Hm.

Seems to be a “whack your hair” type barber.    Sure, there’s a lot of gender normativ-ism in this one, where the cuts are stuck in some 50s crewcut esque, but as the barbers claim… they’ve given them to women too, (as one barber there said “probably gay”).

Though she has other ideas, and doesn’t view the “many probably gay customers” line…

Marshall says she asked for a “No. 4 skin fade”– a style typically more popular with men – that transitions from long on top to shaved scalp on the sides. She says she stayed calm during a 15-minute go-nowhere conversation in which the barbers never asked for clarification about what she wanted and ended after she asked them if they understood the term “discrimination.’
Marshall said the barbers refused to cut her hair because she didn’t fit into their idea of what a man or a woman should look like.
In a past job, Marshall said she advocated for the homeless and disabled. In this case, she said she’s putting those skills to work for herself and others who bend gender norms.

That last line is where it gets “hardy har har”…

Marshall says she’s convinced the issue was about gender – how she looks — not her sexual orientation. By day’s end Friday, she said she’d really rather offer to teach the barbers in a daylong seminar on gender binary oppression than file a labor bureau complaint.

I’m thinking that if this customer gets her demand, and gets the haircut done in this style that this barber doesn’t bother with… fine, but then she must MUST MUST waive her right to complain about the outcome.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee are quite literally jockeying to make hay of … some judge who refuses to do her bureaucratic job.

Mississippi’s Democratic nominee for governor gets the front page (albeit under the fold) treatement in the New York Times…

The party that was once the alpha and omega of Southern politics is now having to explain that its headline candidate in Mississippi was elected on the following grounds: “He was the first name on the ballot, and he was a man,” said Jacqueline Amos, the executive field director for the state Democratic Party.

With added on, previously mentioned in this blog, points on how a surplus of Democratic voters not engaged in Democratic Party politics, wrought from the days of one party rule, brought this about, and keeps bringing this about in the Southern states.

What I find interesting in this story is this…

For Mississippi Democrats, who have to pick their battles, the focus this year has been on regaining control of the state’s House of Representatives. A curiosity candidate who kept a low profile would not complicate that, but to the exasperation of some party officials, Mr. Gray has been granting interviews to most any news outlet that tracks him down, from MSNBC to RoadKing, a magazine for professional truckers.

I’m a bit flummoxed by this notion.  Maybe there’s this idea that it highlights party dysfunction as they try to coordinate messaging, but the idea that he’s taking the opportunity of a surprise primary victory to, albeit feebly, campaign… campaign in the “Ordinary shy Joe” manner… take the 15 minutes of fame and grant the 15 minutes of fame allotment to curiosity-seekers looking at every angle of the story… and that this is problematic to a political party —

It’s not like he’s Donald Trump.

And he has that obvious angle of “touring and getting to know the state”…

His twitter page should be updated more frequently, though.

Rick Perry said it…

In an interview with Fox News, Perry was asked about speculation coming from Donald Trump that Perry would drop out of the race.
“A broken clock is right once a day,” Perry replied with a smile, before adding that he was still in the race.

Ha ha; let’s have a laugh at Rick Perry’s expense.  Of course, he could be more used to this clock…

… Someone needs to peer into Rick Perry’s office to see if he uses this unusual clock, or the more standard 12 hour type to see if this statement is, indeed, a gaffe.

In other “people running for president you’re not paying attention to because you’re being entertained by Trump, silently waiting and thinking “they do have to end up with Jeb or Rubio at the end, right?”… loving Sanders, and sighing as you wait for Hillary’s inevitable nomination”…

Scandal rocks Martin O’Malley campaign!  Furniture sold, bought, cheap… favors traded and…

Thanks to what looks like a generous interpretation of state rules, by some pliable state officials, Mr. O’Malley, a Democrat who left office in January, was allowed to purchase much of the governor’s mansion’s residential furniture — 54 pieces from the family’s bedrooms and living rooms — for the attractive price of $9,638; the original price of those items, billed to taxpayers, was $62,000.

Finally.  Scandal rocks someone in the Democratic field besides Hillary Clinton.

One question…

a new “Joke with the Pope” digital campaign, encouraging people to “donate” a joke to support one of three causes ahead of Pope Francis’ historic U.S. visit.

The campaign, which begins Sept. 8, is being launched by the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States and precedes the release of its new mobile app, Missio. The mission societies work to spread the Catholic faith overseas, especially in poor and remote areas.

[…]

Through Oct. 2, people — anyone, not just Catholics — can submit a written joke or short video of themselves telling a joke on the Joke with the Pope website, jokewiththepope.org. They then can choose a cause their joke will support: helping children in need in Argentina, housing the homeless in Ethiopia or feeding the hungry in Kenya.

The organization will announce the funniest joke Oct. 5, bestowing the title of “honorary comedic adviser to the pope” on the winner and donating $10,000 to the cause chosen by the winner.

This is going to induce quite a few inappropriate jokes of one vintage or another… oh, raunchiness, bitter Catholic up-bringing crap, scandals about pedophilic priests…

They’re probably going to never see the light of day and be shuffled by Bill Murray into a “delete” bin.

But if they’re not… or even if they are… can there be, like, an alternate site that shows these rejected on sight jokes?

In hon0r of the “Deez Nuts” hoax…

… which, whatever you think of the teenager who filed, or the “ain’t this a goof” polling done on the campaign…

presented an awfully bizarre assortment of “NOT REAL” or “Hoax” candidate headlines and statements…

a comment surfaced here relating to a great presidential candidacy / party hoax of the last century… which, looking about the Internet, there’s at least a sort of “news media reporting on fake stuff” theme repeating across the decades which is … interesting enough.

‘Tis the Winter of The Labour Party of Britain’s discontent, as they navigate from a horrible election result with no obvious way forward… the two poles to navigate on that old “thesis – antithesis synthesis” dialectic, whichin ordinary times would land on something like the “synthesis”… one — oh, Tony Blairism, the political figure who represents the party’s most recent success but who the party faithful always found ever so compromised against their policy desires.  (Apparently the figure in the race most aligned with Blair is about ready to come dead last.)  The other route, some assertion or re-assertion of party principles, which is what is prompting the rise of Jeremy Corbyn — the most left-wing of the contenders for Party Leader who has his hat in the ring.  And he’s about to win, with the other two people in the race jockeying for second, to be in line for the Leadership position when sometime in the next five years the party decides to shuffle back to “responsible”.

Rough analogy in American politics, and with the caveat that we have two different political traditions at work here and analogies fall apart — he is more Bernie Sanders 2016 (clearly to the left of traditional front-bench party figures) than Howard Dean 2004 (whatever his political liabilities, very much in essence a mainline Democrat in policy).  There has been, or so my understanding if I read the British press right, that by the time we get to party elections, his bubble will burst… akin to what we expect with Sanders or Trump — some combination of being exposed, the party “sobering up”, or party heads bearing down…  Or so my understand… but it appears it’s the party’s winter of its discontent, the logic comes in that they’re in the wilderness and are apt to want a voice in parliament arguing moreso than immediate electoral aim… so… things are in flux — September 12, Corbyn is going to win.  A party civil war in the offing, and…

So, pass the popcorn, as they say, and… hrm… some conspiratorial aims of politics…  Unreconstructed Trotskyite, ye say?  Funny that… because … hm.  Reconstructed Trotskyites abound.

Jeremy Corbyn spoke by video at a meeting held earlier this year by a group fronting for the far-right LaRouche organisation, it has emerged.
The frontrunner in the Labour leadership race addressed the annual conference of the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC) in Melbourne, Australia in April.
It was held under the auspices of the Schiller Institute, an international thinktank connected to the extremist LaRouche movement, headed by American Lyndon LaRouche, a convicted fraudster.
According to the Schiller Institute’s website, Mr Corbyn appeared in the same session as fellow left-wing Labour MP Michael Meacher and anti-EU Tory activist Robert Oulds.

Yeah.  Interesting band of political allies all around.  A favourite of Kremlin Russia TV.

On “anti-zionism”.  Corbyn clearly doesn’t feel overly perturbed by the chatter about anti-Semitism that is dogging him; when the Jewish Chronicle published a series of questions addressed to him, instead of picking up the phone and calling them—as any politician who cared about the feelings of the Jewish community would naturally do—he appointed a spokesperson to engage in an email exchange with the paper. Thus did readers learn that “Jeremy” considers that “Holocaust denial is vile and wrong,” though at no point did “Jeremy” condemn by name any of the Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists (among them the followers of Lyndon Larouche, an American far-right leader) with whom he has associated.

Interesting thought here… and this is maybe the most interesting piece on this particular controversy ( — a voice to be drawn upon in British news dealings with Larouche …

“The fact that Jeremy Corbyn shared a platform and had any dealings at all with the CEC in Australia proves that to my mind he is not to be trusted,” Duggan, whose group is called Justice for Jeremiah, told IBTimes UK. “Anyone who can have dealings with a political party that is a smokescreen for a highly dangerous political cult that incites hatred against British people, the Crown and Jewish people, that has stated that they are at war with the British state is sowing the seeds of violence to be engendered against us.
“Not only can in my view Jeremy Corbyn be therefore unfit to be a leader of any party but he should be severely rebuked by the Labour party for his past act of collaboration with such a dangerous group. Jeremy Corbyn’s act to participate in a conference organised by the CEC in Australia is to give sanction to a dangerous network and shows me that he is prepared to risk not only the safety of British people but the safety of many other people in the world.”

Comments.

If you actually watch Laroche videos, he talked about Obama wanting to destroy the world because he worked for the royale family. Everything was blamed on the british, I had to laugh, its highly entertaining. I cant believe that people would actually believe larouche hes like a cartoon character on par with alex jones.

Surely ye jest.  Going after the British — Among the articles on CEC Australia’s website is one headlined: “British Oligarchy planning new 9/11 to trigger World War III?” Another reads: “MI6 disinformation division conjures new ‘evidence’ for anniversary of MH17”.

The line from the org on why they’re out to destroy Jeremy Corbyn.

On Aug. 14, American Statesman Lyndon LaRouche emphasized support for Glass-Steagall in his response to an institutional question on whether Jeremy Corbyn was qualified to be the next leader of the British Labour Party. Speaking on LaRouche PAC’s Friday Webcast,

Comically enough, Cliff Kincaid, ala Accuracy In Media goes after Bernie Sanders… ignores that the party they’re vaguely aligned to is currently suffering the woes of Donald Trump… and makes in some way the same connection I have to Britain with Corbyn.  But shouldn’t they mention that the Larouchies are actually backing Martin O’Malley?

As for Corbyn… he’s denying he knew what the heck the Citizen’s Electoral Council was… won’t be there in the future… and — heh.

STORY NUMBER TWO
Hey.  Daily Mail.  Please quit calling the Larouchies “neo-Nazis”.

Revealed: Labour leadership favourite Jeremy Corbyn spoke at meeting of a group allied to American ‘neo Nazis’
He says nothing as his interviewer, an unknown Australian woman, tells him the conflict in Ukraine was ‘foisted upon’ Russia, which has been wrongly portrayed as ‘the aggressor’.

See too…

Somewhere you can draw up a vinn diagram where they meet in the middle circle, but … the parties don’t end up the same, as you’d see in Australia.

STORY NUMBERE THREE: Rhetorical Firepower

Looking over for some overblown… interesting rhetoric.  This from Michael Steger, in a policy committee from July 27…

And that’s all there is. If you have any sense of reality to that, and all you think you can do is conform to that, or adapt to that system, you might be able to get by Monday to Friday, but on Saturday and Sunday you’re probably depressed. You’re not able to survive. And you’re killing people all around you, all over the place! — Michael Steger , 24 minute mark of 7-27

And then… at the “New Manhatten Project” — thiny…  Larouche comes out against killing Obama.  Nice of him to do so.

Q:  [followup] Sorry, I also wanted to ask you, if we’re looking at thermonuclear war within the next couple months, don’t you think it would be safe to say that he should be out already?

LAROUCHE:  No.  Doesn’t work that way, you don’t understand the process of war.  I’m a specialist in the process of war; I can tell you, we’re on the edge of doing it very soon.  And the point is to prevent that solution, and use other methods by throwing him out of office.  We don’t want to have to shoot him, we want to throw him out of office, where he can’t kill anybody, any more people.  He’s killed too many already.

Q:  OK, thank you.

And… sure?

It’s Mr. LaRouche’s view on this that unless we take advantage of the current enormous crisis in the United States, the exposure of the Obama administration for multiple crimes to remove him from office now or marginalize him such that he is ineffective in trying to start the war during this month of August, while the US Congress is out of session, when he can act with somewhat with impunity.
Brings us to today’s EIR headline:  The Biggest Financial Crisis in Modern History… Rense, Lather, Repeat.
Repeat, Harley Schlanger…

STORY NUMBER FOUR: RIP, Amelia Boyntyn Robinson

So passes Amelia Boyntyn Robinson… who at the end of her life backed Obama and Larouche.

The Larouche connection, her vice presidential status at the Schiller Institute, is a last footnote in obituaries and memorials.

Boynton Robinson settled in Tuskegee in 1976 and later became a vice president of the Schiller Institute, an organisation affiliated with political extremist and fringe presidential candidate Lyndon R LaRouche. She said she was drawn to his ideas for economic revival. LaRouche went to prison after being convicted of mail fraud in the 1980s.

Relevancies for her bio:  because of this involvement, in 1992, the petition for “Amelia Boynton Robinson Day” in Seattle WA was voided … and unfortunate, this “human rights foundation“:  Some of Robinson’s words live on — both in her autobiography, Bridge Across Jordan, and on the website of her human rights foundation, the Schiller Institute. 

The Larouche comment on her emphasizes this footnote.

Our nation has lost one of its greatest patriots: earlier this morning Amelia Boynton Robinson passed away in Montgomery, Alabama, at 104, after having suffered a stroke on August 18. Amelia is an outstanding example of the human potential that exists in all of us, if you’ve got the courage to use it. A civil rights heroine her entire life, Amelia teamed up with Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche and became Vice President of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Schiller Institute, traveling the world inspiring the young and old to be a force for the good in human history.

It’s… interesting, isn’t it?

Boynton Robinson, who was portrayed by Lorraine Toussaint in the 2014 film Selma, remained politically engaged and unafraid of controversy even in advanced age, making public appearances into her late 90s for Lyndon LaRouche’s Schiller Institute. She attended the State of the Union address this past January with Rep. Terri Sewell, the first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama. Less than two months later, Boynton Robinson accompanied President Obama across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march.

It’s an unforunate side journey late in life.  I fault James Bevel more than Robinson in the association with Larouche, best shown with this bizarre duality of “Obama and Larouche”.

AND INSULTS and all that

Rare praise for Carl Levin from Commentary Magazine, with an odd caveat.

In hindsight, hats off to Senator Carl Levin for, back in 2003, using his oversight position to survey top generals about their opinion about the planning and potential impact of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While I disagreed with much of Levin’s rhetoric and regret that he spent so much time pursuing Lyndon LaRouche-generated conspiracy theories (such as that involving the stupidly named Office of Special Plans), no one can suggest that Levin did not do his job.

Dateline Manhatten.

“Queen Elizabeth” went on to tell me that the idea is to crush the resistance of the Greek people and their economy and to make an example of them. Perhaps Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia, China, and the U.S will be next. “The U.S. is already subject”, said QE.

Daniel Burke spoke first at the podium set up directly in front of Federal Hall. Daniel Burke questioned Hillary Clinton last Monday when she spoke at the New School here in NYC, asking her if she is in favor of reinstating Glass Steagall of which she gave NO COMMENT. Daniel was escorted from the premises but not arrested.

Dudes really hate the Queen.

“mentally Ill”?

In defense of Mike Huckabee on that “taking the Israelis to the Oven” comment.  If ye must.  Say… isn’t this nuclear deal a thing the Larouchies should be coming out in favor of?

Newt Gingrich, how he’s like Larouche… campaign debt.

Conspiratorial , vintage 2005… Tim Haye and Jerry Jinkins are “poised on the threshold of the looking glass, inches away from a Larouchian wonderland.”

George Soros brings out the... “George Soros Did not break the Bank of England…  The proof is that George Soros is still alive!”  That’s your Larouchian thinking…

Does Great Britain have much of a Larouche Movement?

Wait.  What?

On Tuesday, Public Policy Polling released a poll showing the Vermont senator topping presumed front-runner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire by a 42-35 margin. Following far behind the top two contenders are Jim Webb at 6 percent, Martin O’Malley at 4 percent, Lincoln Chafee at 2 percent, and Lawrence Lessig at 1 percent. Just about everyone in New Hampshire likes Sanders. The Vermont senator has a 72 percent favorable rating from Democrats in the state, with only 12 percent saying they dislike him. A quarter of Democrats in the state say they have an unfavorable view of Clinton.

Two things — one … at least in New Hampshire, and to some extent these state polls are what matters and not , and to some other extent these state polls do not matter because… urm — the year before the election is the year of the “non-practical wistful vote” —

One:  The dream of getting Lincoln Chafee to 1 percent, as per the comedy routine of fellow marginal player Conan O’brien, has become more than a reality.  And, two:  Lawrence Lessig?

Hm.
Hm.
Hm.

That last one is fascinating… I don’t know that Bernie Sanders is running to “win”, not to “govern”, but…

Meantime… Joseph Biden is considering — and meeting with Elizabeth Warren to spur speculation , because… well, Bernie Sanders is beating Hillary Clinton in polls, so why not?  And because Elizabeth Warren will help neutralize the problems that come with entertaining the prospect of nominating or electing Joseph Freaking Biden.

And Al Gore is being … touted… for amusement’s sake.

Explaining the victory of Robert Gray as Mississippi’s Democratic nominee for Governor.  It wasn’t that his name is the same as a color — it was that he was the one man against two women in this low watt campaign.

And then, futher explanation on why we had a voting pool not prepared to vote for the Democratic party’s choice of candidate, or any statued insurgent against the party’s choice.

the conditions that enabled Gray’s victory are deeply embedded in Mississippi’s anachronistic election process, a system designed for one-party white supremacist rule that has not kept pace with the expansion of voting rights or partisan realignment. As a result, the 21st century Democratic primary electorate is distorted through 19th century laws and traditions. Problems occur when these three vestiges of the old regime work in concert:

Candidates for every state and local office can declare a partisan affiliation, but voters can not register with a party. Any voter can participate in either the Democratic or Republican primary.
Many local officials and their challengers still run as Democrats without GOP opposition. Even in many majority-Republican counties, the Democratic primary operates as the de facto general election for certain local offices.
Local races (of which there are many) drive turnout even when state offices are contested. The Democratic primary attracts more voters than the Republican primary despite GOP dominance in statewide elections. A large share of the Democratic primary voters do not support the Democratic nominees in the general election.

Interestingly, I suppose this is one factor that saved Thad Cochran in his primary race last Senate election — those rural down ticket Democrats not being in the Republican voting pool.

So…

The size of the dropoff between August and November can be staggering. Nearly 90 percent of Tippah County voters participated in the Democratic primary, but only 25 percent cast their ballot for the Democratic nominee in 2011. Ninety-two percent voted in Carroll County’s Democratic primary, but only 29 percent went blue in 2011. In total, 17 counties (21 percent) have at least a 50-point gap between Democratic share of the primary and general election vote.

Bottom line, and this probably works as well in South Carolina with your Alvin Greenes of the world.

But even in the Democrats’ atrophied condition, it would have been almost impossible for Gray or any unknown candidate to have won a majority of the vote without the systemic distortion and dilution of the electorate created by Mississippi’s antiquated primary laws and traditions.

Cue the comments from chest-beating Republicans and conservatives “dumb ignorant Democrats” mixed with the creepy “this vestige of 19th century election laws is a-okay”…

The one thing we will give Robert Gray — he is apparently running.   He has a consultant. Which is a thing that he should be doing.  Granted, it’s going to be roughly the Christine O’Donnel “I’m You” pitch — the ad created by the “Demon Sheep” consultant — which was much mocked, but frankly was a case of “that’s all she got” —

I imagine he has better credentials to sell everyone on this “Mr/Ms. Smith goes to Washington” pitch, which is to suggest that the idea is the goal is… something less than embarassment… as he tours the state.  The only thing I can’t help but see as potentially “ugh”-ish is, oh, something like you saw with Susan Boyle, who was quickly made up after he dumpy talent show appearance debut with … “huh”.  (Probably just keep the jeans and flannel… you’re an “everyman politician”.)

Of course, actually hitching a run for office isn’t something everyone of these “some guy”s should do — I remember I saw in Internet comments someone saying “get Carville to coach up Alvin Greene”, which — would have been pointless.