We are getting to a point where we can count a number of Senators who will probably cease to be in the Senate, nonvoluntarily, in 2011.  Jim Bunning in Kentucky.  Maybe Chris Dodd in Connecticut.  Perhaps I’m misjudging him, and the DSCC head is giving a game face with respect to Illinois, but Roland Burris in Illinois.  And Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania.

The thing about Arlen Specter is that, rolling down the poll numbers, I doubt he’s strayed from where he was in 2004.  The Republican numbers are marginally smaller due to there being fewer Republicans and the Democratic numbers are marginally bigger due to there being more Democrats, the slimming effect with the former happens as the wavering changeovers are less “solid” to the current cause of “Republicanism” and the new adherents to “the Democracy” more inclined to support an Arlen Specter.   If he were to survive a primary challenge, he would be in good shape in the General election, as he was in 2004.  And yet…

In 2004, he barely survived that Republican Primary Challenge — one buttressed by more “Republican Moderates” (ie: non Limbaugh listeners).  The National Review threw their backing behind Pat Toomey and cover featured Specter as “The Senate’s Worst Republican”.  But the Republican Party machine pushed Specter through — Rick Santorum had considerable appeal with this base and he stumped for him, George Bush still was a reasonably popular political figure with a decent chance of winning the state and he stumped for Specter.  And they had to do so — Specter was almost assuredly going to win re-election; Toomey was assuredly going to lose re-election.  But today, The National Review audience (and “Movement” voters) makes up a larger proportion of the Republican electorate, this part of the party is incensed that Specter is in that vulnerable position of being the Deal Maker to get to 60 votes in the Senate, and there is no Bush and Santorum to hitch one’s ride to — or new equivalent.  Hence, Toomey beats Specter by double digits.

Labor offered Specter a salvo for the general election — lay down their arms if he cast what would be that magical vote #60 for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have further damaged his reputation amongst his conservative base.  I suspect that deed is already cast — he was in favor of it when he was an irrelevant vote and out of sight of political danger — not something the Republican voters can forget about, particularly given that his rationale for casting it aside (“In these tough economic times…”) isn’t an about face.  Also, it’s not going to absolve him of his orginal Obama Era Sin in being a key figure in that “Gang of 4” (the 2 Maine Senators, the Nebraska “Democrat”, and he) in deal-making the Stimulus Bill.

He’s spurned Democratic offers for a party switch, something which would not necessitate too much massaging  of positioning (though it would take a bit) to get into Evan Bayh’s “Democratic” burgeoning Caucus of Difference Splitting Calculators (or, indeed, back to that “Gang of 4”) — an act which would steer him straight to re-election.  This, I guess, is a sign of steadfast commitment to Party Republican — he wishes to “Save the party from becoming a purely regional Southern Party”.  And it looks like he will now have to do so from the vantage point of an ex-Senator.

For a Senator in Arlen Specter’s position, after spurning as unpalatible any available paths to survival, I suggest the only real choice is to assess your committments in matters of policy, and stick to it as a Legacy Builder, leaving smiling when the Democratic Process has thrown you ashunder.  But in Specter’s case, and with respect to EFCA, the problem is I don’t know really what Specter’s position is — which means he could be doing just that and I’d never know for sure.

A few weeks’ ago, Newsweek featured an article about a concert that happened in Salt Lake.  Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer reunited and put on a show in Utah — pretty interesting since they apparently did not get along too well in their hey-day when they toured together, but two decades of being linked together in popular imagination as something of a pop cultural joke will absolve lingering differences.  Where MC Hammer a few years ago put in a couple of Superbowl ads where the joke was his presence, Vanilla Ice just did an advertisement where he “apologized” for his early 90s appearance on the pop cultural stage.  They have a similar sense of their whereabouts.  Just as similarly each of their “one hit”s (more or less) signature songs were riffed off from — a Rick James song and a Queen / David Bowie song.  Just as Vanilla Ice’s stage presence — glittery baggy pants and on — was modeled off of MC Hammer’s.  Ad Naseum.  They diverge only where Vanilla Ice successfully parlayed his fame and fortune through wise investments such that he’s set for life whereas Hammer went bankrupt.

The reaction in the blogosphere to the concert can be surmised with “WTF?”, and tittering at the state of Utah for allowing such a thing to be attended by a sell-out crowd.  “Utah — 2 decades behind the times!” was the common sentiment.  This is unfair to Utah, and I’d say to the two has-been rappers.  There is not a city in America where a concert with the two in a major venue would not sell out.  It’s a combination of kitsch value (in the middle of a modern day Vanilla Ice concert, he shouts out to the audience, “Everyone here Down With the Turtles?”, and goes into “The Turtle Rap” — a song played from the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 at the end of the hey-day for both the Turtles and Vanilla Ice* — not something that would be taken seriously by hardcore hip-hoppers.), nostalgia (probably the first albums bought for a good deal of white suburbanites of, roughly my age.**)  Further, I suspect there wouldn’t be too many people would to away thinking they didn’t see a good show.

Though, I don’t think they could get away with more than one tour.  That would pushing it.

*TMNT co-creator Peter Laird would go on to cash in part of his proceeds from this time to finance the production of anti-capitalist manifestos.

** No, not me.  Definitely not me.  I remember in a CCD music session, one kid was rebellious enough to say to the chagrained Music Instructor (as we labored through learned to belt out bad church kids songs nobody would like) he’d rather sing [fill in blank of MC Hammer song nobody remembers.]  He thought he was so cool.

tap tap tap… You know… I haves post about more mainstream political stuff.  Arlen Specter.  Obama’s emerging gaffe chart.  Portland’s boondoggle MLS deal.  But, no… I have to go back to this thing:

The latest missive from L-PAC (and what kind of “political action committee is this?) reiterates two points:  #1: The degree to which the org cares not at all about the Duggans, and #2: a degree to which, and I don’t know quite what degree it is, Revenire does not believe his crap.

But let’s start with a demonstration of how ridiculous the Internet art of “fisking” looks like on a Larouchian article.  (And Jerry Pyenson: please to be posting to a 9/11 Truth board, as I’m disinclined to link directly to L-PAC.  Oh, never mind — I’ll go ahead and post it in the comments.)

March 25, 2009 (LPAC)–A well known group of miscreants,
well known group of miscraents?
steered by circles associated with the British Fabian Society
British Fabian Society?
and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair?
, are, once again, planning a hate rally against Lyndon and Helga LaRouche in Germany.
hate rally?

Actually that’s enough of that.  But let’s skip the next paragraph (important though it may be with key phrases) and here’s the key paragraphs for show in the two points I made at the top:

The matter first erupted into the public in 2003, several months after Mr. Duggan’s suicide, when Lyndon LaRouche was prominently featured in the British press as a leading American opponent to the war in Iraq instigated under then P.M. Tony Blair’s lying pretext. At that time, British intelligence circles, most notably British scientist David Kelly, were exposing Blair and his aides of “sexing up” the evidence that Blair and U.S. President George Bush had proclaimed as the justification for the war. After a public uproar, Kelly was found dead, supposedly by suicide. Subsequent events have amply proved that LaRouche and Kelly were right and that Blair, Bush and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney were liars.

Wishing to cover up their public falsehoods, the Blair-Bush-Cheney circle began a war time false propaganda campaign against LaRouche by manipulating the grieving Duggan family into claiming, without any foundation whatsoever, that the suicide of Jeremiah was not properly investigated and encouraging them to promote numerous false and nefarious allegations against LaRouche fed to them by LaRouche’s enemies.

To ask Erica Duggan to accept this is to demand she join the cult in believing Larouche a “World Historic Person”, which clearly she’s disinclined to do even if he’s an important figure in her life after the death of her son.  As a cult focused on Larouche’s Eminence, they are incapable of getting away from this internally, even as externally it’s a necessity.  As for revenire and his mindset:  notice that in his frequent feignings of “sympathy” toward the Duggans’ grief as “hi-jacked” for political purposes (and it apparently it took him until just this last week to discover an amount of animosity and/or distrust by some of the ex-Larouchies at factnet toward King and Berlet) by those long time Larouche haters, he never stated it in the context of Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, and et al. and broader political battles — and that sheer joke of being referred to here as “leading American opponent to the war in Iraq”. 

This LPAC item trips over itself round about here:
After a public uproar, Kelly was found dead, supposedly by suicide.
You don’t say.  Wait!  Is this some sort of double reverse?!  By implying this Suicide as actually a cover-up for a nefarious death, implying the Larouche critics as equally conspiratorial to the Larouchies!  Pretty clever!  It’s actually one step more clever than revenire’s “Bush – Palme conspiracy” contraption, because that one is implied as rejected by the Larouchies while this one is accepted! 

But revenire gets a little bit complicated in allowing me to brush him aside as not entirely believing his crap.  It appears that for the sake of argument and public consumption (figure LPAC articles as in a gray area between public and private consumption), he can’t go into this broader political context because he recognizes its absurdity to the outside world with the always raving matter of “what to do with” the Jeremiah Duggan “problem”.  BUT, in his parting shot, he rattled into the Larouche storyline regarding his place in uncovering Iran Contra — where in reality the Org is a mildly interesting footnote, in the Larouche sphere, he hovers over.  It took me a while to understand what he was stating, elliptically that he did so — a big chit in the reason for Larouche’s Imprisonment, supposedly, as opposed to the actual Credit Fraud as presented in the mindset shown in the recent “Windy City Dialouge” with:

If we don’t get enough money in, I’m going to kill somebody. [laughs]

But here revenire MUST and CAN go into this because this is a bit more in the realm of “Inside Baseball”, and we’ve got this game to play.

Though, nobody believes that one either.

Though, they’re always tripping for a narrative, witness (and I guess this is another board they’ve found useful), Obama’s collapsing ratings.  (Not yet.  It’ll happen eventually, as it does all presidents.)  I also note, a blogger at the libertarian Reason Magazine has discovered the 2 year old insertion into the conspiratorial purview, and European was accused by “Howie Copywriter” of quitting because he wasn’t getting any money or sex.

Reading through the Oregonian last week, I hovered onto the news article for one of the Portland School District’s “Little Miss” “Princess” winners.  I have a basic objection to these things, wondering why we’re awarding high school girls the title of “Princess”.  What caught my eye was in the bullet-point list of things:

News story she follows regularly: Last month’s arrest of singer Chris Brown for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, singer Rihanna.

I don’t know if that qualifies as a real news story, but following that Celebrity Crunch is what tends to qualify as “following news” in the teen years, and I gather to poll a high school, selected down to those who think they follow the news, on what news story they are most following, it would poll ahead of, say, the Geitner Plan.  Chris Brown’s assualt on Rihanna does allow taking stock of societal attitudes, and it’s not pretty.  This sounds about right in terms of dynamics.

As a Boston teenager myself, I’ll tell you that, unfortunately, you’re pretty spot-on. I witnessed a conversation between an 18-year old guy and a 17-year old girl in which the girl insisted, “It’s not his fault, she started it…” and the guy kept incredulously repeating “…but he still beat her.” Girls won’t believe that someone they thought they knew could do something so horrible. I see it also when an instance of rape or sexual assault happens inside our own school – when it’s a classmate that we know, we don’t want to believe that they could be guilty. It’s pretty frightening.

 That it’s not pretty suggests it’s a “Teachable Moment”.

I may well note I know not from Chris Brown and had barely ever heard of Rihanna — who I most know from a radio commercial that urges people to vote on an Internet site to rank various pop songs.  I don’t hear that commercial anymore.  I know not what either sing.

Update from the North Korean News Service:

Let all of us further intensify the Three-Revolution Red Flag Movement and make a dynamic leap forward toward the eminence of a great prosperous and powerful nation under the leadership of the great Workers’ Party of Korea.

Rodong Sinmun Monday says this in an editorial.

It goes on:

The present stirring reality in which a new great revolutionary surge is being effected on all fronts of socialist construction calls for intensifying the above-said movement at a higher level.

The Three-Revolution Red Flag Movement is an all-people mass movement of the highest form for accelerating socialist construction by dynamically waging the ideological, technical and cultural revolutions as required by the process of modeling the whole society on the Juche idea. The above-said movement has been dynamically waged in all sectors and at all units over the past three decades under the leadership of the WPK to bring about astonishing miracles and changes in the Korean revolution and construction. The shining victory the DPRK has won in the Songun revolution by firmly defending socialism and ushering in a new magnificent era of building a great prosperous and powerful nation despite stern trials would have been unthinkable without the immortal exploits the WPK has performed by initiating and wisely steering such powerful mass movement as the Three-Revolution Red Flag Movement long ago.

Some new material from Master Bridge-Themed Beat Poet, Bobby Wolff.

The defense started in the same way against Zia, but as soon as East gave him the ruff and discard at trick three, Zia started thinking about a possible bad trump break. Why would East defend in such a way unless he was hoping to promote a trump trick? So at trick four, Zia played a low club toward dummy’s queen. West played low (a pardonable error), and now Zia had stolen a club trick and could run for home, making five hearts, four diamonds and a club.

Today’s Ziggy:

Upon Barack Obama entering office, Charles Krauthammer offered up a “warning” to Obama that he should “fix the financial system”, but not attempt to “refashion” the system because in that direction lay “the dustbin of history”.  A sly suggestion of Communism without having to put himself down in fearing Barack as a “Big Red Machine”.  Weeks later, perhaps chastined by Obama’s high approval ratings verus the Republican’s low ratings, Krauthammer offered up a more conciliatory note and framed “8 years of Obamaism” as “putting us on the same level of government as European countries”, notably being downsized as we’re up-sizing.  The final line in that column was something along the lines of “Here’s to a great debate!”  The allusion is downsized to a more manageable fear of Socialism.

But Krauthammer shouldn’t have too much to fear in Obama “refashioning” American society.  There is not a president who has ever stepped out of lines in merely “fixing” the (quote-in-quote) “system” to the benefit of the peculiar elite’s benefit.  This inludes the Franklin Roosevelt, and with him we can roll with that sort of liberal theory of him put in the place of “placating the masses” and damping down their populist uprising — an item which coincides with the old story about him meeting a group of activists (depending on who’s telling the story, either Labor or Black) and telling them he’s with them, but they need to “make me do it” — ie: push for the political space to make it the political expedient thing to do.

Currently we have a situation of mass public outrage over a few hundred million dollars in AIG bonuses — such a drip in the bucket that it means that either the public can’t differentiate between millions and billions OR there’s much more at stake as per attitudes.  The more at stake comes in the tension between the view that these executives have developed a sense of entitlement (versus Labor which have given up concessions for the common good through the current economic upheaval) versus the idea that they must be placated in general and to a deeper degree than this one instance in order to preserve them to wind things through the system and untie the knots.  Skip back to Franklin Roosevelt for a moment, at the very least his persona personified in these lines 1936 campaign speech:

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master. 

The various detractors of Franklin Roosevelt gripe that “Roosevelt kep the Depression humming for a decade”.  It was a bit of a slow slog of not uninterrupted growth (the Recession of 1938), though the answer to the question “Are you better off now than you were four years ago” at each of the four year intervals (1936, 1940, and 1944) was “Yes”.  But the working theory goes along the lines of — it had to be in order to loosen a grip of the “Economic Royalists” (personified in 2009 by the “AIG Bonus Army”, I suppose — notably currently emeshed in a “Siege Mentality“), ushering us to and building what Paul Krugman terms the “Great Compression” through the next four decades.  In present conditions, you can sort through that period where a large group of people who’d ordinarily be in charge “Go Galt” on us and come out the other side in better shape.

Maybe that’s what Krauthammer was worried about, maybe not, and to what degree it falls into his two ledgers I can’t quite weigh.

Into Wiesbedan. *

Obviously I wish good luck with that — it gets its smattering of press news such as this, and .  and this, and the customary posting in the updates at the Dennis King website. 

It’s interesting to see a comment from the “Mikey Powell Campaign” on this site.  Must stick together, I guess you can say.
Go to factnet and you will see some former members expressing their frustration with, say for instance, the sponsorship of two people (rhymes with “Dertlet” and “Ring”) — long time “enemies” of the Larouche franchise who you might argue bring their own biases to the front, I suppose.  I suggest my incredulity in the comments section for the previous post — proofread it not at all. * — But to put some things into perspective, we have the inestimable “Howie G”:

European, why don’t you face it, you’re over your head. You are caught in the middle of disputes that will determine the future course of civilization.

Good god almighty.  Note to revenire:  The reason your supposed “jokes” ala “I’ve saved the world numerous times” are taken with a straight faced is because they bear no difference, and are actually rather tamer, than the straight-forward prose of the Larouche organization in describing their mission.  I suppose it would make for an Andy Kaufman routine, if it were not part and parcel of, for instance:

If we don’t get enough money in, I’m going to kill somebody. [laughs]

Ha ha ha!  It’s funny because… it has a ring of truth about… his sociopathology.  Ha ha ha!

Well, in all honesty this “Windy Hills Dialouge” is par for the course, and there is nothing new here.  I note that “Dialouge” is re-defined as “Monolouge with smattering of an ‘Amen’ Choir.”  But I see that “Howie G” has read that “Windy Hills Monolouge” and fully digested said.

I’m in the center of this. That’s my responsibility. Either we succeed, and I know that I’m crucial in this, or we go down. But you have these points. Essentially, you have Helga in Germany, as a key point of reference. It’s a reference for Russia and other places as well. Jacques in France, is in a fairly strong, relative position. The Four, the United States, Russia, China, and India, are coming into existence, and there are some meetings coming up now, which are these four! Hillary Clinton is playing a very significant role in respect to these four, as Secretary of State. Her meeting with Lavrov was highly successful, for its purpose.
So, we have inside the United States, our circle inside the United States, which is now focused around the Obama Presidency; Russia around an inside group in Russia, which is actually the leadership group in Russia; some influence in China, but that could be consolidated with the aid of Russia; and India. That is essentially what we have here, there. That is now the pattern. And what I’m doing, in terms of the question of economy is crucial, because if this were not done, if what I’m pushing were not to happen, there’s no change of avoiding a dark age. And what I’m trying to push through with Obama and Company, against all the enemies and fools and whatnot, is crucial.
That means, in the United States, that the LPAC operation is strategically significant, and will determine the future of civilization. So we are going to have a full-blast approach, politically and in fundraising, centered on LPAC. We have to get the $120,000 a week. {We have to.}
Nothing else is going to work, unless that works. Don’t talk about alternatives, or adjustments — forget it! It’s a fool’s errand.

The Four Powres Alliance, supposedly what the organization is working with, and it takes $120K a week from pestering your grandma on the phone to get it, and theoretically nickeling and diming from donations on street corner card table shrines with the latest ill-produced pamphlet thingamajing.  Well, anyway, the “4 Powers Alliance” is the pretend International Biggie they’re pushing.  The REAL International project can be found off of Parade’s Annual List of the “Top 10 Worst Dictators“.

Mugabe of Zimbabwe.  Al Bashir of Sudan. Khamenei of Iran*.  Abdullah (more to the clerics you can say) in Saudi Arabia.  And Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya.
For Kim Jong Il, he takes credit for a rail-line (or hearlds one?), but really the Larouche — Jong Il “Economic Development” connection is more along the lines of this.

 The “International Economic Program” leads its way to this Canadian Constituion.  I post to the comments to point to something I’ve lost and will post here if I ever find.  In the meantime, translate this Hegla Zepp boilerplate anti-video game connected to violent crime item to English and read down the list of articles at the bottom — Most Illuminating to see the mileu we’re travelling through!
……………………………………….

** To tie up a loose end in that assortment of comments, while it’s true that he’s “more idiosyncratic” and probably better asserted as coming out of a “Stalinist Left”) here’s where I find “Hitler” specifically in the wide world of Larouche (beyond the various alliances at various times with neo-nazis and attendent items, beyond anti-semitism which I don’t know what to put down as)  — a quote from factnet:
First off, he certainly lacks any of the demagogic skills to attract any type of mass base, second, the West is not in the total debilitated state that Weimar Germany was in after the war (although that could certainly change given current economic condiations).

 It is, in Larouche’s world, the world situation is always in the state that Weimar Germany was in, and the paranthetical is what Larouche is going after in, well, theoretically the public imagination but in practice never really beyond the cadres — and I have never been able to read that (and before I em-meshed myself as fully in paying  the attention I have — independent curiosity-seeking) as anything than a mimicry of Hitler.  Surely the Communist Left have that ideology of worsening conditions for the proleteriat being preferable to “crumbs” thrown by the bourgeoise in order to “wake them up”, which always resulted in a same sort of Alarmist tracts of “15 minutes toward Armegeddon”, but the frames of reference throw this particular instance of Larouche over to Hitler.
But, yes, Hitler himself disappears and can’t be shoe-horned all over the place.

…………………………………..
And now for a run into the “leatherstocking challenge”, as per a wikipedia claim to just “look at how Larouche has been referred to” in news accounts in the past fifteen years, and use that.  He sort of played it through google news, a bad gambit because of the inclusiveness with which google news operates which farms in those “Executive Intelligence Review” items and gives it an undue weight as against , say, the Financial Times of London.  I refer to that because I’ll reference a story published there, January 31, 2009 — can’t find it with immediacy on the Internet: The profit of doom: George Soros may have predicted the global economic crisis, but how is the pioneering financier protecting his fortune and his legacy? Chrystia Freeland reports. 
where we see the reference made as “extremist pamphleteer”.  Would that work for wikipedia?

Hey!  ETSU!  Why couldn’t you beat PITT?  You “had them” — as your post-game quotes go–, you were ahead late in the game, then you crashed against the “5 minutes left”  and PITT pulled ahead to a 10 point win.  Damned you ETSU, you’re more damnable than the 16 seeds that get rolled to 40 point defeats, because you are what assures that history is not made — because the next time a 16 seed will be in earshot of winning against a 1 seed will be in, like, 5 years — and they’ll probably be just like you, ETSU, with a similarly insane abbreviation, and with the same  nearing the end of the game choking away when the win is in eye-sight (the sudden shift from “having nothing to lose” to “having this game to lose”).  Thus the old cliche “It’ll happen one of these days” — that a 16 will beat a 1 — will always be a cliche.

Interesting to note just how much ETSU f’ed this one up.  A win for ETSU would have meant that the record of 1-seeds over 16-seeds would have gone from 0-99 to 1-99 — poetically a pretty beautiful play on things.  But ETSU has now flunked Poetry.

If you’re like me, your relatively minor interest in the college basketball tournament pretty much dissipates completely after the first weekend.  And thus it’s all over for me.  It’s been fun seeing these young men try to put a round thing into a basket, but they will now carry on doiing so without my attention.

I see this new magazine, or what I guess is a new magazine, “Hollywood Teen”, devoted I guess to young HOT 17 and 18 and 19 (or 20, 21, 22 in that role) something Hollywood stars, cover with some actors and actresses or other with the blurb “So Young.  So Rich.  So Famous.”

This sub-dividing is, I guess, the equivalent of the various Dog Magazines you’d be amazed to see exist.  (Hollywood Dog is one.)  Or it might be a product of a side-line of magazines like “Cosmo Teen” or the not terribly successful “Men’s Vogue”.

Though most magazines and tabloids on Hollywood vaguries tend toward the young and pretty, I guess this one skips the market that’d be grabbed by an article on Paul Harvey’s Final Message.  (Which I don’t think is published, but probably should be.  This is a particular of story, aimed at an older demographic.)

In the coming years “Hollywood Teen” will cover National Enquirer’s ground and report on “best” and “worst” “Beach Bodies”.  They converge wildly in my mind, even the self-conciously tawdry and self-conciously gushing.

It may be absurd to note the innacuracies of an Onion Parody, but I need to point out that this “Sports” story about the NCAA expanding the Field of 64 to 4096 teams is wrong in one area:  that would extend the post-season three weeks and would not get it out of April, and not into the Dick Vitalle parody’s quoted “June Madness”, if we presume the same schedule of single-elimination games that wind it down from 4096 to 2048 to 1024.  From 1024 to 512 to 256.  From 256 to 128 to 64 (or, actually as the case is, 65 — but nobody cares about that weird game to decide which non-major will get thumped by the prohibitive Tournament favorite).  From 64 to 32 to 16.  From 16 to 8 to 4.  From 4 to 2 to 1.  I honestly just don’t understand The Onion’s error in writing up this parody — don’t they have fact-checkers over there?

I think it would make for a fascinating tournament, though, and hope someone tries something like that… just once.  Portland State is in good stead as one of the favorites, being that a 1012 seed has never beaten a 13 seed.  It also scoots Oregon State to its current pathetic but strangely followed by team boosters because the team doesn’t stink in the way it stinked in historic terms last season as coached by Michelle Obama’s brother third rated (out of four) tournament that exists for some strange reason — Oregon State has a 101 seed.