The Texas Board of Education is a powerful institution, Texas being a large market for School Textbooks nationwide, textbook makers write toward their standards.  So, they hold the nation hostage.  And thus we get this:

The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.”

Gingrich helped lead House Republicans to their 1994 takeover of Congress and became House speaker. Schlafly founded the conservative Eagle Forum and became a leading opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment aimed at formalizing women’s equality with men. The Moral Majority formed in the late 1970s as an evangelical Christian organization that influenced politics and public policy for decades. […]

Whether students will also be exposed to liberal examples from the ebb and flow of American politics is hard to predict. Conservatives form the largest bloc on the 15-member State Board of Education, whose partisan makeup is 10 Republicans and five Democrats. […]

But Mercer said he also would include the liberal National Education Association, MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood and the Texas Freedom Network a group that says it promotes “religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the radical right.”

Two reviewers have recommended that Cesar Chavez, the late farm workers union leader, be removed from history books because they deem him an unworthy role model.

Anyway, the Culture War continues in the comments section of these stories.  See here:

Good to hear that there is some leaning to the right, but our kids need to know how liberals have corrupted any morals and values in this country and stood for everything which is against the traditional family. Hopefully there will be a stall or ban on all the desensitizing our children to the horrid sex and crime that our media so projects as being the norm. May God bless America again.

Also there’s this statement of where this is leading us:
Children have stopped growing taller (the average height of Americans has remained static for fifty years while Europeans have grown six inches) as the standard of healthcare and basic diet declines.

 I’ve stated this before on this blog before I know (though with four digits worth of blog posts it’d be hard for anyone to remember), but I was  impressed by the way my Literature textbook evaded the mention of “homosexual” in a quick write-up for Oscar Wilde  (for “The Importance of Being Earnest”) in describing legal troubles due to “flamboyance”.

As for Newt Gingrich’s place in history — well, he deserves a sentence or two in that thousand page book of finely tuned turgid, I suppose.  Intertwined in those two sentences is that explanation on why he only lasted four years as Speaker.

Here’s the current quote-pull at the top of google news search when “Larouche” is sought.:

Instead of name calling about “LaRouche cultists” and such hot-button language, try not to be half-assed on the facts. I have no idea why LaRouche has gone off in the more recent direction, he does seem to have seized the bit in his teeth and is not being reined in, but some of his prior stuff is sane and makes more sense in terms of how the public should be treated than those who have been taking UnitedHealth money and now are representing UnitedHealth interests over the public interest.

It ends with that thud.  Rumble through the conservative blog vane at a Representative Dingle meeting, an “Obama Mustache Poster Waver” is identified as a “Dingle Supporter” — makes sense, Dingle that type the Larouche org would glom on to — and (you’re losing me with this one) “Plant”.  This goes to show you that while there is no moral gain from becoming an enemy, there is also no moral to lose from becoming a “friend” — and vice the versa with the words “gain” and “lose”.  (See too:  I even went outside to ask individuals to stop being rude to all visitors and clean up their acts. I was appalled at the behavior of the LaRouche PAC and am even quoted on their Web site asking them to tone it down. )  OR:  including LaRouche followers, who had scurried to get a protest of their own together at noon, when they found out that those “George Soros funded MoveOn people . . . that support blatant marxism and more Federal control [who] are not the voice of the Texas people” had a permit for a rally. (Actual quote from their e-mail)

The “Liberal Blog Vane” pretty much has its final shot with Larouche as “loose grenade material” with this dailykos post.  What strikes me about the comments is the manner that the partisan Democrats more or less just drop off the fourth wheel of this “Quad” and go for the more clear-cult partisan enemies:  Michele Bachmann, Betsy McCaughey, Sarah Palin.  That actually might be something of a victory for the org — along the lines of how The Guardian managed to mention Anton Chaitkin of Executive Ingelligence Review without mention of Larouche.

For their part, the question What do the LYMers know anyway about this “takeover”?:

Comment #9:   As to the youth movement, I was accosted by a group of them in Seattle just last week. When I responded by saying, “Hey, look, it’s a dining room table”, it quickly became clear that there was only out of the group who had the slightest idea what I was talking about. Now, that’s a pretty dumb bunch, even by dining room table standards.
Purely anecdotal, I suppose, but it begs the quesiton:  How can they be so shut off from the world that they miss their effects of their “World Changing” activism?

Argurably a small bit of whiplash comes with these placed side by side:
#20:  I knew a fellow who was in one of Larouche’s groups years ago, back in the Seventies. Among other things, they thought that Stalin actually had some pretty good qualities, and certainly wasn’t the mass-murdering monster most have come to believe about him.

#39:  To use Lenin’s phrase LaRouche, and now his disciples, have now become the “Useful Idiots” for an American Fascism. Only his death and the eventual falling away of his followers (to the American Nazi Party perhaps?) will reduce the incidence of stupidity within the American body politic!
Strictly speaking, no.  I don’t know “where they will go” — I’ve stated already a suspected more-than-half lifing away after the old cult leader falls away, which at least suggests a bit of remnants.  But not to the “nazi Party”, and this is something that I see drives ex-members crazy.

For his part, Barney Frank was the subject of a cover story for the conservative National Review, which while oppositional and critical made failed in the task of referencing Frank’s Nazi and Fascist and Hitlerite antecedents.  Barney Frank has also thrown in his support behind Ron Paul’s “Fed Audit” bill, putting his name in highlights in some of those Ron Paul adoring conspiratorial sites that Larouchies have to fight for some space.  (See the “google quote news pull” for one particular prisonplanet link — which gets in there by dent of a Larouchie commenter grabbing the first spot in a comments section!  And while I’m on prisonplanet, look to the comments section on this page — one notable quotation: this woman was a agent provacateur   it was a set up AND Anyway – the reason why she didn’t have anything else to say there was probably due to a bug in her programming…)  Add in his name having been floated briefly, and batted away, for possible replacement in Ted Kennedy’s seat, and we see Barney Frank’s career moving away from this odd little footnote.

While “Leatherstocking” in the wikipedia edit attempts tries to forge forward the “Was right about the 2007 — 2008 Collapse into Armegeddon!” insertion, as against a handy chart here.

As for me, after reading the first paragraph of LPAC’s reponse to Lawsuits:
According to various British-steered internet blogs, Molly Kronberg, a collaborator of circles associated with Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister and controller of U.S. President Obama, wants to sue Lyndon LaRouche and his political action committee, LaRouche PAC. She has teamed up with former LaRouche prosecutor John Markham. This frantic propaganda and publicity stunt is a direct British reaction to LaRouche’s largely successful campaign to defeat the Nazi-like British-designed healthcare plan of the Obama Administration.

I feel the need to assert a certain Britishness.  Well, in honor of a nickname I had way back in high school … there’s this — “SPAM”. 

The obvious observation to the response otherwise comes from here:

Yeah, that’s one response to the lawsuit that might backfire

In other news: a belated report of “a very interesting and successful experience for all involved“, “Speaking In Forked Tongues” and all that.

One of Ted Kennedy’s dying wishes was for a politically expedient change in the Massachussetts election laws, to slot in an interim Senator for the political expedient change in Massachussetts election law that occured in 2004 to keep Mitt Romney from appointing President-elect John Kerry’s replacement.  That item of politics is something that bears to be kept in mind as the attempt to incur into existence a “Wellstone Effect” of a backlash by referencing such a thing (here and here second to last paragraph and here — that last one wins the day in being the first item to appear when typing the phrase into google news — so, congratulations “Hot Air”!) at the same time Republican Senators sit on their hands and claim that Kennedy’s absence in the reason they can’t figure out how to take part in the Democrats’ Health Care attempts.  What do you think “Kennedy would have wanted”?

The election mid-stream change is for the best, and probably should be roughly made equivalent throughout the other 49 states.  Wyoming has a good system, and one that would work for small d democratic values with Massachusetts at the moment due to the nature of their partisan politics: overwhelming legislature of one party in perpetuity, Senators off to Washington the same, governor liable to be of the other party.  Wyoming’s legislature sends the governor three names to choose from, and that is that.

The law should be that a Political Ghost of the deceased’s rough ideological framework is appointed for the interim 6 months, before that special election spits out the new Senator for the rest of the term.  The name that comes out for Massachusetts is Michael Dukakis.  There seems to be a steam-roller demanding Senator Michael Dukakis.  I like the idea.  He is a place-holder and a political ghost.  Are there any other big name Massachusetts Democrats of the past three decades, or is the fact that the Senate has been firmly in hands of Kennedy and Kerry, and no Democrat was elected to the governor’s mansion for 16 years after Dukakis waddled away leave that cupboard barren?

In 2002, after Wellstone died, the political ghost that was attempted to be brought before the people of Minnesota was Walter Mondale.  Unfortunately, the “interim” was to be a full six years, so Norm Coleman ended up in that seat — practically by default.  The interesting thing about South Dakota when Tim Johnson suffered severe health problems was that the the most evident “political ghost” that haunts those halls for an interim would have been the other Democratic presidential loser, George McGovern.  This suffers the basic problem in the rulese in that it would have a liberal replace a “centrist”.  Just as well that the law would have given the Republican governor the appointee.  Which is probably better than what happened in Georgia in 2000 when a deceased Republican Senator was replaced by the Democratic governor with Zell Miller.

Advertisements found in this National Review issue:

The People of America’s Oil and Natural Gas Industry
(note: the word “People” was very much emphasized)
GovMint.com with historic “Indian Head Coins”
Computer designed specifically for Seniors
Conservative Book Club (Get 3 for a penny!)
Bose Radio
Rosetta Stone “learn a language”
“Jitterbug” cell phone designed for… aging baby boomers
Govmint.com with (Historic) Samurai Silver Coins (Are Conservatives by nature coin collectors?)
FLAME advocacy group, “Facts and Logic about Middle East”
36 lecture course “Western Civilization”: Mathematics
Neuroston Memory Pills (apparently National Review attracts an older audience?)
20 carat Staver emeralds
Cenesenics Medical Institute “How does this 54 year old neurosurgeon look so good under his scrubs?”
Phrma (“Following Obama’s lead in Curing Cancer”, ad features the dramatic moon shot

One more note about the advertisements: Through the first half of the magazine, they come every other page.  Through the second half, there are no advertisements (except the back and inside back cover.)

Okay, instead of going to The New Republic, where we’d expect to see a few identical advertisements, I’ll go to a recent (2 back, regretfully) issue of The Nation.:

Credo Mobile (one 1/3 page ad, another full page.  Markets itself against AT&T in regards to partisan political support)
Lecture Course “Quantumn Mechanics Made Clear” (It is noteworthy to compare the lecture course offered to Nation readers to National Review readers, but I don’t know what can be sussed out by this.)
Powell’s Book Store subscription
Panscope optical system microscope
Book: “America at Risk”.  (It’s a title — if not book — that might be promoted by National Review, though I’m guessing the “risk” differs.)
20 carat Staver emeralds (Hey!  Same advertiser!)
The Movie “Taking Woodstock” (finally the “aging readership” prevelant in the National Review ads, though a bit different sociographical group.)

At a Town Hall meeting with Representative Moran in tow with Howard Dean, Randall Terry shouted out from the crowd, “BABY KILLER!”, letting the world know that he did not like Howard Dean.  I have a flashback to 2005, and the parade of the political odd who poked their heads into the Terry Schiavo picture.  That was a sharp puncture at the tiny re-election bubble enjoyed by President Bush.  In the case of the Town Hall meetings, we have this mass of instant celebrities, “movement conservtive” cause celebres slotted into cable talk show slots and radio shows, your “Joe the Plumber” regular folk with grave concerns expressing YOUR anger.  It is that odd sort of American Exceptionalism which has a ranting about the threatened destruction of, against all available evidence, “The Greatest Health Care System in The World!”  I very much doubt that the party of this (and this quad-team ) will win the White House in 2012.  Anyways, the last development was the mobilization of shouting matches between two polarized sides of the Health Care debating — such as this is.

There have been actual non-sensational town hall meetings that have played out without too much of a hitch, and furthermore town hall meetings that have played out with general agreements, as is the wont for our “Safe District”ing nature of the Congress, the lack of confrontation making them essentially rallies.  But in terms of reasonable challenges reasonably framed, unless it happened toward Obama himself, the media (and me) has gravitated to “the Crazies”.  They are things cable news networks can loop that help fill their long void of emptiness, and youtube will get hit upon hit off of.

The weird reality is that this is the most liable way to defeat a Health Care program whole masse, or to stream it over to its most industry-favorable manner where the “Progressive Champions” are left championing industry profiteering protections.  See, for instance, this Wall Street Journal editorial on “Saving the Obama Presidency“ ala what “Saved the Clinton Presidency” by way of finding the minimal, an editorial which, incidentally, contradicts the William Kristol memo of the time.

On the crass political calculation front, Ted Kennedy’s Death, in the grand scheme of this all, may be awash, or if the whole Democratic Caucus can be swayed by a “Legacy” project it’d be a spurring to the end of passing something.  I just sense that “On guard” posture against any hint of referencing The Kennedy and “The Cause of Ted Kennedy’s Life” and picking up his “Mantle” to invigorate the moribud process (thank you very much, Senator Baucus.)  I picture a Fox News — talk radio controversy enflaming some comment or other out of proportion to something crass — think Wellstone Memorial.

Regarding Kennedy, I have little to say.  Look around the Internet and you’ll find a mass of eulogizing of one type and another  (ie: this warning).  In terms of his career finale of import, endorsing Obama — and without his endorsement it’s hard to picture that “Super Tuesday tie” with Clinton that propelled him to victory (and this suggestion which looks like a bit of wishful haliography, until Obama lives up to a promise).  In that sense, Kennedy edged forward Obama / Biden instead of Clinton / Obama.

I do have one random thought.  In 1980, as he ran to usurp the incumbent Carter for the presidential nomination, somebody asked him the very simple question “Why do you want to be president?”  He fumbled the answer to that basic question and said something fairly stupid, which had the effect of unsettling his chances at the nomination.  Yet at the same time, the fumbling of that question betrays the real reason anyone wants to be president: kinda cool, you’ll be remembered — even a John Tyler gets some mention in the History book above and beyond all but a few Senators.  The added reason was that he had a brother who was president, and another president who ran for president, and thus “President Kennedy” rang well in a lot of people’s ears.  But those two reasons would not make a good answer.

From the Reason “Hit and Run Blog”, I see the cover to Glenn Beck’s upcoming book.

Okay.  A little help, please.  What is Glenn Beck trying to get at here?  It’s the quesiton seemingly everyone wants to know.  It is, I guess, an East German military uniform.  In, as they say, a “Werner Klemperer pose” — mimicing the parody of a Nazi German officer on “Hogan’s Heroes”.

I’m tempted to suggest that Glenn Beck is trying something like the parody radical chic a Michael Moore might do with Che, “ironic” because, you see, he’s called a “Far Leftist” and so he would roll to that image.  Glenn Beck, called “Fascist”, imposes the clownish image to the Far Right but somehow mixes the messaging with that one.  Notwithstanding that it’s not a very good message in the first place — he’s supposed to be “Revolutionary” somehow or other, isn’t he?

I never understood the point of the public campaign against Molly Kronberg.  Sure, the private and internal items made sense in that purely vindictive slashing evil fashion, but propelling these items into the public domain (even as nobody was really reading — this was at the time they were evidentally deliberating on which way to go with the new Obama Administration) produced such confused elements as Jerry Pyenson (sp?) posting a Kronberg – headline to a 9/11 Truth board.  I guess this particular “campaign” is best explained as simply stating that they’re a little bit unhinged and a lot paranoid.  Beyond that, it is best not to waste time making sense of the senseless — their internal frustrations spilled out externally.

Roughly concurrent to my posting after seeing the factnet posts, I see Kheris posted on it here (and at another blog), and Nicholas Benton “tweeted” it here.  Dennis King posted this a bit later, propels it to a modest audience, and the “Legal Times” (blog) posted it here.  And also we have this from the Loudon Times.  Note too the additional edit on the wikipedia entry for “Kenneth Kronberg“, unfortunately having to explain his sourceas if to appease your Leather Stocking (“The blog post contains material that has been disputed in earlier discussions here” — Heh!) and (it’s coming) zillion twelth iteration of “Herschel Krustofsky”.
While I’m browsing wikipedia for these things, I will note how problematic these items are for wikipedia’s viability, and leave it at that.  As is taking leatherstocking’s disingenuity about “larouche-planet” published documents seriously.

Last night, my radio left on at the end of the night as Mike Malloy (on KPOJ) finishes his show,.  Next show is one I never listen to — I don’t even know her name right off the bat (Looking it up, it’s Nicole Sandler.)  And at the top of her program she references some Hitler Obama Swastika waver encounter she had for a town hall meeting with Henry Waxman roughly concurrent with the Barney Frank — Rachel Brown meeting, and promotes for next hour’s interview with the author of a piece for “The Daily Beast”, Max Blumenthal who “Found out who is behind these Hitler Obama posters.  Lyndon Larouche … Lyndon Larouche??? He’s still alive?”

Ba da bing, ba da boom.  Or, to quote wonkette.com :”1988 Called, and they want their Larouchies back!”  Obviously the product of the same media black-out that has a confession every so often slip through, such as with the first sentence of this article.  (“Past the filter” indeed.)

Blumenthal says what we basically know and adds little to, for instance to quote myself:

“The question with the Larouche cult’s particular brand of demougery: what measurement can we use to suggest they’ve injected something into our discourse, and to what degree have they simply reflected some bad impulses?  It is, I think, mostly the latter but there are times when the former does impugn on us, and there are a few small times when there are not clear – cut answers.”

Noteworthy, public imagination has it as often as not that they lag.

Blumenthal clearly alluded to Jeremiah Duggan and/or Kenneth Kronberg, without reference to their name, though wisely did not head into an area that he did not have the facts at his disposal and was a tangeant from his broader political point.  “The cult is not terribly interesting”, except inasmuch as we get something like — to quote the cult:

“One senior political operative told EIR that the Republican Party, desperate to regroup after the electoral defeats of 2006 and 2008, picked up the LaRouche attacks on the Obama health-care swindle, studied the documentation, concluded that LaRouche was absolutely correct, and jumped on the bandwagon. By last week, according to the source, every faction within the GOP had picked up on the LaRouche message—to the point that a frantic Karl Rove jumped in, to warn Republicans that they were losing control over the issue to LaRouche.”

And Rush Limbaugh is doing nothing to refute such a proposition.  For instance a listener calls in to suggest the “Hitler” analogies are counter-productive and off base (gives the opposition amunition), and Limbaugh doubles down with the old suggestion that “I’m beginning to think you’re a Seminar Caller”, the term used when a deviating opinion or thought somehow manages to flow into the show.

The next paragraph in the cult’s item here, though, serves to demonstrate the folly of at least not carefully crafting your “partisan problem” with Larouche.

Furthermore, a wide range of Democratic Party-linked voices, from The Nation’s David Greider, to the New York Times’s Frank Rich, to cultural commentator Eli Siegel, to Arianna Huffington, have also joined the attack on President Obama, denouncing him for cutting a dirty backroom deal with “Big Pharma” and “Big Insurance,” and accusing him of being a corporativist—i.e., a fascist.

They think they’re propelling events, with you part of it no matter where you stand.  Hell, they even take credit for the juvenile Uranus pun.  The problem I have with Chip Berlet’s post here is that, whatever else you can say about Larouche and company in relation to the broader agitators (and I see that he subsequently wrote on the broader agitators and assorted demonstrators) — the Larouchies remain interlopers and framing any agitations into their own movements, and not part and parcel to the rest of it.  (Hm.:    Finding a large Lyndon LaRouche pamphlet in my parents’ house was somewhat disturbing. … Mental note: trash them as soon as I leaf through, after spotting on lying around after a “Deployment” happens, to avoid that problem.)

But the part of Blumenthal’s discussion that was most noteworthy for me, aligning to both what we know about Jeremiah Duggan and what is conjectured about his death, and aligning to Peter E. Tennenbaum (“Earnest One”)’s testimony on his experiences with the cult, was his description of a visit to a meeting of Larouche’s young recruits.  After watching them being told to “Give Up Their Dreams” and alerted to the grim task at hand in fighting the Oligarchical Forces, he challenged the speaker to quit “scaring and taking advantage of these young, vulnerable lives” and “quit twisting their minds”.  He then had to rush off, and run to his car to leave, and as he did so, the Larouchies surrounded his car in mob mentality fashion, and to make a break for it (and I suppose the Larouche org would twist these words to suit their purposes) he explained that he had to “practically run them over” in escaping the place.  If you can find the top of the second hour of this program anywhere, it is worth a listen.

(One last note: Yeah, but let’s get one thing straight: he is no Mihkail Gorbachev.)

John McCain, in what has become the ballsy move toward deigning a “bi-partisan” bill of 80 votes, notes that the “public option” may be a “big threat” to Private Insurers.  Which is or was the idea, wasn’t it?

Also, where’s the panel discussion with McCain, Kerry, Dole, and Dukakis?

The cynical promise of Obama’s Health Care policies, such as it is, was that “Big Pharma” might be bought off in order to reign in the power of the Insurers.  But that line is not holding.  We do know why.  It begins with Rahm Emanuel’s stated line that the “Only Non-negotiable is Success”, afraid to be holding a bad when a finality falls short.  It allows everyone to play both sides against the middle, and is a debate against Failure.

I do not quite understand why the process can’t dictate a 60 Democratic defeat of the filibuster to move on to whatever bill can garner 50 votes, except that the process has been built up to fail in such a manner.  After a porcess held up hostae to Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, who themselves have held it hostage to Chuck Grassley, they finally shout out a, “Ronciliation it is!”  Except for the wise words of a Joseh Lieberman, who wishes to pass the buck of the heart of any reform.  To a later time.  Sometime after the historically-to-be-expected party mid-term losses, I gather, which would not make anything easier?  Didn’t we try to get rid of that fellow?

There are serveral ways of looking at the much heralded Obama approval slide.  His “Liberal Slide” is more striking than his more than inevitable “Conservative  Slide” and “frustration from process” Independent Slide.  It is the fear of letting the Bad become the enemy of the Good, as opposed to Good become the Enemy of the Perfect.  But watch the other numbers.  Just when we thought the Republicans’ numbers couldn’t slide down any further, they have.  It is a bit of a game of “murder – suicide” they are playing, and an understandable game.  There is an underlying assumption that a presidential candidate can propel him (her?) self with the messaging of “Rising above it all”, timeless in the scheme of Bush’s “Changing the Tone in Washington” and the thing about Obama which lead many voters over to Clinton in the primary — and is tested round about here.  But as liable to happen here is that Obama will shore up his numbers, by extension his party’s, and that leaves the Republicans with the long-term electoral problem of being identified with yelling “Death Panels!”

The expected Democratic losses in 2010 — again, the times the party didn’t lose seats in a midterm through the past century are all rather anomolous (advice to Republicans: find a Senate candidate in Arkansas pronto!) — is minimized by some feasibly forward-moving health care bill passing and maximized by one not passing.  That’s sort of how these things work.

I was curious to see how one of the most conservative of Blue Dog Democrats, Walt Minnick of Idaho, making an appearance before “Tea Party Boise” would play.  A summary.:

There was lots of loud applause and some fairly lusty booing at some points, but whenever someone tried tried to speak out of turn (they drew random numbers, and only those people could come to the microphone and ask questions / make comments) the crowd shushed them quite effectively. (An example was when Walt was explaining how President Obama is President of the whole country, and someone yelled out “What about his birth certificate.”)

One “Birther”.

Lots of Tea Partiers had what I considered some radical ideas and some fuzzy thinking — one suggested that the whole concept of insurance was the cause of all the country’s ills, and that if there was no insurance people would be a lot more personally responsible. There was lots of cheering for the concept of putting people in jail who tried to use the emergency room and not pay, but they also complained about the high cost of incarcerating people and wanted frequent use of the death penalty. Combining the two, it seemed the only logical solution to their conundrum was to execute poor people who couldn’t afford to pay their hospital bills.

Of course.  What would Ayn Rand Do?

I was beginning to get disappointed that I wasn’t going to see any fireworks when the meeting ended, and then it happened — the “Truthers” (“Israel did it” sub-division) showed up.

A bit more:

Some audience comments drew applause, whistles of appreciation, and a few catcalls about Communism and socialized medicine.  Minnick received some boos for saying he supported the president, if not his health care plans.  Minnick said he saw the need for some private-sector reforms that would ensure everyone has coverage.

AND

In his opening remarks Walt emphasized how we must “pay for” any health care reform, drawing many approving hoots and much applause. Then he said, and this is a near quote: ” I’ve met with lots of groups, (and he named some clubs and political groups) and North End Democrats, and I think that group is more likely to produce a Fox News moment than this group.” Laughs and applause. Which kind of put me off, to be honest. […]

My favorite question was when the elderly “gentleman” complained that “this administration has too many czars and coming from Hungary he know about czars. After attending meeting felt as though I needed to get home quicky to shower. Don’t think that I have ever spent time in a room with people that were filled with so much hate and negative energy!

BUT BUT BUT … a Rebuttal to that:

On the issue of all the Obama Czars he said, there is no such position. The president can call his advisers any title he wants. (WHAT?? Wake up Walt all these Czars are going to make your job irrelevant if you don’t figure this out.)
This blogger than proceeds to refer to his blog in the third-person, and by initials, in calling him a one-termer due to his failure to impress him.

But, initial blog third person figure is right, and everbody knows it.  I do not know what a Walt Minnick gained from deliberating with Bill Sali’s electorate — it is possible that his half – conciliatory straddling, finding that “middle way” that puts him 40 percent into his political party, and that allowed him to defeat a Bill Sali.  He is that accidental congress-critter, much like Cao in Louisiana — in the Democrats’ whip game of “Catch and Release”, one of the last caught, and one of the first released.

Watching a mother lead two elementary school “Back to School” shoppers brought back a weird set of memories.  It was of my teacher — maybe first but certainly second and third grades —

Classroom full of lots of colorful and bright placards and posters all around the room, professional and not, lamenated cardboard of educational content through which students might possibly glean something through a sort of Osmosis —

A horrible memory from the start of fourth grade.  They were coming down at us from the ceiling!  Motivational messages — “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade!”, cut out in the shape of a lemon!  OH THE HUMANITY!

— Reset.

Amelia Bedelia always left me with a certain amount of disporportionate frustration and angst.  The story of Amelia Bedelia’s severals books was of a maid hired with s list of house-keeping instructions.  She would go through them — literally fulfilling idiomatic expressions, thus botching every one of her jobs.  She would then bake a lemon merangue pie.  The upper class New England gentry would then return home, be aghast at each of Amelia Bedelia’s botched jobs, fumigate in anger, prepare to give Ms. Bedelia what for, but then — have a mouthful of that lemon merangue pie, and suddenly all was forgiven and she’d be hired again, except next time with very carefully written instructions.

Ignorning a smidgeon of an inability to identify with the upper class New England gentry.  There was a further problem with my inability to understand why anyone desire lemon merangue pie.  But those were not terribly problematic.  What always put me on edge, whenever one of these two or three teachers read one of these books — compounded by that sort of feeling I garnered that the teacher thought this was somewhere near the pinacle of these stories and a personal favorite / classic — what always annoyed me was that on multiple occasions, spliced throughout the book, the literal interpretation that Amedlia Bedelia pursued was not at all literal.  For instance, she might have an instruction to “Draw the curtains”.  She would then draw ON the curtains.  This was not the same thing, and I knew it.  So, I sat in my seat, or in the “story – book corner” (legs crossed “Indian Style” — do they still use that term?) , not able to process why this error exists, and as whole not really having any outlet for my frustration.  Even if I somehow had that opportunity, I would not have had the necessary vocabulary to explain the books’ essential problem, and I knew that I’d get stuck in suggesting this problem to the teacher that she’d think I’m grappling with the simple “literary” / “idiom” matter, and not see the deeper problem with “false literary” / “literary”  “idiom”.

So, if nothing else the great lesson to be taken from my expreiences with Amelia Bedelia was to grin and bear it, as the teacher smuggly and self-satisfied read this supposedly brilliant piece.  It’s probably an important lesson, really.  There are a number of reactions to different stimuli through the years I hav ehad where I am left wondering one of two subtley different things: Am I the only one? or Is this common at all?  Or was it just little old neurotic me?

I think I am going to have to poke into the Amelia Bedelia books to see if my grade school problems were at all founded, or if maybe I wasn’t at that proper age to appreciate them.  (The primary audience for these books are an ‘elementary school teacher‘ type, the secondary audience the captive classroom who the teacher is trying to mold their minds away from, say, the morning’s GI Joe cartoon and whatever it is the girls watched.)