a member of The Tea Party. And totally crestfallen that a free-wheeling, straight-up, hard-ass, take-no-pensioners American success story like Donald Trump is going to be cheated of his chance to send armies abroad to spread Right and Good and steal oil.

As I write this, in the first hours after the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death, the theories haven’t surfaced yet. But I’m writing fast, trying to beat them, knowing they’re on their way. The American Right erect a sinister postulation as fast as the Amish do a house.

Tomorrow, as the bacteria bloom in Bin Laden’s corpse, the Tea Party will smell something fishy.

Item.  Argentina.

Perhaps our answer is that because too much time had already passed and even the most disciplined, ascetic and stoic man — like it is said bin Laden was — can slip up. Ten years of successful escapes could have made anybody confident — even enough to abandon the most secure refuge in the caves high in the mountains and return to “civilization,” like this home in Abottabad, the “City of Schools,” in a valley where his followers had been defeated by the Pakistani army nearly two years before. Obama said last night that they had the first sign that bin Laden was very close by last August, and a week ago he was informed that bin Laden was surrounded. Evidently this time, the commandos did not want to commit the same error that had been made on other occasions. They took a long time to be very sure that he could not escape from them yet again. It was difficult for them to be able to capture bin Laden alive. He never let go of his Kalashnikov, his pistol or Uzi. Surely he was surrounded by a group of his best men, small in number but trained as well as or better than any Western commando. This is an enormous triumph for President Barack Obama. He made the announcement with the poise and bearing of a winner.

It was the moment George W. Bush always wanted but was never able to achieve. Last night he had to watch it on TV at home in Texas. Obama has something to show for himself in the re-election campaign after being unable to fulfill his campaign promise to close Guantánamo and with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq still continuing under his watch. While bin Laden has passed on into the dark history of terrorism, it is clear that his organization, al-Qaida, will be around for a long time. There are still radicalized men ready and willing to martyr themselves, and there is still a figure that could emerge as bin Laden’s real successor: the Libyan Abu Yahya al-Libi, one of his subordinates and the last chief of operations. It would not be a shock to anyone if al-Qaida or one of its affiliates now attempts to carry out some sort of attack to avenge the death of the man who led it for nearly two decades.

 

Geronimo

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

I heard that Congress was looking into the use of the code-name “Geronimo” for Osama Bin Laden’s capture.  For a moment I was trying to figure out what the heck the Republican Congress was doing– seems out of character — “Tea Party” contingent irked against “Political Correctness”.  No, it is the Senate. And it’s on a large list of concerns, somewhat fraught against Though many Americans associate the word “Geronimo” with a cry uttered when jumping out of an airplane . ..

The Senate Indian Affairs committee will hold a hearing Thursday on racist Native American stereotypes, a hearing that will now also address the Osama bin Laden mission and the code-name Geronimo.

While the hearing was scheduled before the mission, a committee aide today said the linking of the name Geronimo with the world’s most wanted man is “inappropriate” and can have a “devastating” impact on kids.

“The hearing was scheduled well before the Osama bin Laden operation became news, but the concerns over the linking of the name of Geronimo, one of the greatest Native American heroes, with the most hated enemies of the United States is an example of the kinds of issues we intended to address at Thursday’s hearing,” Loretta Tuell, the committee’s chief counsel, said in a statement.

Maybe.

To be fair, almost any name chosen for Osama would generate this kind of indignation. Bin Laden by any other name might smell as sweet, but call him a rose, and the flower lobby would be out in force. Call him Romeo, and the Anti-Shakespearean-Character Defamation League would be hooting and hollering and carrying on. Yes, Geronimo was a conscious choice, perhaps because the Native American leader was famously elusive, and there’s a hostile history there. Geronimo wasn’t even his original name. (That would be Goyahkla, “One Who Yawns.”) But say what you will about the history of wildly misappropriated terms for Native Americans — Washington Redskins, anyone? — the objection boils down to the fact that a code name for Osama that referenced anything with any redeeming qualities whatever would be drawing fire from some quarter.

Was his skull ever released from the Skull and Bones tomb?  Congress should look into that… or they would, but… you know… one member approaches the issue and gets stalked by their colleagues of … skull and bones.