An interesting thing going on in today’s comic strip section of the newspaper.

Yes.  Why don’t you be like this elderly couple and contemplate “volunteer”ing.

The Luann storyline makes it explicit.  The Barack Obama Administration has put the comic strip industry at work to promote this “Thousand Point of Light” concept of “Volunteer”ing.  It’s like a new WPA from out of the old Roosevelt administration, wrapped up in George Herbert Walker Bush’s plead toward Service.

Ah, but The Wizard of Id goes off script in exposing Obama’s “Volunteer” Fraud for what it is.

Next week, be sure to tune to the comic strip page and read about how much you need to get vaccinated.  Will The Wizard of Id be the lone voice of dissent again?

Richard “The Dick” Cheney won the “Keeper of the Flame Award” at a conflab of officials from the previous administration.  Apparently, Cheney is currently huddled over a dying fire, blowing at it fervously in a desperate bid of keeping it from being extinguished.   The Dickster then lobbed attacks of the weakness of Barack Obama — the New Carter.

That’s where the previous installment of what represented the Republican Party is heading — largely restricted to foreign policy, as I don’t imagine Cheney cares all that much about domestic policy affairs.  Neither did Richard “The Dick” Nixon, come to think of it.  The current installment of the Republican Party, meanwhile…

We just saw a Republican Senator from Tennessee raise his q-rating by accusing Obama of having an “Enemy’s List” and employing the tactics of Richard Nixon, for Obama’s run of the mill politicking against political opposition.  Overall, this is simply a matter of the Perpetual Silly Season — it is hard to take such a thing seriously.  Obama, Senator Lamar! Alexander points out, is out to marginalize the National Chamber of Commerce.  That is the way these things work, of course — in much the same way Dick Cheney “marginalized” President Barack Obama.

For what it is worth, the first time I noticed the claim that Obama was compiling an “Enemy’s List” was a story from the Alex Jones website (one of them) reporting on a British tabloid story claiming that former President Bill, Clinton had met with Obama, shown him the way things work in these Big Leagues, and thus Obama started drawing up his list to run down one by one.  From Alex Jones’s point of view, the proof that this was true was the inclusion of Alex Jones on that list, which is interesting because I would take that as proof of the inaccuracy of such a list.  Funny enough, American tabloids have been plastering Obama next to Glenn Beck, which I take to be a demographic alignment between the audience of Tier 2 tabloids and the audience of Fox News.

There is one thing about Lamar! Alexander’s voice speaking up that I can’t help but remark about.  It seems that every time we hear about a Republican politicians in the Senate making noise in a new partisan line of attack (meaning the two Senators of Maine are excluded), you look up at the tv screen or down at the computer screen or newspaper, and see the geography of where he sits.  “Republican Southern Senator” is a redundant phrase, except for Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

I think 2010 will see Republicans satuate the South even more, jabbing out a few “Conservative Democratic” Members of Congress in marginal seats moreso than up North which would then be more likely to recede in 2012, spurring the further regional imbalance of the political party.   It’s also instructive to look at the Senate Class of 2004, which saw several Democratic Southerners retiring and being replaced by new Republicans, and a couple of Republicans replacing retiring Republicans, and see that they’re mostly pretty safe.

The question becomes: Name the next Republican US Senator to play this type of partisan game, and name the state he  (more likely than “she”) comes from.

One note about Lamar! Alexander and my placement of an exclamation mark after his first name: this was a campaign sign he waved about in his political campaigns: 2002 Senate bid, 2000 presidential bid, probably his 1996 bid.  Political bids are a sort of cult of personality, and the politicians get wrapped up in declaring their name in such manners as putting exclamation marks after their first name.  See also Jeb! Bush.

In the wake of a ninja running around with nunchunks out to get Joseph Lieberman…

Giant Ball things chased after Arlen Specter.  While Lieberman didn’t think much of the ninja, Specter thought the ball things were “fun.  interesting.  Sporting.”

I hazard to guess theydidn’t much affect Arlen Specter beyond that.  I suppose we could all tap into this type of Political Activism, chase about politicians in various bubble things, put it onto youtube, and it’d all dissolve from any issue or cause advanced into a giant mess of dadaism.

Arlen Specter is maybe the most vulnerable Democratic Senator coming up in 2010.  But it’s not the most vulnerable Democratic Senate seat.  Arlen Specter numbers are all screwy and softening in the primary match-up with Joe Sestak, and faltering against the Republican nominee Pat Toomey — the theory that would hold him as more electable is faltering.

So it is that Joseph Biden came out to pitch Arlen Specter to the Democratic crowds in Pennsylvania.  Joseph Biden was supposedly instrumental in convincing Specter to switch parties in the first place, the subject of long-winded Amtrak ride conversations, with Specter amenable to political reality of falling in the Republican primary — Biden talking and talking and talking apparently pushed Specter over the edge.

To hear Joseph Biden tell it, Specter voted with the Maine Republican Senators (I don’t recall — was it both Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe or was it just Olympia Snowe?), after teaming up with Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson for this task, and — with the magic of trimming out some hundreds of billions of dollars and upping some tax cuts — crafted through that bill that saved us from entering a gloomy Great Depression.

Interesting enough, I heard the same in an interview with Specter earlier.  And also interesting enough, he was far more chilly and sanguine at the time of passing the bill than he is now.  But that is pretty predictable — one rejoinder of having to move from away from his past . 

Always notice that Barack Obama speaks about creating or saving x number of jobs.   Indeed, most economists agree, even though it ends up being a bit unprovable of jobs lost versus jobs otherwise lost.  The affect, with the economists theoretically most favorable to Obama thinking that Stimulus Bill was watered down, has October 9’s Congressional Insiders Poll by the National Journal with Democrats counting Yes 44 percent No 51 percent Depends (volunteered) 5 percent, and Republicans counting Yes 7 percent No 89 percent Depends (volunteered) 5 percent.  Interesting responses, if you want to look to the National Journal.

The “jobs otherwise lost” doesn’t really sit all that well.  What we have is an argument that we avoided the Worst Economy since the Great Depression and steered us to the safe ground of the Worst Economy since the early 1980s.  Is that a message that works well for you?

Similarly, the Budget Deficit is some 400 billion dollars less than was forecasted.  Which is great, I guess?  That still leaves a whopper of a deficit, and one heck of a number to throw around on a campaign trail.

So, there’s that “Eat your Vegetables” item about these unpleasantries.  Doesn’t always go down well, as the elder knows with brocolli.  (Unrelated, but kind of amusing nonetheless.)

In a year, Biden and Rendall will probably have to be campaigning for Joe Sestack.  What started as a whisper, with only a Ned Lamont or two, backing will give way to Arlen Specter losing a primary race he would have lost anyway in the other party.  Then he’ll move on to his stint as Lobbyist (unless he retires completely) at K Street — where the giant balls should be continuing to bounce after him — it is as much a part of the perma-government as the Senate and the Specters of the world, after all.

The list of Senate votes worth pointing out, Senator Al Franken’s focus on redressing the crime of Halliburton and KBR against Jamie Lee Jones in getting her claim out of a hackneyed Corporate Arbitration to the Court System.

Specifically, the amendment would bar federal funds from going to defense contractors that continue to apply mandatory arbitration clauses to claims of sexual assault, assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent hiring, retention and supervision. The amendment also covers civil rights claims of workplace discrimination, according to Franken’s office.

Sounds good.

But there were thirty no votes.  And they were:

Make of that list what you will.

I.  You know, I had this item from The Rachel Maddow Show playing on, without watching it.  In trying to curb some intemperate things against Obama from conservative activist students and other organizations (4 paragraphs down), George Herbert Walker Bush made some comments, and in trying to more or less balance them he referenced “the cables” and Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann as “sick puppies”, and the whole wall of talk radio and television hosts being essentially narcistic in these things, that guaranteed Rachel Maddow would cover it.  Maddow went on, and then mentioned the Obama Hitler Mustache on campus.  To which I had to run over, roll the thing, and go back to 8:40 or thereabouts and watch for half a minute for some context.  Yep.  She showed the Larouchies without mentioning that they were Larouchies.

But before I could join some conservative commenters who’ve banged the drums, though with a somewhat less partisan “Don’t.  Show.  The Larouche.  Obama Hitler Mustache.  Unless you’re explicitly covering.  The Larouchies.”, I see that Ann Coulter (one such member of that group, though she referenced it to “Left-Wing Plants”, more dishonesty on her part) has made the “George Soros a Nazi Collaborator” comment.   Which, I suppose, if they want to claim Ann Coulter might prove her a big fan of the pamphlet “Your Enemy, George Soros”.

Not that anyone cares too much.  You will notice if you look down the comments section of the “Crooks and Liars” post that no one mentions the Larouche factor of the post, even though that’s in the title.  The same thing works with Ezra Klein’s reference here.  Ezra Klein is wrong about that being a political party, though I suppose they thre together ad hoc political parties every four yehars during the general election for the various presidential bids — “Economic Party” or some such ridiculousness.

Another instance of this at play is shown with the comment here: 

One thing a bit instructive of Obama’s appearance on behest of George Herbert Walker Bush at Texas A and M: the conspiratorial book du jour, birthplace or way station of various Bush rumors and innuendoes — was written and published under the auspices of the Larouche organization.  The Barack Obama book that fits the same mode and is in the same basic genre wasn’t.  Mr. Tarpley is the one constant.

Another basic thing about this is shown around here:  Weaving Rush into this is bizarre.  Weaving RUSH into this is bizarre?  Really.  Leatherstocking bait: an item of reference for “validator purpose” at wikipedia: 
In recent months, high-profile Obama critics such as talk show host Rush Limbaugh and political activist Lyndon LaRouche have used Nazi imagery to attack the administration’s health-care proposals.

Well, it fits the biases to claim that.  Than again:

Two members of the organization — who declined to identify themselves to a reporter — planted themselves outside the Ipswich post office on Tuesday passing out literature and seeking donations from those sympathetic to the cause.
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I compare Obama to Hitler all of the time because unfortunately that is who our president most resembles since it appears he can only lead through his oral skills and nothing else.

One referral possibility to harrangue on the phone, I suppose.  Even though, mostly we’re just aiming for a certain controversy.

But if the Democrats had anyone who knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t let this go. Its further evidence that the Obama as Hitler posters and swastikas carried by Republicans at the town hall meetings were much more of a calculated and organized effort on the part of Republicans than any “grassroots” spontaneous reaction.

Note the poster included there.

A bit instructive the story is on the controversy last week of an official Republican twitter feed linking to a youtube clip of Hitler discoursing on Obama’s Health Care Plan.  “Sick Puppies”, as the elder Bush would phrase it, though by any rights it would put to rest the hub-ub of moveon’s two Bush Hitler contest entrants, as it’s a demonstration of how these things happen.  It won’t, though — “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” as soon as you put yoursel finto an identity.  One good thing about that link is it put it into general use for Balloon Boy mocking, funnier probably due to an apolitical nature.

(OR: ‘The Larouche PAC does not represent the … Republican Party’)

II.  Let’s run down the bend with Leatherstocking at wikipedia.

Here we see Leatherstocking attempting to thrust RoyFrankhauser, among others, out of the org’s history.
I removed the section called “others,” which seems to have been there for “guilt by association” purposes. If the criterion for inclusion were simply that a person’s name was linked with LaRouche in press accounts, you could have hundreds of names in that category. Unless a reliable source has specifically named a person as a member or supporter of the movement, there is no reason to include that person in the article.

Here we see Leatherstocking demand Dennis King disclose his “Conflict of Interest” in arguing against deleting the Duggan page. Interesting.  You know what Leatherstocking might consider as a good bolster his case?  As we’ve seen in  an example of getting a “vindicator” in, ala Menshikov, perhaps a Dennis King entry on wikipedia!

Here we see Leatherstocking change the lede to describe the man as an “Economist”.  That should be changed back any minute now, I’m guessing.

III.  An interesting development from Laland, worth keeping tabs on.  Leaving aside some worth of exploration of what the phrase “boy” suggests, in a loaded manner with Obama.  (We are back to the “Monkey” problem of how a select handful of insults are loaded in the double standard.)

To enumerate these things.

Case Number One:  The man and woman refused to be interviewed or give their names. She was asking people what they thought of Obama’s mustache, as they walked past or dropped an envelope in the mailbox.
Case Number Two:  When contacted, the EvCC staffer refused to speak about the topic. LaRouche representatives also refused to be interviewed on the subject.
Case Number Three:  Two members of the organization — who declined to identify themselves to a reporter — planted themselves outside the Ipswich post office on Tuesday passing out literature and seeking donations from those sympathetic to the cause.
Case Number Four:  The man said the LaRouche organization does not allow them to talk to the media, and he referred all questions to the organization’s public relations person.
Case Number Five (not quite the same, but in the ballpark):  When students asked questions such as “Where is the genocide in this country?” and “Why are you comparing Obama to Hitler?” LaRouche would only give vague responses that always came back to the monotonous line “read our pamphlets.”

Then again, some people are cleared to talk to the media.
A LaRouche spokeswoman defended the display, saying the comparison between Obama’s health care plans and Hitler’s genocide is fair because it starts a conversation on how the two policies are similar.
“It raises the right question: What’s the similarity between Obama’s health care policy and Hitler’s?” said LaRouche health care spokeswoman Nancy Spannaus.
The “Larouche Health Care Spokesoman” Nancy Spannaus.  Who I’m sure can speak on regarding Larouche Health Care.  Incidentally, Ms. Spannaus is wrong: it’s not poetic or artful.  If you google “Obama Hitler” and look at the images, the first images are far more interesting than the one deployed by the Larouche org.

 Apparently this is another “Larouche Health Care Spoksperson”:
Craig Holtzklark, a volunteer from Houston told KEYE-TV the signs were to grab people’s attention to Obama’s health care plan.
… It so happens that Craig Holtzlark is also a volunteer from Colorado, and Texas.  Itenerant Preachers be they.  (Note: I owe this Holtzlark Caper to xlcer at factnet.)

Apparently also authorized for some limited debating, you could go debate Brian Crowell here:
I am an African American teacher of Economics. Larouche is 100 percent accurate. I’ll debate you on the facts.
Hm.  Note that this Dave Chapelle item was posted in the comments section as a response to Crowell.    Was that what spurred Leatherstocking’s insistence on dumping Frankhauser.?  Check the dates, I suppose.

IV. Okay.
Veteran American physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, who has accurately forecast the world financial and production collapse, warns sharply that the intention of the British Empire is genocide on a scale to make Hitler blush. […] to defend the US dollar then the whole world economy will collapse into a Dark Age and a dramatic population crash even worse than the 14th Century Dark Age where similar money speculation followed by war famine and the black death wiped out a third of Europeans.

It all happened on October 12.  Did you notice.  How’s your current 14th Century Dark Age going?  THIS is how Brian Crowell sees Larouche as right there to “Launch a Blue Collar Revolution“.  Debate away, fool.

One final note: this is an odd place to be posting the SNL parody.  But for the “Connect the Dots” people, Larouche is as likely an agent of someone or other — maybe British? — anyways.

  Humbug.
I suppose it’s not exactly a race, but I’d take the first 23 issues of Mad over it.

There are a couple of perenial issues that pop up in this book, pop up forever and ever.  Take this from October 1957:

This promises to be a the most enjoyable school year for the kids yet.  Happy rough and tumble classes will be afforded by overcrowded classrooms and busy busy teachers who will have little time to inhibit children.  Teachers taking after-school jobs to supplement pay will have no time to create or check oppressive homework.  Budget slashes and paper shortages will cancel a good part of annoying written tests.  Following pages show more of the joys of today’s school life.

The image shown is of an aged building, replete with added on “anex”, “sub-anex”, and two outhouses, and a comically overflowing school bus with puffing smoke.  The school is next to the “City Dump”, and in front of a city landscape with the (then modern innovation) fancy super-market, before a shiny Sports Stadium, and again.

Skipping forward:
“Typical schoolday starts with pledge of allegiance.  A full and complete dossier is kept on the half-hearted performers.”
2 school children are shown dutifully with their hands raised, as the Pledge used to be done, the third kid is a stereotypical bearded Anarchis with the classic bowling ball bomb in hand.  The teacher has notebook in hand, eyeing the third kid.

“Citizens Responsible for Fine Schools.”
One man in these four hits me as rather familiar.  Col. Good Oldays — “says improvement lies in going back to little red school-house.  Was good enough for him.”
I remember a “Citizen’s Form Letter” which was sent out to my town back in high school arguing against proposed bond measures for the schools.  This was the gist of his argument, it was good enough for him, why make these changes to the school?  The letter had a half dozen typos in it.  The bond issue, incidentally, failed the first two times, and then the third time was broken into three parts, where two of the three failed.  The Gym and Athletics Facility part failed, which I suppose was just as well.

Another perenial topic pops up in the old Humbug, regarding prospective relocations for the old Brooklyn Dodgers franchise.
Baseball minded town of Grunch (Idaho) makes attractive proposal for New Home for the Majors.
Smile and nod.

Breaking new development from Colorado this morning: Falcon “Balloon Boy” Heenes has, apparently, FALLEN DOWN A WELL.

We will be monitoring and having all of the Media’s Cameras focused, 24 hours non-stop coverage of the crisis.

… Camera focused right on this wall for all breaking developments.

Rush Limbaugh owns a small stake of an NFL football team?  Heaven Forbid!

Actually, that was as ridiculous a story as any story of the past week, save Balloon Boy.  But more ridiculous than the thought that after every loss, reporters would horde the St Louis Rams locker-room and ask the players about Limbaugh’s last program, is some rehashing and defense of Limbaugh’s most famous NFL commentary, and Limbaugh’s new NFL comments.

Why is saying that Donovan McNabb is over-rated, and is over-rated because the sports media wants a black guy to succeed as a quarterback, a racist comment?  I don’t know.  Because Donovan McNabb is certainly a very good quarterback, and you’re hard-pressed to say he isn’t.  And his answer as to why this consensus opinion exists as it does is because he’s black.  And for that, his defenders say he’s less racialist in outlook and more he is an “individualist”.

Rush Limbaugh is upset that a couple of bad quotes float amongst his legitimate race quotes.  What’s interesting is that if you give me that list, tell me a number of quotes that are wrong, I will be able ferret out the false quotes quite easily — he’s not going to insult Martin Luther King, Jr. — he’ll probably claim him as a Republican.  For the sin of the bad quote, he gets to accumulate a total denial.

But he gets more absurd in the wake of havig to pull out of NFL ownership agreements.  As we learned in the Donovan McNabb controversy, the NFL sports media are LIBERALS.  And apparently the NFL itself, and as proof we point to the controversy of him being part of an NFL ownership agreement, is sliding into a bastion of LIBERALS.  Yes, for him the definition of “Liberal” is liberal, apolitical, black, gay, or less conservative than he.  I expect the NFL (National Football Liberals) to start running more and more liberal plays.  You know the Miami Dolphins’s “Wildcat Play”?  It’s a well known Democratic ploy.  Devised by George Soros.  I mean, it’s a play that’s run off the basis of “sharing the wealth”!

Oh for the days of the solid Conservative NFL player Johnny Unitas.  To quote Grampa Simpson, “There’s a haircut you can set your watch to!”

This “Americans Heroes and Famous Republicans” slideshow has been getting the greatest amount of attention, from a page that has been mocked mercilessly and on since Launch.   The observation lies around the fact that what we have a pretty good domination from  from the birth of the Republican Party in the second half of the nineteenth, Senator Everett Dirkson in their white-washed version of the history of the Civil Rights Era, Jackie Robinson before denouncing the party in 1964, Susan B Anthony, a couple of other

The message that the new gop page wants to relay is, to quote their quote of Mary Terrell, “   “Every right that has been bestowed upon blacks was initiated by the Republican Party”, said  on behalf of the President Harding campaign.  That is a generally paternalistic attitude that misses a few points, but to put in its historic context, it was said on behalf of President Warren Harding roughly ninety freaking years ago.
And regarding the exclusive club that Harding is in, the Line of Presidents of the United States, the “GOP Hereoes” consists of Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan.  No mention of poor Harding.

This take on party history was apparently mined from the Michael Zak book Back to Basics.  But, looking down this assortment of Abolitionists and female Temperance leaders, heavily weighted to the nineteenth century, and knowing that Jackie Robinson is the most mocked inclusion, I am still drawn to…

Wait, who’s this guy?

As much as we question whether the Republican Party of the late nineteenth century has too much relation to the Republican Party of the early twenty-first, I have to wonder if the Republican Party of the mainline United States has much relation to the Republican Party of the Puerto Rican colony at the time of Theodore Roosevelt’s rough-riders.