I am having a problem understanding the “news” Tom Ridge is “relvealing”.  It is forcing a quick file search through my brain.  Color coding in the terror alert system was politicized? You don’t say.

Didn’t he already say that?  Maybe it was some other Bush Administration official?  Or was it my awareness based on the simple matter of a very base level of observatory skill?  his doesn’t even rise to the level of “Confirmation of Suspicion” because I’ve thought my suspicion confirmed long time.

In other news, I felt an element of  “Oh, Go to Hell” with this. But I guess I can cheer up. The man’s no longer president.  Actually, most of his lasting damage happened in his first term anyways.

This Washington Times “Blame Game” blurby thing?  I call Partisan Blinders.  In stylistic terms and in some modest amounts of substance (in as much as it is a variation of Franklin Roosevelt’s perhaps apocrapyl “You have to make me”), Bill Clinton came across well in that exchange, and in his defense of his policies.  His interjection, “You oughta go to one of those congressional health care meetings, you’d do really well there,” was a reasonable way to cool off the audience protest and move ahead with his agenda at hand (a speech), and I do not think gay-rights blogger Lane Hudson had anything to take personal offense.

Substance-wise, Bill Clinton came up short.  To believe his would be to dissolve from the record book his electioneering of garnering votes with his “Defense of Marriage” act, and even more to the point some rather toxic snubbing of homosexuals at the White House in the aftermath of the 1994 mid-term losses for his party, and since I’m having a problem finding it around the Internet in quick order — I’m forced to pass it away.

I suppose there’s a reason he was elected twice, which takes a healthy amount of cynicism.  Just don’t say he advanced the country on this social issue.

In the not too distant past, leading out of the debris of that moment when just under half of the Democrats in the House voted to authorize the war in Iraq and just over half of the Democrats in the Senate did as well, and coming in to the shift of an oppositional line from the Democratic Party, the easy calculation was made in order to demonstrate to the American public that they meant business and were not “soft” in the Military and Defense departments.  Afghanistan was and is smart; Iraq was and is dumb.

John Kerry stumbled around there, further expressing a proposed — dare I call it — “surge” of military personnel in Iraq.  Muttering rollsed in along the lines of “maybe he doesn’t believe it?”, though I luck-lusterly meted that out with “maybe it’s a better strategy”, albeit not one that aligned in with the anti-war platform most of his voters would support.

Interestingly enough, as support for the war in Iraq deteroiated through 2005 and 2006, a counter-veiling and quasi-counter-intuitive opinion emerged amongst a certain subset.  It made sense, even if it seemed based on such a bit too broad a framework of understandings — “a little bit of knowledge” being “more dangerous than none”.  Iraq will turn out fine enough — better than under Saddam; they have a well enough history of maybe authoratarian and undemocratic order, but order nonetheless — to pull together.  (And, oh yeah, caveat to keep some cred here: we’re building permanent bases.  ‘Tis a shame.)  But Afghanistan?  I don’t know about that one.  Not going as well as we are lead to believe.  And it’s the grave-yard of empires and all that.  The United States might be screwed with that one.

As it were, Obama campaigned promising winding down a war in Iraq, and ramp up a war in Afghanistan.  It is a plank that comes from out of the previous item of Democratic conventional wisdom.  It is worth mentioning, on the eve of their election, that the administration has professed an uncertainty over the metrix, a sure-fire direction to uncertainty of purpose.  Democracy, I guess, is being served:  James Carville had provided political advice for one of Karzai’s opponents.  Elections tomorrow!

          “In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”

[…]  Some old associates see Cheney’s newfound openness as a breach of principle. For decades, he expressed contempt for departing officials who wrote insider accounts, arguing that candid internal debate was impossible if the president and his advisers could not count on secrecy. As far back as 1979, one of the heroes in Lynne Cheney’s novel “Executive Privilege” resolved never to write a memoir because “a president deserved at least one person around him whose silence he could depend on.” Cheney lived that vow for the next 30 years.

Okay.  He’s out of these meetings.  All Right, then.  What say you, W?

 ” … ”
Okay.  He’s mum.  But then again, we don’t really have direct quotes from Cheney either.  Maybe we can find out what he has to say about this “slam” from someone they mutually speak to.  Hm?  George H W Bush, perhaps?

Can’t reach him.  He’s too engrossed in his hobbies.

The history of “Signing Statements” goes like this: sparingly used and clinging pretty well to the  narrow purpose of administrative functions from President Monroe up to President Reagan.  President Reagan than upped the ante, issued an unprecedented 250 of them, using them for challenges of the law being signed.  The new standard set, Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton followed suit — 228 signing statements for Bush, 381 statements for Clinton.

President George W Bush increased the purview once more, who [used] statements to challenge about 1,200 sections of bills over his eight years in office, about twice the number challenged by all previous presidents combined, according to data compiled by Christopher Kelley, a political science professor at Miami University in Ohio.

Things to follow with Obama on Administration: how far will his use receed from Bush’s — back to the post Reagan era level, back to the post-Monroe era level, or will he go right along with the expanded powers spotted by Bush?  Check in time.

Still, since taking office, Mr. Obama has relaxed his criteria for what kinds of signing statements are appropriate. And last month several leading Democrats — including Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts and David R. Obey of Wisconsin — sent a letterto Mr. Obama complaining about one of his signing statements.

“During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the president’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of Congressional statutes he was required to enforce,” they wrote. “We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude.”

They were reacting to a statement Mr. Obama issued after signing a bill that expanded assistance to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank while requiring the administration to pressure the organizations to adopt certain policies. Mr. Obama said he could disregard the negotiation instructions under his power to conduct foreign relations.

The administration protested that it planned to carry out the provisions anyway and that its statement merely expressed a general principle. But Congress was not mollified. On July 9, in a bipartisan rebuke, the House of Representatives voted 429 to 2 to ban officials from using federal money to disobey the restrictions. And in their July 21 letter, Mr. Frank and Mr. Obey — the chairmen of the Financial Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee — asked Mr. Obama to stop issuing such signing statements, warning that Congress might not approve more money for the banking organizations unless he agreed.

Gut check, when all is said and done:  Somewhere between Clinton and Bush.

For the past few days, I’ve been weighing what to do with Lyndon Larouche’s current place in the news, on the edges of the Town Hall meeting disruptions, with the most media attention grabbing of the signs (Obama with a Hitler mustache), and swirling on the outside as one conduit for the “Death Panel” and “Euthanasia” memes.

The effect in looking at how this swirls about in the blogosphere is wearying.  It is a lot of half-witted “gotchas” and less than stellar intellectually dishonest partisan gamesmanship.  The effect is that I don’t think it’s worth wading into this cavern today — let it die down, and if someone so desires to see a mass of links, go to the comments section of my last entry or read around  the last few factnet posts of one “xlcer“.  The upshoot for the cult, though, is the Toxicity — Lyndon Larouche fills the role as a grenade that everyone thinks can be lobbed at partisan opponents.  [Incidentally, when dissing the nature of the Health Care Town Hall Disrutpors, I’m more inclined toward this guy, and everyone can admit that the Larouchies are but an amusing side-show.]

But the general effect of the Larouchies, in terms of “local color” for the scenes, is probably ultimately this, and I can ignore some things here as beside the point.:

Finally, a rather skeevy-looking older man wearing a “DEFEAT THE BRITISH EMPIRE” sign and stumping for Lyndon LaRouche. Much like Nancy Pelosi and the left improperly characterized the Nazi Party as being on the political right, some of the liberals in line were overheard to mistakenly claim that LaRouche was “just another nut-job conservative”; in reality, LaRouche ran several times for the Democratic Party nomination, and is said to be a student of FDR’s economic policies. Some of the liberals around me knew this already, and a light-hearted moment came when many of us in the line engaged in a bit of bipartisan laughter, each of us taking turns acknowledging that folks on both sides of the political spectrum really don’t care much for LaRouche or his flunkies.

I suspect that in the coming days, Lydnon Larouche will be making hay of the Nancy Pelosi psuedo-controversy, extrapulating it into a grander area of intrigue, with him being part of that great Elite Power-struggle  — you won’t hear about that in the mainstream news because, you see, Larouche is the square root of two.  The only vaguely interesting chestnut from the Larocuhies circling around the “Tea-Parties” was a report of a conservative activist taking their Nancy Pelosi Bad flyer, and tearing out the “LPAC” ingsinia for their own waving use.

Regarding the “Death Panels”: First, the Lyndon Larouche organization has been evading “Death Panels” in Great Britain and Germany for six years now, the “death panels” that would investigate the death of Jeremiah Duggan.

Secondly, it’s worth looking at their “fracus”.    The concern he has with his quasi-common cause with the “right” (“quasi” is a key qualifier), where he has set in next to Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin, is that the government  will be placed in a position where it is making value judgements of  lives to society on perceived productivity and worth to society.   The further item for Larouche’s allegations of Obama’s “Nazism”, which ties in here, comes from their interpretation of the Obama Administration’s Behavioral Economics , which — in this case — would have at those , a nudge toward death.

Larouche’s “interpretation” of Health Care policies — the government ridding itself of what they decide are the “Useless Eaters” within a world of scarcity of resources, reminds me of this memo — and his “policy ” toward Kenneth Kronberg.

Of course, there’s also the matter that the org has dropped their employee’s Health Care Insurance, summarize:
While LYM morons are running around the country doodling mustaches on Obama’s pictures, while Lyn is beating the drums on Obama’s Nazi health care plan, we have the following real-life health insurance story from LaRoucheland.
What would you think of a group that cut off a longtime member’s health insurance when that person had a dependent family member in the hospital in critical condition?
What would you think of an organization that stopped paying that member altogether, and, when that member (who for various reasons might have a hard time getting a job) asked what he should do, just shrugged its collective shoulders and said, “I dunno”? (Actually, it was an individual NEC member who said this, one of the most Stalinist of the bunch.)
How does LaRoucheland have the effrontery to babble about Nazi health care plans when it has condemned so many of LaRouche’s loyal followers to death, disease, misery, and penury?

Hard to say..
I first listened to LaRouche about 10 years ago – he may be correct – certainly he is a hyper intelligent guy and appears genuine – but indeed his ideas are RADICAL like no one else ive ever seen, even Noam Chomsky, the anarcho-syndacalist). That doesnt make him wrong though – maybe idealistic more than pragmatic but his predictions of disaster are emphatic and its panning out how he has long foretold.
…
the Zionist banksters at the Fed and Wall Street are propping up the financial markets, disguising the true bankrupt situation with their complicit media empire, to give just enough time to fool the masses with propaganda and lies. just like they did for Iraq, so Israel and their US puppet terror machine can attack Iran Russia has warned this would mean WW3, which seems to be the Zionist objective for their Zionist controlled one world government
………
la rouche actually has a lot of altruistic policys – listen to the very last question on that webcast, and his answer – i mean – the guy has some serious serious points that needs addressing.
the fact that their youth movement is cultish in appeal means very little to my image cause its not unlike most youth political movements…
……….
Yes, good points. But the members act like its the end of the world and only him and them can fix all the problems. People like that can ruin your image so again, your choice.

It is worth mentioning that the next day of their annual Economic Armeggedon is slated for October 12.  Interesting to note:

“Apocalyptic dissapointment” is the scholarly term given to the failure of predicted events of an apocalyptic nature to come about on the date specified by the guru or inspired leader of a doomsday cult, or rather, the after-effects on the mind and body of the cult. The fallout is usually the loss of several, but not all the members of the said cult. In some cases, “apocalyptic dissapointment,” can be the trigger that spells the beginning-of-the-end for the cult, in other instances, it has a minor impact.

History tells us the cult members have enough delusionary power to continue to chant “Larouche was Right”, as they continue their studies.

I’ve been listening to LaRouche for about a year now. He’s the only one with a viable solution that I know of. He’s a little out there sometimes but well worth hearing. More should start talking about solutions in my opinion

@Phil: Lyndon Larouche has been running for US President since 1976…….he is a self described “physical economist”…and his wife Helga is campaigning in Germany for the presidency there…and yes he calls for Obama’s impeachment….His economic historical perspective recalls the Venetian city states that came to power after the great plague in the 1400’s ( I think)…and the many centers of power since then…and the Rise and fall of the British/American/Dutch empire that we are suffering under today…and the rise of the Shanghai Cooperative nations …..and on and on…
I watched the first 30 minutes of his presentation ( the rest later ). So far , the guy speaks much truth, but spoils his delivery at the very beginning with comparing Obama and Schwarzenegger with Hitler . Shame really, because he didn’t need to do that , the (historic) facts he mentioned were quite correct wrt Empires etc. OTOH, he seems to think that the US should “police” the world to rid it of Empires … by replacing them with one (US) Empire didn’t seem to bother him much ?
…………………..

One last note: I see in this latest burst of interest some linking to wikipedia articles.  Which is, as always, naturally why the wikipedia edit attempts continue… with Herschel Krustofsky Sock Puppets number gazillion, gazillion-two, and gazillion-three.

Also, in honor of Lyndon Larouche being a fan of Stephen Colbert, well… click the Colbert Hitler Mustache appearance of a few months’ back for the Colbert bit about Sarah Palin and “Death Panels”:

Also see.

Hm.

The partisan tussle has even infiltrated a meeting that was to be held today in Longview to discuss Mt. St. Helens Monument. The Cowlitz County Board of Commissioners hastily canceled the event — which was to feature Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Rep. Baird — Wednesday afternoon after learning that advocacy groups from both sides were urging followers to show up and turn it into an impromptu health-care forum.

I suppose every meeting everywhere is going to become a chance for Health Care advocacy eruptions and disruptions.  NFL Pre-season practices, for instance.

I feel like running to something apolitical.  John Hughes, maybe?

He defined the genre of teenage comedy movies for the decade of the 1980s.  And for the life of me, I only really know — from that batch of his ouvre — The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller.  I think I have seen Pretty in Pink and I know I have seen Sixteen Candles, but I barely remember either of those two (kind of girly, those two, aren’t they?), and click past furiously the Psychedelic Furs’ song whenever it pops up on pandora.  I don’t see anything interesting about the premise to Weird Science, and would only watch it if someone paid me to.

Hughes means more for others in my age-group, and the age group that proceeds me, than he does for me.  Ferris Bueller has the feeling of a classic rock song that I assume is good, don’t quite remember not having seen, and has been so overplayed that I don’t think I’d have much of a reaction to it if played in front of me.  Yes, Ferrari totaled — whoopee!  Yes — Ben Stein… funny.  Yes, it’s a fairly smart fantasy and everyone would like to get away with what Bueller does, and yes also the time sequence of Mr. Rooney catching the school bus in the evening doesn’t make sense. 

The Breakfast Club goes straight to the teenage audience’s biases in certain ways– the Prinipal a so very vindictive foil.  It has one great thing going for it — understanding the classic dramatic tradition of a set of characters stuck in a single room for an extended time, for emotional claustrophobic effect.  But, unlike — say – 12 Angry Men, this narrative is diverted for a sequence of stoned dancing.  Oh, and also that oddly schizophrenic message that comes with the “Princess” (Molly Ringwald, Claire) ‘s make-over of the “basket case” to conform to societal standards of beauty – a complete 180 from the general message that goes something like “We’re all the same under the skin”.

I see from his list that he did in fact direct Home Alone 3.  Interesting movie experience for me: Out in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk, entreated by a group of Turkish students asking me vague questions.  Strange times –and better that the movie be dubbed in Russia as, I already saw it in the form of Home Alone 1 and Home Alone 2… which was why it was chosen to be shown, I suppose — no point in paying strictest attention — lest I not be able to answer Turks’ vague questions, and eat my endless supply of rice pudding.  The one thing that can be said about the Home Alone Series is that in filming the same movie three times in three different settings, Home Alone 2 becomes a sort of unthought of classic overview for New York City.  I assume Fuerris Bueller is sort of the same for Chicago, but again: how would I be able to tell anymore?

“Mr. Dewey has pledged himself to an administration of unity and efficiency.  In our time, we have seen the tragedy of the Italian and German peoples, who lost their freedom to men who made promises of unity and efficiency and security.” […]
“When a few men get control of the economy of a nation, they find a ‘front man’ to run the country for them. Before Hitler came to power, control over the German economy had passed into the hands of a small group of rich manufacturers, bankers and landowners.  These men decided that Germany should have a tough and ruthless dictator who would play their game and crush the strong German labor unions.  So they put money and influence behind Adolf Hitler.  We know the rest of the story.”
— Harry S Truman, October 1948

It’s a bit difficult to remember what about Dewey might inspire any passion of any kind — neither a Saint nor a Devil be that Thomas Dewey, but I believe that there was a bit of the 2004 Bush v Kerry “Swift Boat” going on there where the idea was to throw out something ludicrous and should it not be responded to ask the question “If he can’t handle this punch as a candidate, how is he going to handle a punch Stalin as a president?”

Harry Truman presents a bit of a conundrum with this classic item of raw demagougery.  In the great game of ahistorical Hitler references… The problem with Thomas Dewey is shown with a photograph:

If I wanted to do that whole “Hitler” thing, would  I strip him of that mustache and replace it — or go ahead and scribble a differently colored “Hitler Mustache” over Mr. Dewey’s already extent mustache?

For a more current example, we can turn to John Bolton.  Could I just color a big chunk of his white mustache brown, leaving the chunk of his mustache that hangs around his mouth white?

John Bolton at least has enough of a crowbar to make a color swatch work.  Dewey just kind of flummoxes me.  (You’d have to — what? — color the two sides in and clip it off ever so slightly at the edges?)

In the end, if I have to go ahead with the generically understood two factioned tribalist nature of the body politic, I will take “our” hyper-ventiliating rhetorically ratcheted ahistorical Hitler analogy over “their”s.  Ted Rall wrote a Bush = Hitler piece (one?) which probably could have been proferred with only slight variations by an advocate for a war in Iraq with the typical always at the ready (and always tired) “If Hitler had been stopped at Munich” line.

Consider the Disruptors at the Town Hall meetings.  When not speaking of the “One day God’s going to stand before you” (and his… um… right to leave?), we have (Can someone identify what the woman from :12 to :18 is trying to sell us?), we have an allusion to the Socialism of Russia — Obama dismantling the nation, apparently — Maoist China.  Also please let Obama know he’s an American (for once, I can cheer Arlen Specter for something: “I think he knows that.”)  To explain the problem of the incoherence, I can point to sometime in the Bush Administration, a bit annoyed by Hitler references I pleaded for some new infusion of Totalitarian Leaders through history — though with specific allusions for specific items, I therefor can’t get behind rolling them all into one. 
For the Obama — Hitler analogy (Hey!  The Larouchies are getting around!), we are churned over to The Euthanasia Card — the Death Panel that might have voted down Sarah Palin’s baby and perhaps Steven Hawking.  It does feel like addressing that one is addressing a straw man — ’tis heavily compromised by its very nature — Obama bought out phrma to get Harry and Louise on board, (something I see Jonah Goldberg couldn’t help but notice, though he calls phrma “naive” and profers that Obama can’t say “no” to the extremist leftist Henry Waxman and — I guess double crossing Big Phrma?), and Senator Johnny Isakson is in the artful position of having to push away at this while not allowing Obama to claim him for political purposes.

Was Gerald Ford ever Hitler for anyone’s darkest impulses?  It seems like a weird proposition but consider for a moment one thing (on this, a few days after the anniversary of Ford’s ascension to the president, and as we come near the release of Squeaky Fromme): 

A much reviled and despised man, the fury of public scorn through over two decades.  He had the honor of one hell of an electoral thumping, and then was kicked out of office in the lowest public regard.  He was replaced by a genial well liked man, who went out of his way to not offend the sensibilities of a troubled nation, who was impossible to hate, and not a terribly bitterly partisan official.
Richard Nixon didn’t come particularly close to being assassinated.  The best we can do there is Samuel Byck.  Gerald Ford, on the other hand, had two attempts — at close range — in quick succession — on September 5 and then September 22 of 1975.  Those two particular assassination attempts were, I guess we can call sort of after-shocks after the that funny period of time we define as the 1960s.