I flip past the talk radio circuit to hear the big word on today’s events in the Big Donkey — Elephant Game.  They accuse Arlen Specter of political expedency.  Arlen Specter said as much in his press conference today:
“I found that the prospects for winning the Republican primary were bleak. I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. Not prepared to have that record decided by that jury.”

It was hard not to marvel at Arlen Specter’s precarious situation, which I did here.  Since then, things became worse for the man electorally.  Over the weekend, he looked at his poll numbers and saw that the amazingly shrunk Republican Party of Pennsylvania had polled him to a 21 point defeat against Pat Toomey — a real victory for the guy that start the bottom row of this item.  Grover Norquist has flexed his muscles.  Why has the Republican Party of Pennsylvania shrunk?, you may ask.  Look at the comments section at the various news-sites, and you will see some hilarious explanations.

Perhaps I’m as Irony-Deficit as the Conservative believers in Stephen Colbert (Note: this study requires you to create a flow-chat), but if not I have to point out the math problem of the explanation.  “More than 200,000” is, technically, “hundreds”, but by this point you tend to explain the number in terms of hundreds of thousands.  It’s a joke, right?

Okay.  Two more thoughts from the commenters of big time news entities.  The first one:

Does this really mattter? The two parties are are two wings of the same bird, pushing the same agenda … destruction of our rights and enslavement of the American people. Politics is nothing but the slight of hand a magician uses to distract you while a trick is executed.

Run of the mill comment, that.  And then there’s this assessment:

You will recognize a great deal of the names of the last half of the twentieth century, as the Solid South opened up, split against the the national Democratic Party.  People like Ronald Reagan, This wikipedia list serves as a history of the partisan transformation of the South, and then the regionalization of the Republican Party.  Too bad the Democrats didn’t follow the advice of Zell Miller in heading this off , eh?  More impressively, is the flood of Louisianans and Texans and South Carolinans switching after the Republican landslides of 1980, 1984, and 1994.  They kept their jobs and didn’t miss a beat.

Whither the two parties from here?  I don’t know.  Didn’t you see that comment about all this being a sham?  Like it or not, Obama’s full fledged support assures that Specter is going to be re-elected Senator — meaning all you liberals have to hope his EFCA change of heart was a sham in pursuit of beating Toomey and his statements today are just a means of not embarrassing himself. 

What, did I just go to sleep and wake up back in 2002?  First we have a modestly exaggerated threat of a pandemic — not SARS but this Swine Flu — and now I see this headline:

Pakistani leader: Bin Laden ‘may be dead’ — or not

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s president said Monday his intelligence agencies believe Osama bin Laden may be dead, but he added there is no proof. Other Pakistani officials and a U.S. counterterrorism official said they thought the al-Qaida chief is alive.
Money Shot.

“We continue to believe that bin Laden is alive,” said the U.S. official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record.

Of course, there is no proof of this.  AND SO…

Zardari added that his country’s intelligence agencies “obviously feel that he does not exist anymore,” but he didn’t explain how or when they reached that conclusion, and quickly qualified his comment by saying bin Laden “may be dead.”
“That’s not confirmed. We can’t confirm that,” he said. “It’s still in between fiction and fact.”

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, appearing later Monday with his visiting British counterpart at a news conference, seemed surprised when a reporter asked about Zardari’s remarks.

All very uninteresting, I’d say.  But we’ve been about here before.

#1:  Chris Elliott:  Television Miracle
#2:  Dramatic Interpretation of Elton John’s Classic “Rocket Man”.
#3:  Chris Elliott is The Fugitive Guy
#4:  Discusses the upcoming 3 minute program The Fugitive Guy
#5:  “The Guy Under the Seats”
#6:  A “Conspiracy Guy” trilogy 
#7:  Chris Elliott is The Regulator Guy
#8:  Whirlwind Romance
#9:  Chris Elliott is Jay Leno
#10:   The Chris Elliott, Jr Show , or — you know, Morton Downey.

It’s never too early to concoct a “Cattle Call” ranking for the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls.

Well, actually, yes.  Yes it is.  Absurdly early.  Not only that, but even in the “thick” of early 2012 it would be a little silly.  But, I do absurd!  Who’s up, who’s down, who’s what…

#1:  Mitt Romney.  By default.
#2:  Newt Gingrich.  No,haschance.  But, as “Idea Man” for the Republicans has maintained his role.  Supplies the Republican party with plenty of ideas.  Just none of them are any good.
#3:  Bobby Jindal.  I think his volcano monoitoring statement will haunt him in the general election.  I don’t know how his past Exorcism will work in today’s Republican Party.  Would it expose some anti-Catholic feeling from the fundamentalist tongue-speakers?
#4:  Mark Sanford.  A new line is out there:  “Dated Paul, Married Sanford.”  Granted, he’s pulled in some of Paul’s more establishment backing, and has excited a part of the Tea-party contingent, and is favorably viewed by today’s John Birch Society, but I don’t think he’ll ever get Paul’s 9/11 Truth contingent.
#5:  Mike Huckabee.  He’s risen in this thing.  Two things:  The Iowa ruling on same sex marriage has opened the door for him, but more importantly is the continued demise of
#6:  Sarah Palin. Cut loose her national advisors, and is currently working on alienating everyone in Alaska.  Also John McCain forgot her name.
#7:  TimPawlenty.  If he had no national ambitions, he would probably ratify Al Franken’s Senate seat by now.
#8:  Rudy Giuliani.  No, probably in his head knows he has no path to the White House.  But it’s impossible to view his new stance on same sex marriage as a matter of conviction, and it’s hard to see why it would be necessary for the New York Governor’s mansion.
#9:  Michael Steele.  When asked, said the matter was in God’s Hands.

All right.  How about the Democrats?

#1:  Barack Obama.  No comment.
#2:  Um… Hillary Clinton.  If you search hard enough, you will find remnants of ye olde “PUMA Movement” online still keeping the faith.
#3:  You think Dennis Kucinich might try for anotehr ever more quixotic campaign?

I’m not sure if it’s worth commenting on that a radio talk show host that I will actively not listen to is back, replacing her seat-warmer in the  radio host I passively allow into ear-shot, nor if I should try to explain some significance on this account to “Liberal Talk Radio” and / or KPOJ and whatever else you can attach it to.

Some things that can be found in poking about wikipedia.  I don’t understand this amount of loathing for Nancy Skinner, nor do I understand what underlies this statement:

2. Skinner was anti-Bush long before it was “cool” to be that way, whatever that means. The show, which started with the Monica Lewinsky debacle, was basically comprised of Ski Anderson and Nancy Skinner apologizing for Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes… until George W. Bush was first rumored to be seeking the Presidency. Then it was just anti-Bush, anti-Bush, all the way to the end. Ya gotta love it, because you just can’t like it.

Anyway, it probably violates the “Not For General Discussion” rule of wikipedia.

Now, looking over at the wikipedia article for the company that previously had Randi Rhodes’s contract — and the bizarre “whatevers”:

Rhodes’ last show on Nova M before an abrupt break was February 3, 2009. Political commentator and one-time Congressional candidate Nancy Skinner hosted the show in Rhodes’ absence beginning February 5. Following this, Anita Drobny of Nova M Radio posted a message on the Nova M site saying that they were unable to disclose details of what is going on due to Rhodes’ having complete control of the show, and that Rhodes “now has to make her decisions as to what she must do with her career”.^[4] Mrs. Drobny has also said, “People are saying it’s about money. It’s not about money at all. I just could not fulfill one of her requirements.” She did, however, note the financial impact of Rhodes’ departure: “I looked at [our] site, and I see that because Randi Rhodes isn’t on, there are so many people leaving the Founders Club [which involves a fee paid to Nova M]. And you can’t operate without people’s participation.” ^[5]Additionally, Rhodes’ own Web site was taken down, and replaced with a letter from Rhodes to supporters stating that the entire situation is within Nova M’s control, any implication that Rhodes is responsible for the disruption is false, and that Rhodes’ show will be “seeking a new home” in light of the recent developments.^[6] According to an individual familiar with the issue, Nova M agreed to provide certain standard legal protection for the popular radio host, but Rhodes had to leave the air and Nova M following a discovery that Nova had not lived up to its contractual promise.^[7] Subsequently, on February 19, 2009, Nova M Radio announced that they would be filing for bankruptcy liquidation, but no such filing has yet occurred.^[7]

Stephen Lemons, a blogger for the Phoenix New Times, has suggested that On Second Thought has also ceased to exist^[2], and radio station KKGN, which airs Mike Malloy’s show, has reported on its blog that Malloy is now self-syndicated.^[8] Records available from the Arizona Corporation Commission as of 11 March 2009 (2009 -03-11)^[update], however, indicate that the LLC (which was originally formed in 2003^[9]) remains in good standing^[9] (at least with respect to the Arizona state government).

I like how it has to end with an existential question for “On Second Thought”:  if your radio station is boarded up to deny your entry and flipped to Spanish, but you retain filings in a drawer in a government office, do you still exist?

“Randi Rhodes” will, I guess, now be the “#1 rated Progressive Radio Host”, based on the distribution of who she just signed with — Clear Channel / Premier.  I guess this means she’ll be shuffled onto any number of radio stations.  Eventually.  If there were many Clear Channel stations that had picked up “Air America” to fill one of its place-holding stations left, she’d be bumped to those, but casually watching the ebb and flow of this I think they largely flipped back to their pre-appointed canned formats.

Bah.  Why do I care?  If there were any way I can cement 610 AM off my radio dial for the 6 hours of 12 pm to 6 pm so that I can’t accidentally hear it, let me know.

The massive reaction to Susan Boyle  can best be seen as largely a rejection of a mass cynicism which has been accumulating, Day One of American Idol and its related shows focused on laughing off bad performers and enjoying Simon’s insults.  Ms. Boyle pierced various artifices.  I don’t know who made this comment, and I don’t watch “American Idol” enough to know what to make of it, but it’s been said that the audience has tended to surprise — not necessarily picking the most obvious choices in terms of “Idoldom”.  Boyle undoubtedly has a record contract coming her way of some sort, and a make-over — one where make-up artists will focus on thrusting out an “Everyday Underdog Working-class” image.  (Again, piercing, especially for women, a very narrow cast of who gets to perform.)

Actually this is not a blog post about Susan Boyle, interesting sociological test that she be.  I just wanted to speak about the experiences of “Schadenfruede” long enough to get this series down past a scroll.  But, if I’m focused on Susan Boyle — here’s a test to see if you’ve become a more empathetic person, and have put schadenfruede behind.  Watch this series of pictures, and I’ll ask a simple question.

Did you laugh?  If so, Why?

I keep seeing stuff like this being batted about in the liberal blogosphere.

Yes.  Republicans.  Less Popular than China.  Or Venezuela.

Leaving aside that we’re left assuming that this as meaning the Chinese government as opposed to the rich legacy of Chinese culture — if nothing else, you gotta love your chow mein, right?  Also, Yao Ming appears to be a nice enough guy.

… Assuming we can correlate the numbers exactly to the Chinese government, as against the Republican Party, we are left with the simple matters of apples and oranges.  When asked for an impression of China, the baggage that comes with it is various policy measures as to what to do with the odium.  To answer an unfavorable impression with China is to suggest that something needs to be done with it to loosen the grip of the Chinese government on either their human rights records or with regards to economic and military might.

Meanwhile, we can do something with the Republican Party: keep them out of office.  Hence, a quick answer of unfavoribility is more apt when asking for impressions on the Republican Party than on China.

I don’t like this game, and I feel the need to state my objection.

Hm.  Canada seems to be sucking out our lame Presidents.  On May 29th, these two will be apparing together in Toronto for a “Discussion”.

Okay.  A list through the comments to determine who’s more hated:

anti – Both: 13
anti – Bush: 3
anti – Clinton: 1
pro- Bush: 3

Now I just need to go back over the lot and figure out the “pro – Canada” to “anti – Canada” margin.

I’m having some trouble with this one, the Daily Briefing for March 16.  My question is: What is “the LPAC Way”?

Because: If we continue with the present policy of practice this organization will go out of existence in two weeks. Therefore, there will be no deviation as a matter of policy or practice from what I’m about to say. And the $120,000-$125,000 is key. Don’t say you have to achieve something else first. That’s what you have to achieve {first}. Otherwise, you’re not going to solve the problem. Anybody who thinks you can solve the problem in another way is an idiot and needs some kind of care.

Look: Our influence is not based on people doing heel and toe in the street. Our exposure in the street in some cases, is relevant. But that’s not the way we raise money. We raise money with the LPAC way. Now, what’s the LPAC way: If you want to raise money, you don’t talk to a member of the Senate or a member of the House of Representatives. That’s a stupid move. We have people who talk to these people, and we call them trained toads—that is , the people who talk to these guys, who call these Senators and Members of Congress toads. Because they can’t swim any more, since they crawled out of the swamp. They can only run around rhhuhh! rhhuhh!

It’s a strange admission.  Apparently observed as much on the streets as in the conference table at Leesburg.  Observe:

Item #1:  Far be it from me to advocate pouring a lot of money into it, I’m just suggesting they use a permenant marker and get somebody with good handwriting to letter it.
Item #2, and I’ll link to a Tea-Party friendly forum that linked to this Seattle Times article, to take note of the follow-up plug to “Obama Deception” — notable because, of course, Tarpley, and there’s a certain irony in a pooh-pooh of Larouche next to an embrace of Tarpley: 
Liz Monta, 69, of Ballard, a retired bartender who said she was upset with bank bailouts, “nationalizing health care and Obama’s socialist agenda,” did take one of the 3-by-3-foot signs the LaRouche supporters were handing out.
But she folded the bottom part that had LaRouche’s name, so she was only waving a sign that said, “End the bailout. Dump Pelosi.”
Finally, something the Larouche Organization is good for.  Eventually your political enemy will align with their political enemy, see here.  They’ll produce a bunch of pictures of unflattering photographs of that individual for your own use.  If only the Larouche Organization could figure out a way to monetize that, they might have something going here, and have a different way of “making money the LPAC Way”.

Just as well the deployments at the “Tea-parties” are down-played.  Observe:

The April 15th Tea Party anti-tax actions were not a “mass movement”—they were an orchestrated operation of George Soros and his Twitter operations backed up by Sir Rupert Murdoch’s Fox media empire. Forget the so-called organizers like Newt Gingrich, Fox News fascist Sean Hannity, and Congressional has-been, Dick Armey. They are just frontmen—the real organizers were the cyber-zombies of Twitter, Facebook and the like. […]
This whole thing is being orchestrated—that’s what’s important. What you have is the control of so-called popular opinion, which is a bunch of zombies! They’re like a bunch of zombies, like 14th century zombies, marching en masse. Don’t treat it as credible: this is not mass protest. This is not spontaneous protest. You’ve got zombies out there, who will move at the hint from that fascist drug pusher, George Soros.”
“And a lot of this stuff which is called mass protest, is Soros’s zombies—which come in many varieties, because he’s paying for them. Many of them are drugged. They’re out there doing mass protests, not because they know what they’re talking about, but because they are just being told to go out and shake up the Establishment.”
“They have to be compared to the lunatics known in the 14th century New Dark Age, known as the Flagellants. Call these guys the New Flagellants.”

The “Tea-Baggers” were … 14th Century Zombies.  Yes, taking rim shots at the words of Lyndon Larouche is easy sport, though noted is that “Howie G” didn’t get the memo.  I suppose if I say that I nod in agreement with Gary Trudeau’s thoughts It’ll be like an imaginary conversation taking place between him and James Galbraith.  Beyond this, I will echo the thoughts of one Tony Papert, from that briefing:
TONY: Don’t discuss what? I didn’t understand what you were just saying a second ago.
Though, in Tony’s case, the answer can be found with a few simple words spoken:
What we’ve been doing, it STINKS!

Looking through this, does this mean we have a two week bunker-session manning the phones followed by a season where the Larouchies will be taken off of “cardtable Service”, providing a tad less amusement to the public, and put to work sticking videos on their website?  And how is the website going to be “monetized”, anyway?

But the key thing is: Think about what the mission is. Think about what this business is, on method of operation: We’re doing mass organizing in the way I’ve described. Not massive, saying we need 50,000 people; you don’t need 50,000 people. You wouldn’t get anything done with 50,000 people that you couldn’t get done with 500 people. Really get done, in net effect. With 50,000, they’d trip over each other’s feet.
What you do, is you use the vehicle we have: We have an effective website operation in terms of the way it’s designed. It merely has to come up a little bit more in terms of performance, and it {has to be supported!} so it can do the job. We have to have more people on it, doing the work. And we have to produce more product, which means, some of this product is going t be one month, three weeks, two weeks, and so forth, to produce as it comes along. Some stuff is ready to go. So but you have to have a net effect of more than three a day. […]
But we have to produce the stories, and we have to do it in the audio/video form. The audio/video form is the type that gets across. And the other thing will work: because if they accept you on the audio/video lead, then they’ll accept your written report. Because it’s information, especially short.
So that’s what we do—and we go like hell with that. And we get the impact immediately, because we need, in the next two weeks, we need to get the cash up! And this is the only way we’re going to do it. And we’re going to go full tilt! No apologies, no guessing games, no college tries. Burn down the universities, we don’t want any more college tries. We want results, not college tries. A college try is a guy struggling with a condom. [explosive laughter]

The “Obama Deception” was the number one video on yahoo, beating out “1932” by a country mile, I’m thinking.  Supposedly the next two week’s of phone harranging is going to produce more web material ala “1932”.  (New up-take of new material apparently coming up quickly.  The money is being raised for more of this quality, I guess.  I see they’ve found the great “Hydrogen Monoxide Kid“, but after cribbing that gag it’s all downhill.  I guess this means this is one of the kicks they’re on , and it along with “Goldman Sucks” don’t fall into the category of bad issues… which, strictly speaking I don’t see what’s wrong — have to throw a wide net in order to get money out of, say this guy‘s Hamiltonian Crusade.)

Actually, the real story of “Raising Money the LPAC Way” is shown in the scrippings for savings.  This “to all points” memo shows health care for the central org being dropped.    Which apparently is leading to a Run on final Health Care Check-ups.  The tradition of “raising money through scrippings” is long running, as seen in this memorial to the John Morris.

I don’t know what he and Gary were driving such a long distance at that hour for. I don’t know whether they were coming from a long deployment (standing at a small table selling subscriptions and literature, collecting names and phone numbers to call later), or driving back from an event. But I do know why they ran out of gas. They ran out because there wasn’t enough in the tank, and there wasn’t enough in the tank because there was never much gas in the tanks of LaRouche cars when I was in the group, when the stuff was well under $2 a gallon. I can only imagine that the problem was only more pronounced last summer when gas was $4 a gallon in many parts of the country. Gas tanks were never filled because cash from deployments was a precious commodity. It was always better to bring cash back to the office than spend it all to fill up a tank. Usually, there was only enough gas in our cars to last a day. At the end of a long day of selling literature on the streets, we’d put a few gallons in, at most. Enough for tomorrow.
The cars were never in very good condition. Though these cars were used every day for driving over long distances (sometimes for 50 miles or more each way) they were rarely maintained. I remember a car or two in Los Angeles that didn’t even have a working gas gauge. We always had a can of gas in the trunk of the car. If the driver of the car ran out of gas, he’d have to pull over and re-fill out of the can. I’ve heard that it was a common problem elsewhere in the country as well. Given that John and Gary were trying to refill their tank on the side of a highway, I think there’s they may have had a car in this condition.

 I gather that comments like the one found here are wrong, and can be checked against experiences such as that one:
As to what is motives are, or his credibility, I can be sure that you can never really know, any more than you know what goes on by those in power every day. what you can be sure of, is that a significant portion of those in power, in the U.S., in outher nations, and throughout history, have done, and continue to do, really, really bad things to keep things in their favor.

  For instance, something that’s popped up in my mind regarding “Howie G”‘s sex obsession at  “European”‘s blog.  The line about leaving the cult because it doesn’t provide sex seemed to derive from European’s comments on the proposed Canadian Constitution and its homosexuality ban.  Which is about what harm the org did in their two California Initiatives, as seen by this commenter.
I remember what the LaRouchies were doing 20 years ago. May your leadership be reincarnated as garden slugs for adding to my friends’ stress levels during the darkest years of the HIV pandemic.

Well… anyways…