Archive for May, 2016

mentations on Trump versus Bernie

Tuesday, May 31st, 2016

I suppose the logic of Donald Trump tapping into the sense of the aggrieved of Bernie Sanders supporters — the system is rigged against him — plays into the up-ending of the map.  Trump asserts he may well win 40 percent of Bernie Sanders’s primary voters.

I suppose the logic of Bernie Sanders trying to debate Donald Trump is to rebuff the politics of Trump.  To assert that they’re both anti-Hillary Clinton, sure, but somehow a vote for Sanders here ought not lead to a vote for Trump there.

The logic of Donald Trump’s sarcastic rebuff to this debate fits the logic of Bernie Sanders’s sarcastic rebuff to Trump’s rebuff.

The logic of Bernie Sanders doing better in the polls than Donald Trump is that Donald Trump and his team of Republicans are campaigning against Hillary Clinton, and think they have an in with 40 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters.  They won’t be getting to town calling Bernie Sanders a Bolshevik.

The logic of Bernie Sanders facing a “rigged system” is … hit and miss.  Certainly the super-delegates might swarm in against him in the case of a tie against Hillary Clinton, but a funny thing… it’s a moot point.

From a pure point of ego, the problem of a “left” being lead into the 2 system through Bernie Sanders perplexes him.  As it does some of his supporters.  But probably not the ones who’d be going off to vote for Trump…

all roads lead nowhere

Saturday, May 28th, 2016

Yeah, sure.

Die-Hard Bernie Sanders Backers See F.B.I. as Answer to Their Prayers.

Bernie Sanders already claimed that Americans are sick of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s emails, and he continues not to run on them.  But… they’re out there, and they’re throwing hail marys at the whole corrupt system.

On the other hand, it does answer David Brooks’s problem of “Why do people hate Hillary Clinton?” beyond his answer “People hate work-a-holics“.  (Though Brooks has a point… it’s perhaps possible Hillary Clinton fits the long line of Democratic contending stiffs — Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry..

Then again, the problem for Hillary Clinton stems more around the this thing… the system as it is… gotta pay your dues, back-benching true-believers in Congress.  Team Player, and who’s the top of the team anyways?

who be that?

Wednesday, May 25th, 2016

Overheard:  “She’s basically a female Bernie Sanders.”

My guess was Chloe Eudaly… came in second and will be facing Steve Novick in a run-off for city council… and is in need of elucidation and definition in conversations of matters political.
but the next sentence alludes to being a Senator…

So that leaves us at Elizabeth Warren.  Even though she has the name recognition and profile not as much in need of definition.  Though, I guess it depends on who’s talking and to whom.

on seeing vestiges of a past America

Tuesday, May 24th, 2016

Saw a guy in an anti- George W Bush t-shirt.  Two terms in, and with a different cast of characters floating about —

— If perhaps temporary.  Karl Rove will return like a bad dime, but does Roger Stone have any staying power post Donald Trump?

The t-shirt just seems odd.  It’s not like a vintage (ironic) “Oliver North for President” shirt.  And I don’t think Bush has the iconic status of a Nixon that Bush masks will be in vogue.  (Can you imagine the entertainment value of such things as the “Bush Tapes”?  Me neither.)

Maybe a Trump Presidency is necessary.  Just to pull back the remnants of the Bush Era, all the damnable bumper stickers people just won’t pull back.

curious details in news coverage

Thursday, May 19th, 2016

Just wondering.  What are these suppose to signify?

“I just want to be clear: I accept everybody being proud,” said Daniel Baldwin, a 17-year-old junior. Sitting at a table in the school hallway, a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” open in front of him, he wore a “Straight Pride” shirt pulled over a shirt dedicated to Slayer, a thrash-metal band. “Everybody has the right to be who they are.”

I get that he’s the student operator for a sort of rearguard political activism on the big toilet wars… but…

Catcher in the Rye and Slayer?

Might not they note the conservative hair cut as against the transgendered  student’s green slick back?  Might represent something other than… comfortable disaffected youth?

No slate of candidates? No one to shock Texas?

Thursday, May 19th, 2016

ITEM NUMBER ONE:
The Schiller Institute gets into places at the old annual Left Forum…  moderating a discussion on Greece, it’s Helga Zepp.  And then they’ll be Deconstructing the Subhumanization and Dehumanization of Global Society.  Interestingly enough, the Larouchies are nowhere to be seen in the conferences dealing with the issue of abortion, art, or the environment

which they offer different opinions on...

Lyndon LaRouche really. Is that the best you can do? LOL
Why not just David Koch for better propaganda?
LaRouchie!
hAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Joke’s on you.  Best

Helga Zepp also seen here.

Where’s (former member) Webster Tarpley?  Telemundo, apparently.

ITEM NUMBER TWO:  If I read this email message right… Larouche is in a sort of “legacy” stage of operation, trying to figure out how to fling his name forward.

This is a man who has profoundly changed the history of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries,— with completely deliberate intention, but by using nothing but his own highly-controversial methods. He has changed the history of these decades using his mind alone, without weapons or budgets. Or whatever weapons or budgets he may have had at any time, he obtained using his unique methods, while he was “understood by very few, and supported by no one,” to quote Einstein on Johannes Kepler.
How is this possible? Common sense and practicality reject it completely,— yet it has happened. Not only that, but it is happening now. And not only that, but it was visibly happening on May 10,— for those who were able to see it.

Tend to the cult, I suppose.  And try to bring the legacy forward.

Liberal Media Bashing:  To cover the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs conference without understanding the publication or the record of its speakers would be akin to covering an Executive Intelligence Review conference on economics without realizing its ties to conspiracy theorist and felon Lyndon LaRouche, or covering a American Renaissance conference on the Black Lives Matter movement without realizing that that publication was dedicated to white supremacism.

ITEM NUMBER THREE:
Hm.  “World on Brink of Existential Crisis”.  Or.  Wait.  I mean,   US, Russia On The Brink Of Thermonuclear War.  (Though, I’m pleased to see the photograph of Putin and Obama at the table there, talking it out, presumably.)

  Putin not strong enough to hold it on, even though…
Mr. LaRouche has repeatedly identified Putin as one of the most brilliant leaders in the modern time as best exemplified by […]
So we are now at an existential crisis, nothing short of removing Obama for his crimes which include this crime of deploying these unnecessary missile systems
Well.  Putin will outlast Obama in office.  Which begs the question:  assuming that Obama’s continued presence in the White House threatens our existence — can we not wait until January?

So this is the last dinosaur in his last desperate ploy trying to provoke a war which would mean the end of civilization. There would be no winner in such a war and it is our duty here in the United States under Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche’s leadership to galvanize the US support for the BRICS nations…

Hmm… The LaRouche Political Action Committee issued its pamphlet, “The United States Joins the New Silk Road. A Hamiltonian Vision for An Economic Renaissance,” precisely as a call to arms in the war to end this literally suicidal submission to that British system.
Symbolic victory.  Hamilton had been slated to be nixed from our currency. Seems to have been saved due to popular culture, ie: a Broadway Play with a positive portrayal of Hamilton.  Instead, Jackson was nixed.  Do I see the Larouchies celebrating this, or building off of it to promote the Hamiltonian Vision?  No.  Opportunity wasted, I suppose.

David Cherry?  In support of Zuma.  And on Sputnik TV… TPP Deal and their take on the Panama Papers.  (Surely we have Cameron tagged, and by extension the British Royal Family… and nobody in Russia.)

ITEM NUMBER FOUR:
Har de har har.
Are you getting the vague sense this wasn’t a Republican presidential primary campaign at all? It was the hapless Shemp Howard of Texas taking on the paranoid, fear-mongering Lyndon LaRouche of the Big Apple to become the Court Jester-in-Chief.

Rachel Maddow brings more attention to Larouche on national television than the man has received in 30 years… largely by re-running a newsclip from 30 years ago.
So, sandwiched between Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan (who Maddow has an interesting relationship with — claims the very clip she shows from the 1992 is what brought her into political activism and today is a co-worker) … it is   at the 7:30 minute mark, as she segues from Ross Perot to Lyndon Larouche.  “If Abe Lincoln were alive today, he’d probably be voting for me.”  Goes on to 12:20 or so.
Into the comments.  Partisan wrangling and things…
RM is correct comparing Trump to LaRouche, both have cult like followings. The only diffence is that some of LaRouche followers were educated and once well meaning leftists who got sucked in by a very cleaver but demented maniac and also the time they were living, the late 1960s and 1970s. Trump and his followers can never be accused of being educated, cleaver, nor well meaning, and he has once and for all transformed the GOTP into a bona fide demented cult.  Cleaver?
Larouche went to prison for credit card fraud (one of mine included). Trump has taken investors’ money and has walked away from bankrupt business ventures while his investors took the loss. Trump knows how to take investors’ money and stay out of jail. So far.
Trumpet isn’t just like Larouche, additionally add in that he’s a jumbled-up combination of Nixon, George Wallace, Bernie Maddow, P.T. Barnum, Pat Buchanan, and Mussolini.
So… Trump is doing good for Larouche’s name spotting.  but Americans need to realize that we’re entering uncharted territory. We’ve had our share of demagogues and would-be despots through the years – Huey “the Kingfish” Long, George Wallace and Lyndon LaRouche among them – but never before has one of them captured the nomination of a major party.
In 1980, the Democratic Party was targeted for a hostile takeover by the political cult of Lyndon LaRouche, a mysterious but well-funded eccentric who seemingly materialized out of nowhere as a presidential candidate. When the votes were tallied, LaRouche was barely a footnote in that election, which blew out unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter and ushered in the Reagan revolution. But LaRouche did not fade away. In fact, he’d been doing what Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have not: pursuing a strategy not only to lay the groundwork for his own candidacy, but to build a movement that would advance his programs on a permanent, ongoing basis.
In theory that’s what Sanders is now apt to be doing, though of course… he won more votes and can’t figure to be a “footnote”.
Larouche’s presidential elections are the ultimate footnotes.  [See?  300 people keep voting for him in Democratic primaries in Virgo County, Florida!)  Rounding errors.  That’s the one big difference between Trump and Larouche:  assuming something catastrophic in the November election, ala a result akin to George McGovern.  The tally will show Trump beating Larouche’s best showing by a 40% (or thereabouts) to 0% tally.  (Or, 0.000something percent).
It Could Be worse…  There have been candidates from obscure parties like the Queer Nation Party and the Vampires, Witches and Pagans Party. Animals, kids and cartoon characters have run, albeit not seriously. A whole slew of entertainers, from Stephen Colbert to Roseanne Barr, have run.
The arcane rules of delegate allocation, which vary from state to state, are lost on the Trump operation, which is perhaps the most laughably unserious presidential campaign since Lyndon Larouche ran for the White House from a prison cell.  The next sentence is moot.  (As is moot the historical footnoting of how Larouche’s 3rd party runs set up a possible Trump 3rd party run.) This means that even if Mr. Trump walks away with the April 19 primary in his home state of New York, it is increasingly unlikely that he will lock up a majority of delegates before July’s Republican convention in Cleveland.  Helps to win the thing outright.  In Larouche’s case, I don’t think he much cared.
I attribute the anger to what I perceive as the old tension between blue-collar workers, who are often less educated and lower paid, and better-off white-collar voters. It is nothing new. Even though white-collar liberals have always supported unions, better pay, better hours, and other improvements for blue-collar workers, that love rarely seems reciprocated. Blue-collar workers have long been angry. In the past they supported George Wallace, Lyndon LaRouche, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot and others. So what’s new?
Speaking of Trump…
After all, I didn’t see any 2014 stories proclaiming that Lyndon LaRouche acolyte Kesha Rogers is beloved in the panhandle community of Hutchinson County
And speaking of which… shouldn’t there be a Larouchie out there running for something, or is that something they’re not doing anymore?  (Instead, just claim they already have great powers)…
 ITEM NUMBER FIVE… Australia.
LURKING on the fringes of Monday’s Labour Day parade was a scattering of adherents of the Lyndon LaRouche cult and its political arm, the spectacularly unsuccessful Citizens Electoral Council.CEC is the party for those who don’t think One Nation is nutty enough. But, despite an abysmal vote-catching record that would make even a few senators blush, the CEC has an enviable money-raising ability, notably separating a Queensland grazier from $862,000.

Also see this bit of history…  And… showing Illinois 1986 worldwide…
In 1988, Mr Truss stood as the Nationals candidate in the by-election for his state seat of Barambah.In an upset, he was beaten by Trevor Perrett of the ultra-right Citizens Electoral Council. It was largely a protest vote against the Nationals for getting rid of Bjelke-Petersen.

 ITEM NUMBER SIX:

Anecdotes.
Back in 1976, when I was the head of the Democratic Club at my college, an opponent threatened to bring Lyndon LaRouche on campus for a speech.
Rather than threaten a protest to shut him down, I instead suggested a debate – which never came off. He didn’t come to campus.
Later, in English Class, we were asked to “Thoroughly explicate a novel” – I did “The Story of O,” by Pauline Reage.

And, indeed to this.

We can form a political party whose sole end is to promote the candidacy of Lyndon LaRouche or Captain Kangaroo or whomever we want, just as we can run a newspaper that makes comically ill-reasoned endorsements of obviously unfit candidates. No one might join the party, as no one might read the paper. But a political party it would be.
 ITEM NUMBER SEVEN
Dan Schmidt reports
With this beautiful time of Easter, we could enjoy a real Easter blessing, with the resurrection of humanity to a more Christian world by joining the BRICS nations that Obama, to date, hasn’t allowed the U.S. to do.

And here the former Pope and Larouche find their vision placed in the same paragraph.

9/11 was an inside jobLaRouche had forecast eight months earlier, a “Reichstag Fire” type of attack shortly after Bush and Cheney took office.

Also.  “A plainly unhinged woman writing as ‘Brice Taylor’ insists that, when she was a child, Kissinger turned her into a ‘mind-controlled slave,’ repeatedly making her eat her alphabet cereal in reverse order and taking her on the ‘It’s a Small World’ ride at Disneyland,” writes Niall Ferguson, Harvard’s Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History and a Hoover Institution senior fellow, who also scrutinizes Lyndon LaRouche’s claim that Kissinger is a British agent and David Icke’s assertion that he’s a reptilian shape-changer from the lower fourth dimension before concluding, “No rational people take such nonsense seriously. But the same cannot be said for the allegations made by conspiracy theorists of the left, who are a great deal more influential.”

 ITEM NUMBER EIGHT
 Gonna Shock the nation of France!
 “I am running for president against the political seraglio who sided with the empire of money,” said Mr. Cheminade on his Twitter account. Confirmation that he made ​​Monday morning on the set of the 4 Truths of France 2 . “For over 40 years, the policy is conducted is a financial dismantling policy, not a policy of growth.” And so, in 2005, he announced his candidacy for the 2007 presidential election, it will be validated due to an insufficient number of signatures. This is the sixth candidate for the next presidential candidate in 2012 already. “Yes, I will be a candidate for the 2017 presidential election,” thundered one already candidate in 1995 (he had obtained 0.27% of the votes) and 2012 (0.25% of the vote). Just under two years later, he announced having collected the 500 signatures needed, and when the day comes, gets 0.25% of votes cast.
 Can he break free to .33 percent, or is he doomed to get stomped by the Trotskyite Party as always?

who came in third?

Wednesday, May 11th, 2016

The “others” in the West Virginia Democratic Presidential Primary …

Paul Farrell …           8.9 percent
Keith Judd …            1.8 percent
Martin O’Malley       1.6 percent
Rocky De La Fuente .4 percent

I had thought that by sheer logic of a kind of name recognition, Keith Judd was slated to come in third place, but… the problem seems to be that he received permission from parole to actually do a bit of campaigning, and once they learned he had an occupation as a “superhero”, that was it.  So it is Paul Farrell

He captured 9 percent of the vote statewide, and in Mingo County, the heart of West Virginia’s coal country, he even won 113 more votes than Mrs. Clinton.

That maps overlaying results in 2012, 2008, and now 2016 will be very interesting…