Out in full force, the “Recall Sam Adams” are.
I grow to despise them. They’re like — two people straight on a Max ride. Like, completely unaware that someone else just came up to me about five seconds ago with the “Recall Sam Adams” clip-board. Like — maybe this is a tactic — person one asks for a signature, you say no, and then you can mull it over for a few seconds and perhaps change your mind when person number two asks for the signature?

Walking forward and outward, man flags me. “Recall Sam Adams?” I say, “Re-elect Sam Adams? Why would I want to Re-elect Sam Adams?”, as I walk past him. He shouts “No! Reca–”

Did Avel Gordly get her $75,000? If she didn’t, and she had gotten the $75,000 — would this Recall Sam Adams scene look even worse, or would that $75,000 somehow siphon the Recall effort into a spot with a greater ratio people to people who care anymore to recall Sam Adams? Given the new-found interest in the oregonian comments section, I suggest they circle around the “Black Blox” demonstrators concerning the police.

Really?  You’re putting in that position of having to defend Alex Jones?  Really?

I don’t know where this sprouting from, but it begins with this citation of Alex Jones as “Larouche Front Talk Show“.  It roams into this Karl Rove Wall Street Journal request to the Tea Party to “Weed out the Kooks” , referenced for the sake of referencing the word “remnants” —

A small fraction of the tea partiers’ leadership are ambitious individuals who haven’t been able to hold office in either the GOP or Democratic Party. Some are from fringe groups like the John Birch Society or the remnants of the LaRouchies. Others see the tea party movement as a recruiting pool for volunteers for Ron Paul’s next presidential bid.

— Interesting, but I suppose false — or maybe it isn’t… I don’t know.  I would note that Ron Paul supporters basically invented the Tea Party movement, and Republican Party structures encroached to it.
But Comedic gold is as always found in the comments section.
Rove advises Tea Partiers to steer clear of fringe groups.

I agree. The top of the list would be the Democratic Party (especially the Obamatrons)and the Republican Party (especially neo-cons).
He laughingly identifies The John Birch Society. Ha! They are one of the finest promoters of Original American values in existence. If Rove says they are fringe, then he is a Socialist.
Thank you John Birch Society.

From Rove’s missive we jump up back to an Alex Jones reference.

The dangerous Lyndon LaRouche cult is attempting to hijack the TEA party movement.   This cult consists of fanatical followers of LaRouche’s peculiar brand of Marxism.  Interestingly, one of LaRouche’s former high level associates, Webster Tarpley, is now openly working with self-described “patriot” Alex Jones, who runs the infowars and prision planet web sites. […]
The strength of the LaRouche appeal to some TEA partiers was dramatically demonstrated in a recent election when LaRouche-Democrat Congressional candidate Kesha Rogers won the nomination in the 22nd District in Texas.  She campaigned on one main issue — impeach Obama.  That message had great appeal to many in the freedom movement and they came across party lines to nomimate her.
Rogers victory has done massive harm to the freedom movement by giving LaRouche the one thing he lacked – his own political foothold on the elective battleground.  He used the TEA party movement to give him what he never had – legitimacy.

Mostly the dangerous Larouche Group is interested in standing in front of the Tea Party and claiming it, in various swarths, as itself.  The Tea Party is not in danger of being hi-jacked by such a thing, nor did they particularly vote in the nomination of Kesha Rogers… which is best understood like this.  A bit less so the final sentences here.

My previous comments on the supposed Alex Jones — Larouche Axis is found here — I’m not going to repost them.  I can assure everyone that neither man invented that one about the Rothchilds, or the Vast Eugenics Plot that in Alex Jones’s estimation is leading to the Government secretly building large numbers of Internment Camps throughout Middle America.  But skip past, for the moment, trying to slice the confluence of Political and Conspiratorial issues and let’s look and Hiring and Employee Relations.  From this article:

Ryan was the new guy. He had answered a Craigslist want ad six weeks earlier looking for a radio producer for an unspecified program. “If I put my name in the ad, I’d have fans lining up out the door to apply,” Jones told me. (The location of Jones‘ studio is a carefully guarded secret.) When he applied, Ryan was a casual listener of the show who enjoyed Jones‘ style but thought the subject matter was “a little out there.” After a few weeks immersed in Jones‘s world, however, he was a believer. “If you saw what we see every day–fifty to a hundred articles all calling for global government, for eugenics, mind control, and everything else–you’d believe it too,” he said.

I’m a little chagrined by the ease of falling into the opinions sprouted by Alex Jones based on a sort of immersion, but it appears there is an exchange of wages for services rendered.  As for the Larouche org, here we see two workers doing their deeds for their employer.

Well, the figures speak for themselves for Renee Sigerson and John Sigerson.  Significant tithing, I would say.

Did you know there’s a war going on in Seattle?  Take ONE.

Rave To our neighbors who for years have treated the neighborhood to the gift of their outdoor tree decorated with different colored lights and charms for every holiday. Thanks for the lovely spectacle!”
Rant To [political activist Lyndon] LaRouche supporters. If you really want to reach the intelligence of voters, do it through intelligent means. I would talk with you, but your posters of President Obama as Hitler make me feel that LaRouche supporters belong to a cult. Though you may be adamantly against his policies, the president is no Hitler, and it’s rude to make that comparison. How about a picture of LaRouche instead, or posters saying how LaRouche can fix our country’s issues? Why turn off people you want to reach?

… And Jeers to this rusty tailgate.
You know.  This is a bad idea.  They are quite capable of doing this — I think I remember seeing them with something in 2004 with Larouche’s visage next to Lincoln and Roosevelt.
Anyway, I think the cult is liable to take this headline seriously, as seriously as they take their War on the British Empire.
… preparing with their Larouche Constitutional Dollars.

According to a police report, another sign-wielding Mooninite (that’s what we’re calling them now) called police at about 4:00pm on March 24th and said he’d been assaulted by an angry passerby.
Police arrived at the scene and found the man “carrying large political signs with a very unflattering picture of our country’s current president.”
The victim told police he was holding his sign “and trying to engage passersby in conversation” when a “very enraged” man walked up to him, circled around him and began screaming “fucking retard” over and over. The suspect also told the victim he “was in a cult,” tried to grab his sign, and then shoved him.

I beg of everyone: this is not the way to fight the War on Larouchies.  They Battle must be Waged and won with Youtube Videos.

Those people are assholes. I had my 85 year-old mother (who still hasn’t gotten over the closure of F&N) downtown a few years back, and one of them got in her face and started screaming some obscenity laced tirade about Bush.
Mom is a Democrat, but she’s also a lady who doesn’t stand for words like that. I thought she was going to hit him with her handbag (if she were twenty years younger she would have)
Seriously, they’re just jerks. I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish. Reminding us that LaRouche is still alive?

… We’ll see when the man dies if that’s the whole aim of their antics.

… Wait.  They aim to bring Kesha Rogers to congress (though apparently they already think they have), (last sentences in my post already linked), Summer Shields, and Rachel Brown.  Right?  Roll through the campaigns.

In the span of a few minutes, several people spoke to the LaRouche/Brown supporters and signed a document on a clipboard.
When the Advocate editor asked why the Brown supporters had a sign with Obama’s face and a mustache like Hitler’s, they refused to answer, however.
A young male in the group said, “We’re not talking to people.”
Asked if that meant the press, considering that he was talking to several people, he repeated his refusal and said, “It’s all on the website.” He blocked his face with his hand while the Advocate editor took a few more pictures.
The woman in the group said she was a Brown supporter but she also refused to answer questions.
While the press took photos, she turned the sign so her body was blocking Obama’s mustached portrait. She also said to look for information about Brown’s candidacy on her website, rachelbrownforcongress.

Wait.  They’re not talking to people?  Well then.  That’s a start, because it at least means they’re no longer shouting invectives at already.  (See the 85 year old mom in Seattle.)

How’s the Summer Shields campaign going?

Surely the New Jersey readers want to know about supporting this candidate.

Summer Justice Shields, running in the California Democratic Congressional Primary 8th District now represented by Nancy Pelosi, was informed that he would not be allowed a booth at the upcoming California Democratic Party Convention. With the second lowest approval rating in the House of only 11%, her seat is considered one of the most vulnerable. Campaigning, sometimes door to door, Summer Shields has seen widespread support for the need for her and the Obama Administration’s replacement with a return to the nation of a “Hamiltonian” banking and credit system, starting with a “Pecora Commision” federal criminal investigation of the roles of all those responsible for foisting the Wall Street bailouts on the nation, including now Treasury Secretary Timmy Geithner, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Hank Paulson. The following article is from the LaRouchepac.com website, and at Summer Shields for Congress California Democrats Move to Exclude LaRouche from State Convention

Wait.  Where does that come from?  Here, I guess.  An absurdly low approval rating, an almost absurdly low disapproval rating, and a  bunch of blank.
Rules of thumb:  Congress is NEVER popular — reflected to congressional leadership.  Your congress-critter almost invariably is, in your district.  This is a bizarre trick, apparently coming with the same feelers that hold that Kesha Rogers has been elected to Congress.

Anyway… You know something?  This citation of “Neo-Nazi Girl” is false, but it occurs to me…

Are you kidding? You’re either profoundly incompetent or just plain lying. Do not talk to me about dignity or respect either. You accuse the LaRouche movent of racism and ani-semetism knowing full well that we are running a candidate, Mr. Summer Sheilds, in the Democratic Primary against Nancy Pelosi who is African American. So you permit these kinds of slanders to appear on your website without ever even talking to a LaRouche candidate.
They’re NOT TALKING TO PEOPLE.  What is the press supposed to do about weird people waving nazi-images put together by largely forgotten cults (see Karl Rove’s “remnants” remark.)
Why would they have any particular reason to “know full well” such?  See too this San Francisco newspaper article.  Pelosi, who faces no Democrats in June, will “take a look” at who wins the GOP primary in her district and “go from there,” her political director, Jennifer Crider, said.

Silverchild pops in to echo “European”:
The young lady you reference is NO Nazi, but is fighting fascism!
We will remember that Jeremiah Duggan joined the Larouche organization because of the “Anti-Nazi campaigns” the org was involved with “at the time”.  Silverchild, I will point out, calls Jeremiah Duggan “Jeremy” here — as did Howie G.

Wikipedia Edit Attempt Alert.

Anyway, relating to Duggan… as the recent Channel 4 special brought some new people to view it — an example here —

Any fans of Bugsy Malone?  Event described here, Petition description here.

I am tripping over the latest and very weird Oregonian editorial favoring a Recall of Mayor Sam Adams.  I take it to be a means to try to amplify Avel Gordly’s request for $75,000 from somewhere out there to “Get This Thing Off The Ground.”  So, if someone out there has $75,000 lying around — just send it to Avel Golly — Time Ir Running Out!

The commenters in the piece coming out for a Recall seem to do a good job making the case against the Recall.  Take this item for instance.

Mr LIBBY: I agree, your sickness, is what this is all about, if your sick, think how well feel..LIED TO GET ELECTED, OVER THE TOP COSTLY PROJECTS…..TRAM, SOUTH WATER FRONT, STADIUM FIASCOS, RIVER PLAN, MORE UNFUNDED MANDATES, 600 MILLION DOLLAR BIKE PROJECTS..140,000 LOOS, STUPID DIESEL CONTRACTS, COP PROBLEMS, LACKING FISCAL SKILLS IN HIS ON LIFE VS RUNNING A CITY INTO THE GROUND, COMPUTOR ISSUES……CITY PROCLAMATIONS INTO MATTERS OF NO CONCERN TO THE CITIES BUSINESS…..DID I MENTION LIED TO GET ELECTED….ALL CAPS FOR A REASON….WE ARE SICK AND FED UP.

Now run along, and have a nice day.

He forgot to mention the POTHOLE ON HIS HOME STREET.  Recall Sam Adams for that, why don’t you?  IN ALL CAPS!!!

It’s almost interesting that the “COP PROBLEMS” are inserted into this thing.  So we go to the issue of “apathy”.

This is getting a bit of play.  Here we have the conservative website “Real Clear Politics” pointing to a clip of Barney Frank speak the words, headlined…

… “We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government”

in the (financial) regulatory area.

And so google this up and we’ll see that newbusters, thefoxnation, the national review, heritage, dailypaul are leading the fight to point to Barney Frank’s quote that

“We are leading the fight on every front to increase the role of government”

in the (financial) regulatory area.

Or, I suppose, Barney Frank is leading the fight to increase the role of government in one particular front.

So it goes into this New Republic Jonathan Chait post which incorrectly cites the quote as looping in “among fringe-right websites” is incorrect, as it’s been looping in mainstream right websites.

Today I’m trying to find the fuller context for John McCain’s statement in his Republican primary battle in Arizona..

“I never considered myself a maverick. I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”

Is there something about that second sentence which would refute the constant branding of himself as “Maverick” over the years in a similar way that the the next few words of the Barney Frank within the context of the debate moots the “every front”?  I don’t think there is.  Maybe I’m being overly reasonable in even asking that question.

It appears that Obama has set the list of his next Supreme Court appointee to three people, as Justice Stevens inches toward Retirement.  So it is … Diane Wood, Merrick Garland, Elena Kagan.  The next Supreme Court Justice is one of those people.

Meanwhile, Mark Ambinder throws out this statement.

Obama and his team are well aware that judicial confirmation battles almost always excite Republicans and confuse Democrats.

I suppose a policy of Total Opposition will do that for the Republicans, along with the basic role of “Judicial Appointments as Fund Raising Tool”.  Isn’t that all Roe V Wade is for the Republican Party, really?  For the Democrats, their tendency to really like and find that Supreme Court Justice the “Real Deal” might well confuse us.  So here too — who does Mark Ambinder think he is — Mark Halperin?

Anyway — read up.  Some thoughts and some links found here.  But this will just confuse you even more.

Thinking about the Politics of Your Bama, Read this Hill Staffer letter.

Obama preempts the other side’s most resonant arguments, which forces them to come up with more and more extreme claims in order to differentiate themselves. In the end, he occupies the reasonable middle ground and his opponents are Palinized. It doesn’t always work — on the national security/gitmo/Miranda stuff, for example, it turns out the utter extreme positions the right is left with given the centrist ground Obama has staked out turns out to be fairly popular. But even there, the Administration has had reasonable success pushing back on the Miranda nonsense and, because they effectively occupy the tough, pragmatic middle ground, they routinely get cover from non-crazy Republican national security voices, which has helped blunt the force of these issues. (I understand that the term “middle ground” is very slippery and dangerous here, but I basically use it to mean policies that, before the great crazy of 2009 had broad consensus support from large portions of both parties and the Broder/Friedman/Brooks axis.)

At the same time, the policy is a tailored, measured version of what the Republicans have urged — so, yes, the headline is, ‘Obama Allows New Offshore Drilling/Presses For Energy Independence,’ but at the same time, California/Oregon/Washington where opposition is strongest isn’t included, and there are environmentally-friendly changes to Alaska leasing policy announced at the same time. And again, as we’ve seen before, Republicans are sort of forced to twist and parse, and even to oppose things they have long supported, just because the Administration hasn’t gone far enough.

Or, in another words: Triangulation, once again.

Understand, I do believe this rating scheme to have been a useful exercise, an item which forces a confrontation on the historical expectations of the President.  At the moment, I’ll go ahead and say — move Zachory Taylor to the third level, move Ulysses Grant to the second level (this article ‘s arguments have momentarily fazed me), move William McKinley to the fourth level, and move Rutherford Hayes to the third level.  Not that I’m losing sleep with this — come back to me in a week and I’ll restore them all back and, I don’t know — move Martin Van Buren?

Now drop Obama into this game, and …  The effect is always strange.  Maybe I can drop Taylor out with the same force that I don’t mention Garfield or W. H. Harrison and make a spectacular announcement? 

So I had that giant “Er… No” once when Obama gave this Health Care speech where he evoked the Presidents Roosevelt (as in Ted) on down with respect to Health Care — “I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”  He corralled the last few liberal dissenters in the House by promising that he would not be the last President to take up Health Care.  This surrounds that area of David Frum — . The DNA of this bill traces back to what Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts, and it traces back before that to the Republican alternative to Clinton Care back in 1993 and 1994.  — While insisting he would not have voted for it due to what the Heck is wrong with it.  This is to say that in 1993-1994, the Republicans as a whole and as a group had the political need to come up with public proposals, as opposed to 2009-2010, when they would go with a straight face with the “America.  Best Health Care in the World.  America.”

Off-shore drilling is not all that puzzling.  It may be a flip flop, but it’s a flip flop already made.  He campaigned for this in the 2008 presidential general election.  Is this a compromise with himself before — what?  Securing Lindsey Graham in Climate Change bill?

After a while, these matters poke into a bit of a feeling of being “punked”.  See this recent blog conversation between The Prospect’s Tim Fernholz and The Atlantic’s Mark Ambinder and back.  While Mark Ambinder side-steps the standard aniums against Mark Halperin, the breezy comment, the part Fernholz high-lighted.:

it’s high-reward, low-risk; environmentalists will complain, but then again, environmentalists complain.  Aside from the substance, which is beyond our ken, the politics of this move is easy:

Everyone is always complaining.  But I know we’ll be somewhere when we can see the comment “Talk Radio hosts / Tea Party Protesters will complain, but then again, Talk Radio hosts / Tea Party Protesters always complain.”  Even better if we insert Financial Lobbyists, etc. as the subject.

I suppose the revised theory of Triangulation works that the shouts of “Marxist” will exhaust itself out, even as it hits up against the general Theory and Laws of Mid Term elections.

The “Recall Sam Adams” Recall is in full force today.  I’ve seen a few people with clip-boards and the question about Recalling Sam Adams. 

My opinion on the first Repeal went along the lines of “Tepidly, yes”.  Or, I’m not going to wring my hand and believe we’ve reached a nadir of local political intregity if it does not succeed. 

My thought on the second Recall is that we see a slippery slope toward a weird “Permanent Recall” culture.  Imagine a massive well-moneyed organism parking themselves in as a permanent political fixture, running one unsuccessful recall after another toward a mediocre mayor.  We’ve only got to come to the end of this second Recall effort to seemingly just wait for the brief legal lag time respite into the crazy third Recall Effort.  I suppose if my initial opinion for a Recall were stronger, then the threat of this “Permanent Recall Culture” would fade from view.

Actually, I have an additional thought on this second Recall.

With less than three weeks to go and fewer than half the needed signatures, the struggling campaign to recall Portland Mayor Sam Adams rallied Thursday at City Hall for petitions and donations.

The recall campaign has until April 20 to submit 32,183 valid signatures from Portland residents. Chief petitioner Avel Gordly said the campaign has “well over” 10,000 signatures. Chief organizer Teresa McGuire put the number between 12,000 and 15,000.

“It’s going to be tough, but we can get there,” Gordly said. “We still have time to get there.”

The first recall attempt failed in October, dogged by lack of money and professional help.

This second effort, launched in January, was supposed to have a bevy of financial backers who could pay for professional signature gatherers.

For the most part, that hasn’t happened, although Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle has given $17,500 to the overall $44,000 raised. That has allowed the campaign to hire workers from a temp agency.

It appears to be doing good work in that regard.  It’s putting people to work — some quick money that’d tide from one corner to the next.  I suppose it’s “make work” – irrelevant in what it’ll end up producing — but maybe when this third Recall comes along, even if you’re more fatigued by the idea of recalling Sam Adams — and you’re hurting for money —

— Hell!  Sign up right now!