Archive for July, 2015

“the” Donald, or “a” Donald

Thursday, July 30th, 2015

Ralph Nader complains about the coverage of Donald Trump, and suggests Kasich should be in any Republican debate.
Does well to complain that the Huffington Post is here in the “entertainment” business.
Kavitches about poor showing of his various presidential bids — though I will argue with him on something… notably, I may suggest, he had a weird 2004 Meet the Press appearance which seemed to overstate his impact.  (Media driven, he would argue.)

Of course, Nader is a guy who wrote a book — “Only the Super-rich can Save Us” — which suggests that he’d like someone in the left-wing of the Plutocracy — Bill Gates? — to step in and do what Donald Trump is doing for the Right wing of Plutocracy to … hm… now stop Clinton.

I note that this editorial suggests what I’ve suggested for a while on Donald Trump — so far he’s a boon for Jeb Bush, by exhausting all the media oxygen that would otherwise be doing what it did in 2012, bouncing from candidate to candidate — and while your Rick Perry never picked up the ball, that’s what would have done in Mitt Romney.

For weeks, the blustery billionaire has made it next to impossible for any other Republican candidate to be noticed or emerge as a viable alternative to the former Florida governor.

Though… here, I’m now left to wonder… Donald Trump… could he … actually do something as a third party / Independent candidate?  Approach Ross Perot’s 1992 total, though here submerged entirely with Republican votes?  (which, naturally, will eventually collapse his vote tally into single digits as they dread the prospects of a Hillary Clinton Presidency).   Funny that result… a third Clinton term without a majority of the vote!  Sure… Donald Trump has… all this  — but… does all this matter to the Donald Trump “Reality Show” voter in the first place?

inappropriate or off-putting beside the point thought about horrible tragedy

Monday, July 27th, 2015

Good thing it wasn’t Ant-man.  Because then we’d have a pattern with Superhero movies to work with and speculate widely about…

Biden in ? Says Who?

Friday, July 24th, 2015

Lincoln Chafee has an inside source…

Or just speculates furiously, because what else has he got?

BIDEN TO MAKE A BID!!!

Though…

Chafee said that he would put “two dollars” on a Biden bid, going on later to say “I think he’s going to get in.”

Two dollars?  More like… TWO DOLL HAIRS!!!
Gotta make the news somehow, and how better than a two dollar bet?

answers to the gresham cake thingy

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2015

This week’s Willamette Week cover story answers a few questions about the Gresham Cake Controversy that had puzzled me… which, admittedly, if I were more curious I could easily look closer into at any point in the last couple years in court dispositions, etc.

The hinge for me is the difference between “creating” a piece of “Art”, ala Cake — which would allow the bakery to not stick a bride and bride on the top of the cake, and baking a cake, which would not allow the refusal of taking money from the couple in transaction for the cake.   It’s interesting.  Religious Freedom Law as supported by liberals in the Clinton Administration to allow for tribal use of peyote now being pushed aside by strains of the dominate Christian faith as they face a secular public.

The next two hinges… one… apparently the personalities of the business owners is something like Archie and Ethel Bunker… the congenial and friendly wife not at all congenial and the husband narrow and doctrinaire in his bigoted opinions.  Here they were lucky to have had business over the years with the wife.  Notably as they move to becoming a cause celebre and in need of a counter market to the broad market they lost, the Christianist business owners now shuffle to the party line, the wife probably retro-fitting her past to fit the new reality.

The second hinge… I don’t know if I believe the couple that they tried to comment on the BBB but ended up accidentally commenting with a state bureau, but… the game continues.  My sympathies for the couple have  always been short-circuited by the fact that it is now a prerequisite in the Portland metro area for every bakery to have in their window the sticker “We don’t Discriminate Against Anyone” in the shape of Oregon, some words on Love, and that this leaves the Gresham bakery to a niche market (and granted, swarths of America it wouldn’t be a niche market, but even in most of America we’re getting to the point where someone SOMEWHERE is not going to deny their money.)

Yes, but where does Ms. Clinton stand on thermo-nuclear war?

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015

Disappointing to reference a “neo-nazi cult” in the headline.  Sure, I know… “Borman’s Ghost”, “The Underground Reich” — see the Dave Emory program for the latter and a blog post series for the former, but — precision is off.

And here we go...

But a British inquest ruled last month that Duggan did not commit suicide.
The coroner found that the far-Right LaRouche movement “may have had a bearing” on his death.
Now the student’s family have returned to Germany to press the authorities for answers.
Erica Duggan, his mother, accused German police and prosecutors of a “cover-up”.
Mrs Duggan told a Berlin press conference how her father fled to Britain from Nazi Germany to escape persecution as a Jew.
“I have tried everything to find out what happened, because every mother would want to know what happened if her child died in this dreadful way,” she said.
“Why has it been 12 years and I still don’t even know where my son was the night before he died?”

The German high court ordered the police investigation into the case to be reopened in 2012 – an unusual move in Germany.
But the family said the police have been dragging their feet since then, and have not interviewed suspects named by the court.
“At this point I don’t know if we can go forward with the legal process because in Germany there’s no way of making a complaint against the police,” Mrs Duggan said.

After shifting past the few comments from the Larouche Internet Commenters re:  (rigid east:  send in slime ball tony blair to sort it out, that is now his job, but do not hold your breath.. — not necessarily coherent, but get in a dig on Tony Blair), I’d wondered if there would be an “official” response, visa vie Executive Intelligence Review.  Finally, this appears to be it.

It is a doozy.   Someone (ex member, apparently)
began sending an obscene series of emails, numbering 80 printed pages to members of LaRouche PAC in New Jersey”, which is your garden variety internal email affair  any organization has to deal with, (whatever the theme of the email — here — hm — calls the cult a cult).
The Brooks email incident and aborted infiltration of the LaRouche movement is a notable part of an unprecedented attack, on behalf of the British monarchy, on a U.S. political organization and an associated organization in Germany. It is abundantly clear from the claims in the emails that, the individual who wrote them, is acting on behalf of British intelligence and the Royal Family, as part of a desperate effort to derail the escalating influence of Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp LaRouche on the BRICS group of countries.

Huh.

The writer bases these accusations on theories propounded by Steve Hassan, a “cult deprogrammer” and former member of the Moonies, who has recently emerged as a star player in British Crown’s years’ long black propaganda campaign against the LaRouches centered on the suicide of Jeremiah Duggan. The Moonies were a documented Bush family intelligence operation in the U.S. and in Central and South America. Hassan otherwise has a long history of attacks on the LaRouche political movement. The goal of the Duggan hoax is to defame, discredit, and harass the LaRouches in the United States and Germany in particular. Both the U.S. and Germany are critical to the success of the BRICS.

The Moonies?  There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance in moving from “Shortly after the verdict the Duggan family once again accused German authorities of Nazi leanings” (historically anti-semitic, natch) to bringing up the Moonies.

STORY NUMBER TWO:  The question.  In the long span of 8 time presidential candidacy Lyndon Larouche… what would it have taken for him to pull off a victory?

Here’s the best shot.  Into Congress.  The “Leninist Cadre” Cohorts around him.  Onto the presidency in the year of the Outsider, 1976.

I like the fact that Robert Caro wrote the book.

And… no, I’m still not convinced.

Maybe LaRouche will approve lots of funding for Project Orion…to Mars by A-BOMB!!!  Yes, probably.

More historical notices, in remembering the candidacy of Bill Bradley 2000:
Scores of other candidacies have expired or suffered irreparable wounds. Front-runners (Ed Muskie and Bob Dole), one-percenters (Steve Forbes and Pete DuPont), insurgents (Jesse Jackson), radicals (Lyndon LaRouche), self-defeatists (Gary Hart), talking heads (Pat Buchanan): They all tread New Hampshire’s hills and valleys in unsuccessful bids for the presidency.

And, as we currently reside in “Peak Trump“: He has pontificated about the presidency almost as often as fellow fringe candidate Lyndon LaRouche has aimed at the country’s highest office.

And a blast from the past on inner-Republican battles, Oklahoma 1989…

STORY NUMBER THREE:

So.  Does this put him the running to replace Diane Sare (can’t run on the “Youth Movement” idea any longer) in the New Jersey slot of the electoral campaign apparatus?
Daniel Burke… heckler

“Senator Clinton, will you restore Glass-Steagall?” activist Daniel Burke yelled out. Escorted out by security, Burke told Business Insider that he is an organizer with LaRouche PAC, which supports activist Lyndon LaRouche. The Glass-Steagall Act, which separates commercial banks and investment banks, was repealed in 1999, during Bill Clinton’s presidency. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is working to restore it with a bipartisan group of senators.
Glass-Steagall. Dodd-Frank. For a select Democratic primary crowd, words like that will have them cheering from the rafters — just like Donald Trump’s words about immigrants excite the most right-leaning Republican primary voters.

Sure, a tad more coherent than, oh, Dave Christie … but… but… but… Greece? 

“It should be passed immediately, preferably in the next two weeks. We really do not know what will come … of the potential for an immediate financial crash on the basis of the Greek trigger,” Burke said.

Clinton has not been clear about her position on Glass-Steagall. Her two Democratic primary rivals, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) have said they support restoring the law.

Etc. etc. etc.

 Mr Burke also said that he was a huge fan of Ms Clinton’s husband bill — who was often criticised by Democrats for undoing the major provisions of the original Glass-Steagall act.
Maybe we can have a heckler for Lincoln Chafee and Jim Gilmore, as well one for Jeb Bush and Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders… and which person is assigned to which candidate will give then given us an idea of who’s up and who’s down within the organization who gets sidled with which candidate.  (If someone disrupts a Lincoln Chafee event, would anyone notice?)

Interesting to note… the Larouchies believe Hillary Clinton is finished — finished off by the Burke Intervention.   Lincoln Chafee thinks she’s on borrowed time too, though… it is puzzling … who does he think will replace her?

DATELINE WALNUT CREEK

Although I was vaguely aware of the politics of Lyndon LaRouche, the perennial presidential candidate, and had over the years noticed the sidewalk tables where his views were promoted.
I had never spoken with his supporters until today when I left the post office on Broadway and saw the LaRouche table out front on the sidewalk. Rarely, if ever, have I had such an awful experience. The two individuals at the table were nothing but thugs who engaged in the most obscene language not only in description of the nation’s political parties, but in regard to myself personally. I was so shocked I immediately went to the police department to file an incident report to which the police responded by sending two officers to the Broadway location.
I strongly urge every citizen to avoid these thugs who have no right to be in any civilized place, much less Walnut Creek.

DATELINE NAPA … Say, is this an example of “good cop / bad cop”
The two men sitting at the table were a study in opposites. One was young, well-dressed, and personally well-groomed. The other man had on a white sleeveless undershirt, shorts, uncombed hair, and a slouched demeanor.
STORY NUMBER FOUR — Moving to Manhatten?  To Sing?

October of last year, Lyndon LaRouche announced his intent to revive Alexander Hamilton’s Manhattan to its proper national and international role as the center for restoring the unity of the United States of America. A crucial aspect of this, has been, and will be even more, the formation of a community chorus, based on the principle of harmony, as expressed above.
On top of that, or perhaps as a result of that, we have a president who is about to plunge the world into thermonuclear war, while he indulges himself in fantasy-ridden snuff films about the killing of Osama bin Laden, or hosts orgiastic rock concerts, which are the moral equivalent.

That being said, there is a better side to the American people, and it emanates from Manhattan; explicitly from Alexander Hamilton and his collaborators’ battle for the principle of the human mind vs. the bestial approach of the Virginia slaveholders:
It is this human quality of the American population which can be most directly accessed though Classical music, specifically choral music.

…………..

STORY NUMBER FIVE — International Reception
Jun Bondoy says:  June 15, 2015 at 10:10 pm
I wasn’t aware that tatad is a chinese kak saker. Definitely a disciples of Lyndon LaRouche. One quick searh for this other guy and you will not find any good words.

Blasco says:  June 15, 2015 at 2:05 am
Is that racist nutcase Lyndon Larouche still alive?

From here, an explainer

Its only 45 seconds altogether, and she spends most of the time denouncing Bertrand Russell. She claims Kennedy had a back channel to Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis (behind the backs of the British, that is) and that this saved the world. At 2:05, THE STARE warns, “Unfortunately, with Obama there is no such thing.”
Now, this was a report Channel One was doing about the already-infamous video of Mark Dice wandering around the beach asking people if they would “help Obama” by signing a petition to preemptively attack Russia with nuclear weapons. Dice has done a series of these petition videos to demonstrate idiocy in America, and they are meant as humor. But Russians did not find it funny.
And, no doubt, THE STARE decided it would serve the org’s purpose by playing up that anxiety in Russia with a hysterical diatribe against Obama that will be watched by tens of millions of Russians, a good many who’ll think her analysis of Obama’s murderous intentions are truthful.
So, if WWIII starts on July 5th as a result of her babbling, will THE STARE have the satisfaction of knowing she played a crucial part of this PROCESS to help Obama start WWIII? […]

But I think she’ll have to work harder than she imagines. Channel One did not place a banner with her name or, more importantly, that of THE DEAR LEADER or even LaRouchePAC, and therefore did not make her out to be any more of a geopolitical expert than any of the other people who were interviewed on the streets of Manhattan.
As far as the Russian viewing public (and Kremlin) are concerned, it was just some bat-sh*t crazy woman in a green frock snarling about Obama’s nuclear death wish.

And, okay… Press TV with William Jones, Sputnik with JJ Steinberg,and

All AfricaAn organisation set up by highly controversial US political activist Lyndon LaRouche has been unsuccessfully pressing for a canal project known as Transaqua. LaRouche and the various publishing organisations he runs have previously attracted suspicion for circulating conspiracy theories and advocating for grand infrastructure projects.

STORY NUMBER SIX

Webster Tarpley and Dennis Speed at the “Left Forum“.

Interesting… Pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine sympathies… and fighting the “gate-keepers sanctioned left”…

Prof. Tarpely presented a powerful slide presentation documenting less considered aspects of current events, for example:
the non-existence throughout history of a Ukrainian nation until the dissolution of the USSR, and the resulting patchwork of nationalities within an unmanageable Ukrainian state;
Democracy Now, Code Pink, Medea Benjamin, and Michael Moore being Leftists with credentials used for CIA purposes in regard to Libya and Syria and other Anglo-America led crimes against humanity;
a host of autocrats in history like Bismarck, made to be viewed in a harsh light, who pioneered great social improvements with Tarpley looking to possibly expecting the same from current figures painted in a harsh light, like Putin.

Don’t trust Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now… trust Webster Tarpley…

who, what, huh?

Thursday, July 16th, 2015

Hey!  Jim Gilmore is running for President.  Because… why not?

He briefly ran for president in the 2008 cycle — announcing his candidacy in December 2006 before withdrawing in July 2007, citing the difficulty of raising money. He went on to run for the U.S. Senate in his native Virginia that year for retiring GOP Sen. John Warner’s seat. But Gilmore was trampled by more than 30 points by his successor in office, former Democratic Gov. Mark Warner. He currently serves as president and CEO of the conservative think tank, the Free Congress Foundation.

It’s a little like Rick Santorum’s run, who… in his last statewide election in Pennsylvania lost by… oh… 17 points… Except, oh… Rick Santorum lost by 13 or 15 percentage points less than Jim Gimor, and in the wacky 2012 “wack-a-mole” Republican contest was the last mole standing against Mitt Romney.  (As opposed to Jim Gilmore, who — was the first mole knocked out in 2008?)

Also running for the Republican nomination… John Kasich.  Because… why not?  And… hm?

Kasich could be the one to watch.

Meanwhile… this should really expose the hypocrisy of any attack from Democratic Presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee on Republican Presidential candidate Carly Fiornia

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiornia may be best known as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, but it turns out that another candidate holds more stock in the technology firm these days.
Lincoln Chafee—the Democratic former governor of Rhode Island—owns $50,001 to $100,000 of Hewlett-Packard stock, according to a financial disclosure released Tuesday by the Federal Election Commission. (Candidates only have to classify assets and income by range.) Fiorina, who ran HP for six years and has made her tenure there a key selling point in the presidential race, said she owns just $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares in the Palo Alto-based firm in a disclosure from Thursday.
That makes a certain amount of sense, considering that Fiorina was fired in 2005 amid a tumble in the company’s stock price following the controversial merger with Compaq. In campaign speeches, she has often called her termination the result of “a boardroom brawl” and blamed the decline on the tech bubble bursting for dooming the merger (critics say the move was doomed to begin with). Either way, Fiorina still invests in her former employer, though not heavily.

 

bumpering

Monday, July 13th, 2015

The National Review is ratcheting up and odd theme… see the lead story when I click to the website…

Hillary Clinton’s Uber Speech Belongs in 1930s America.
That’s better than what Bernie Sanders gets, which has him — again in the 1930s — chewing over a “Nationalism” with his “Socialism”.
To be sure, neither one is too hairy, and what really bugs me more is this fixation within the article on the preponderance of political bumper stickers on the cars of people attending Bernie Sanders rallies…
The bumper stickers on the mainly foreign-made cars of his followers tell the story: One of those “Peace” (not the more popular “Coexist”) slogans made of various world religious symbols, “Clean Water Is for Life!” and “The Warren Wing of the Democratic Party,” sundry half-literate denunciations of “Corporate Oligarchy” . . . “Not Just Gay — Ecstatic!”

Sure.  Tells a Story, indeed.  I suppose the bumper stickers on the cars at a Ted Cruz for President rally are any less detoxicating?

like a rolling stone

Thursday, July 9th, 2015

2 guys walk up to me.  Seem to be people who should know the answer more assertively than I.  (They’re wearing leather in a couple spots?)

“Hey.  What band did Keith Richards play for?”
Me… just a tad uncertainly and afraid I’m wrong with something that ought be obvious… “Rolling… Stones?”
“Right.  Guitarist, Right?”
Me:  “Er… Sure.”

“Who was the lead singer?”
Me:  “Can’t remember.”

“Something like… Nick… Rick… this is killing us.”

Me:  Shrug.

Minute passes by.  I think “Oh, crap!”  Have to run over to them.  “MICK.  MICK.  MICK JAGGER!!!”

“Oh.  Wow.  Thanks.”

I shake my head.  Have to turn in any card signifying me as some classic rock aficionado… but again… SHOULDN’T THOSE TWO KNOW THIS CRAP?