Okay.  One question:

That Christmas song, “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”?

Would somebody maybe parse through the lyrics and find the answer to the question, “Who is Mommy kissing?”

Is she kissing Daddy?  OR a man she is cheating on with daddy?

Hearing Christmas songs, and the sort of unrelenting melancholy and depression and dysfunction that are the twentieth century standards (“I’ll be home for Christmas, and etc…. If only in my Dreams“), I automatically suspect the worst.  Mommy is having an affair, and has a thing for red stockings.  Mommy and Daddy are planning a divorce.  They will break the news to the singer of this song as he’s distracted by all the toys he’s opened.

So the question of the day:

If you could throw any shoe at President George W Bush, what shoe would it be?

Will Nike put out a model of shoes aerodynamically designed to throw at Bush, or will Adidas beat them to the punch, and who will be the celebrity or athletic endorsee?

No sharp cleats, please.  We don’t want to hurt the guy.

Yep!  It’s all over for Barack Obama.  So unfortunate, as I had relatively high hopes for him.  I learned about the demise of the Barack Obama administration when I went over to technorati for some blog searching, and saw that technorati had this blog entry for “water-cooler” high-volume front page link, and with coffee spewing out of my mouth due to laughter I read .:

The Obama Administration Is Now Damaged Goods, Obama Lied To America

http://strata-sphere.com/ blog/ index.php/ archives/ 7…

Update: A consensus is brewing about Obama’s pending troubles – see here, here, here and here. Major Update Below! The big dominos seem to be falling already, less than a week from the news breaking. I simply cannot fathom the damage Barack Obama and

The “consensus”, if you go to the website, is the consensus that comes from an assortment of conservative blogs.  This is the type of thing which will animate the thoughts of conservative and Republican activists for the rest of Obama’s tenure as president, and be ignored by the rest of Americans.  That the rest of Americans won’t be able to recite the Great Obama Deception in relation to Mr. Blag will be a testament of the complicity of the Liberal Media and the Dumbing Down of America.  The good news is that eventually Obama will be more firmly implicated in a scandal, and that will have to be what taints America’s view on the man.

Mostly this is just an example — and I see it everywhere — of attempting to force a reality, particularly of popular opinion, that suits one’s political predilictions into being.

Any other Consensuses brewing out there? 

And another thing about Mr. Blagojevich:

Back in 2006 I saw a number of Democratic chest thumping on what an election the party had, and something to the effect that not one Democratic Congress member, Senator, or state-wide office including most importantly Governor had lost election.  This struck me as a bad way of looking at things, because clearly various Democratic politicians deserved to be dumped — whatever the cumulutive value of the two parties were.

The obvious figure that deserved to be dumped was William Jefferson, who two years later finally lost.  But Rod Blagojevich, never popular with Illinois voters, always swarming with less than 50 percent approval, and always with a spectre of corruption hanging over him, would have been best be shoved aside.  The combination of a weak state Republican party and a tidle wave for the Democrats brought him through loud and clear, though — with less than a 50 percent vote, and with the Green Party grabbing a big enough percentage to garner “established party” status.

Around 2006 a hackneyed partisan argument came into vogue that “Republicans” couldn’t govern because their ideology of “limited government” put them into the position that once they had power they couldn’t see how the levers of governing did anyone any good, so they’d use it for personal gain.  I never liked this, and could see the argument of “one for me, one for you” in the ideology of liberal graft.  At any rate, back in 2006 Republican hacks were too busily focused on the phony specter of corruption with Harry Reid and Boxing tickets (as today we see strained attempts to attach Blagojevich’s scandal to Obama)– and Blagojevich?  Who was he?

Read today’s “Mother Goose and Grimm”?  I didn’t think so.  Well, here it is, for your… enjoyment? 

The joke loses something in being a pop cultural reference from September 2007 — an individual’s 15 minutes of fame referenced one year later, I have to pull the joke out of a cob-webbed memory bank in my head and blow away a bunch of dust.

I have compiled one or one and a half full postings which are essentially copycats of the comic strip surveyor Comics Curmudgeon.  They become outdated rather quickly, because they’d require me to save the comic strips.  As a lark, one of these days I may well just post them — out of context.  Today’s edition of Comics Curmudgeon has a Beetle Bailey I wish to make note of, because it takes note of a vital issue of the day — the departure from having grade school kids as crossing guards.

When I was a kid, at the start of the fifth grade the teacher would ask for volunteers to be Crossing Guards during various shifts — before, during, after school.  It wasn’t compulsory, and it was compulsory at the same time — it was compulsory because of the simple fact that everybody signed up for it and it seemed silly to be the only one not to do so.  The result, for me, who had no particular interest in this task, is I forged myself to a low priority pick to don the uniform and stop the cars to get everyone across the street — I did it a few times during the year, while a few students won accolades at the end of the year for “being on the front lines just about every week” in various shifts.  Eager Beavers were they; I assume that their “get at it” quality that had them eager to do this business in their formative experience has aided them in becoming today’s CEOs and high priced attorneys?  At the end of the year, everyone received the prize of a night at the roller rink — where I skated around in circles for a few hours to the tune of a scattering of bad pop songs.  No harm; no foul.

A few months ago in Portland, there was an accident here in Portland.  A crossing guard was run over, or maybe a kid they were crossing the street toward.  I noticed in the Letters to the Editor a certain attitude — Something must be done.  We need to get the kids off of the street.  Adults should be in charge of this task — it’s too terrible for the kids.  My thought to these letters was that if this school policy was changed — and it looked like it was, I was forced to wish harm on through an unfortunate accident striking one of the new adult crossing guards for at least a lesson in “there is no permaneable safety zone bubble”.

It is a similar feeling I had in 1995 or thereabouts when a kid, seeking the World Record book for Youngest flight, crashed.  The situation with this kid, aside from his parents living their lives through his accomplishments and pushing him and them being annoying a-holes not deserving, was that nobody should have been flying in the thick fog he pushed himself through, and an adult should have stopped him from flying — but not stopped him from flying when the weather came together– and this was a controversial view which ran in the face of the commentary of the time.

The matter of the crossing guards is a little broader — it is a more routine task and not a spectacular feat.  They are standing in the middle of the streets in 20 mile per hour zones.  I used to walk past a school zone on occasion when school was being let out around 3.  Kids were doing the crossing guard duty.  I’ve walked past the school zone again as of late.  Adults are doing the crossing duty, wearing the same orange vests.  This is an abomination — an avenue of responsibility has been taken away from these children.  How are they going to grow up to be the CEOs and High powered Attorneys of tomorrow if they’re not given this simple task due to a regretable accident or two?  Why is Beetle Bailey’s Seargant doing crossing duty for a couple of adults when a couple of the kids he’s leading should be doing it?

The following is a list of Notable people who have left comments for this blog.  If you’ve left a comment on this blog and are upset by your lack of inclusion, you may argue your case for “notable”.  Though, for the life of me, I wouldn’t know why anyone would care.

1.  Alexander [???]; almost certainly has an important role in the Cascadian Independence Movement, but can’t figure out what.

2.  Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates, co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America

3.  Dianne Bettag;  campaign manager for various candidates who want to take on the threat of Synarchism.

4.  Kari Chisholm, web developer and political consultant for “Mandate Media”; proprietor “blueoregon.com”; weekly guest on KPOJ Morning Show

5.   Mullah Cimoc; dime a dozen Internet troll whose sheer volume of posting makes him noteworthy.

6.  Ron Gunzburger, proprietor “politics1.com”

7.  Elliott Jacobson;  Director of Communications for the Gravel for President campaign

8.  Dennis King, author Get the Facts on Anyone.  Anything else escapes me.

9.  Scott McLemee; Hm?  “Cultural Critic”?  Expert on various items of American fringe;  quoted in a New York Times article about a largely fictional holiday popularized by Seinfeld — which I take to be a cast of that Allen Salkin for the NY Times pulling together a fluff piece by quoting various acquaintances. 

10.  Tom Metzger, founder White Aaryan Resistance, 1982 Oregon Senate candidate, seller of bootleg Simpsons merchandise 1991; found liable in the murder of Mulugeta Seraw in 1988.

11.  Daniel Pinkwater, author The Neddiad, Ducks!, occasional commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered”, failed Reading and Pudding Advocate.

12.  Gordon Allen Pross, Democratic candidate for WA-4 House seat 1998; Republican primary candidate for WA-4 House seat 2000, 2002, 2008; Republican primary candidate for Washington Senate 2004, 2006; What will 2010 hold?  Only Time will tell.

13.  Eric Shanower, cartoonist/illustrator:  Age of Bronze; Prez; An Accidental Death.

14.  Jeff Sharman.  free-lance photo-journalist whose work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times.  owner “Using Books”.

15.  Victoria Taft.  Portland local conservative talk radio host.

16.  Shannon Wheeler, cartoonist “Too Much Coffee Man”, “How to Be Happy”; animator for a Converse commercial.

17.  Bill White, leader of American National Socialist Workers’ Party and administrator of  Overthrow.com; ad-hoc spokesperson for “Libertarian National Socialist Green Party”.

Two days ago, I thought something was just about to hit when  Rod Blagojevich came out for the strikers in front of Bank of America’s Chicago branch in ordering Illinois to quit doing business with them.  It struck me as this sort of constituency builder of a man with no constituency — an approval rating in the single or lowest double digits.  Unfortunately, a search through google news search shows up the first “connection”, such as it is, the opinion from out of the Heritage Foundation.

What strikes me about the scandal, and the auctioning off of Barack Obama’s old Senate seat , is seems less slimy than the process had been.  There was this somewhat bizarre process going on where the various Senate aspirants suddenly had to curry the favor of a politically discredited politician who they would otherwise not be touching with a ten foot pole and treating as a leper, mainstream news speculators running through scenarios of how various candidates might make agreements on how they could suck up energy from potential primary candidates if he should be stubborn enough to run again and other “scratch each other back” manuevers.  The specter of cold cash and blatant quid pro quos at least erases a political fiction and is in some manner a little less cynical.

I am not a firm believer in the “Rick Emerson Brand”.  I am a firm believer in the “Tim Riley brand”, and as such sense that my listenership to “The Rick Emerson Show” is going to wane a great deal — whatever my “P” rating falling from “P-1” to “P-2” — or is it “P-2” to “P-3”?

This, of course, is a shame.  Emerson and Sarah Dylan are solid professional producing and hosting a radio program in the right way.  But the effect is similar to that era of the Rick Emerson Show where the program was clearly being stomped under the jack-booted consultants of Entercom and the nightmare of fitting into something called a “Max 910”.  I sort of felt lousy fading away and turning the dial — this was not Emerson’s fault and he certainly carried on the best he could under those horrendous circumstances– but I had no other choice.  It was with that that I always had a mixed reaction to the destruction of “Max 910” — on one hand Emerson, and Clyde Lewis for that matter — were off the air; on the other hand, this goddamned exercise in hyper dilineated market segmentation and insulting of everyone’s intelligence was dead.

So what do you do when the chief ingredient that made a radio program entertaining is taken out?  The figure whose looming presence made some diversions from Rick Emerson and Sarah Dylan relatively listen-worthy?  Inevitably my Core is just going to break down into Cum…ulative.  This time around I can’t even really lay waste to the Corporate Behemoth — CBS is not Entercom.  Oh well.  The one thing I can say about “The Rick Emerson Show” as it goes forward: it’s not like there’s anything better on the radio dial.

I was walking down the street one day, when a guy approaching me yelled out “What are your choices for bread?”  Confused and puzzled was I.  Then I looked down and saw I had a Viso bottle on me, and groaned silently to myself.  Once I safely passed, I provided the answer.  “White.  Wheat.  Sour dough.  English muffin.  Bagel.”  Does this make a radio listener community?  Who can say?

A reaction to a dismissive attitude to the Obama Birth Certificate Controversy 

wingnuttiest of wingnut lawsuits???????
Obama has NOT released an unaltered copy of his birth certificate. He has NOT released any hospital or doctor records that show where he was born and who the doctor was. (He has also NOT released other significant documents, like his college records or his thesis.) He has NOT released the records of his adoption or his Indonesian passport. He has NOT released even an altered copy of the long form of his birth certificate that would give the kind of information that would completely satisfy and silence the “birthers” (at least most of them). His pattern of hiding and obscuring and even lying about his past (like stating in writing in a formal document that he never went by or used a different name) is over the top and is one of the reasons why I do not trust anything he says and would put nothing past him.

For myself and many like me, until he answers these questions (which he could easily do if he just released the documents), we will not recognize him as the president, we will not recognize any legislation he signs as law, we will not view any orders he gives the military as binding, we will not view any judges he appoints or the decisions they make as anything other than bogus.

Obama is forcing the Country into a state of anarchy by his insistence on hiding key, essential documents. For this reason, he is the greatest threat to the state of the nation to ever hit the USA–worse than 911 and even than Pearl Harbor. He and he alone bears the guilt for this disaster. And NO, we will not “live with it”; this issue will NEVER die.
…………………………….

Yeah, you go do that.  Don’t recognize him as the president, don’t recognize any legislation he signs as law, don’t view any orders he gives the military as binding, don’t view any judges he appoints or the decisions they make as anything other than bogus.  Let’s see how far this takes you.

I recommend some plots of land in the mountains of Montana or the desert of Texas.  Get your food rations up, get your supplies, get ready…

I saw them set up at two locations last week, entreating passerbys to ask about Newton’s Fraudulent Credentials.  (Seen too by a few other people, putting them back into some Portland resident’s conciousness long enough to make a snide jab at Bill Sizemore.)  As a result of seeing them at two locations, I could verify for certain that that car was theirs.  And I surmise that the automobile was used back in the Carter Administration when the organization (led by the Youth Members’ forefathers) was hawking their “plan” to save the Detroit Auto Industry back then.  Which does dovetail to one of those random comments I saw posted to a “Hey!  Look Larouchies!  Yesterday’s version of Ron Paul / Ralph Nader / fill intheblank supporters” blog post.

“Don’t know how they’ll survive once their leader croaks, but they seem to be hanging on with all the tenancity and tenuousness of Castro’s Cuba.”  Or something like that.  I didn’t bother saving it, and I can’t relocate it in enough time to justify completing a search for it.

I was reading over some of the old — I guess we can call them”flame – wars”, though that suggests some form of a game I was never really interested in playing– with revenire, always having planned to go back and plaster together something into a file onto the sidebar — mostly by way of some observations from ex-Larouchies which pertain specifically to Wiesbedan (fewer of them than I remember… I myself offered relatively little of substance and can summise my favorite moment of his washes ashore as this exchange… Revenire:  Don’t ‘Um’ Me.  and Me: Um.  Ba de dum, be da bing, you’ve all been great!), but was generally struck by the ridiculousness someone so cock-sured on the viability of Larouche — there’s an odd paradox with a cult that you simultaneously want and think everyone is thinking about your man and nobody is.  Revenire did make a fairly interesting comment near the end of his last stay, to wit:

April 15, 2008:  you jumpers have been drive insane by the fact larouche has been right all along… and you have been wrong and his public record proves it
you have no public record, except your hearsay etc. from losers who could not stand the heat in the kitchen… cowards and fools, like rachel
duggan was a suicide and kronerg jumped… larouche is alive and doing quite well
you have tired old re-hashes of high times writers and mothers being used by people she has no clue about where is the new investigation into duggan?
THERE ISN’T ONE

Well, pooh.  There is now.  Or a start to one.  Somberly, it’s something worth noting more than “gloating”.  But does revenire’s statement count as one of those Larouchian forecasts?  Somewhere with the premise of Erica Duggan being “used” by former High Times writers on one hand, and Dick Cheney and the British Government on the other hand, she pushed it forward herself for the past five years.  I was going to simplify this quote, leaving what I highlighted in bold with a preceeding summary that goes [insults of various people, insult of Mrs. Duggan in the cloak of a sort of faux humanitarian sympathy — belated at that].  What fascinated me about revenire was upon his introduction, his interest was Jeremiah Duggan.  This was a little odd, as I’ve always felt I was just a little bit lax with the topic, always stating that legal issues notwithstanding the Organization was morally culpable for the death of Duggan — their best case on that regard scenario looking quite awful.  (Revenire also having a knack to disbelieve everything from the outside world.)

That “Justice for Jeremiah” conference was heavy on the anti-semitic angle.  Larouche is an esoteric enough topic that I have few foils to work with with differing thoughts on their activities, and that is why I once again have to go back once again to Alan Osler’s observations on watching the conference… and, I always come back to this because it really is a bizarre piece of commenting on his part… and Chip’s penis (link provided in previous postings, go down in this category).

Here’s a thought on why so many of there people in that room didn’t know what “antisemitism” means… […]

And “really anti – British”.  In traversing the Internet regarding Larouche, it is funny how I always come up against these things.  As though some neo-nazis on the furthest extreme of the “right” take that “code word” business seriously and see a sympathetic analyst for their position.  By accident, I suppose.*

The worst thing about this little shitfest was that the Duggans’s grief was hijacked. Wasn’t it supposed to be about reopening the investigation? But no one wanted to say “The police fabricated the evidence”, so were were left with 2hours of pure, undiluted bullshit.

“2hours of pure, undiluted bullshit”, and a re-opened investigation.  Which will either drag nowhere or gets somewhere.  And legal issues aside, the very least it will at the very least broadcast the organization’s culpability in something beyond a Simpsons punchline.

For what it’s worth, I thought about Larouche when I saw the headline London Times Reports British Tortured Obama’s Grandfather.  Good fodder for the Larouchian engine which insists the “British Empire” is out to assassinate our Presidents.  Sure enough, and skip to the end:

Lyndon LaRouche has recently stated that there is a battle royale around the Obama administration. Obama as a president and Obama as a candidate are two different things. As a candidate he was controlled by the British, by George Soros and others. But now he’s in the thrall of the institution of the presidency, which means the potentiality of dealing with what he is faced with is different, especially now, in the context of a new fourteenth century dark age.

Love that “Fourteenth Century Dark Age”.  No matter how bad things might get, an impossibly bleak outlook is made available for comparison’s sake.  Well, it puts him off of one crusade for a while… though, off I guess he’s off the video-game crusade and onto a Satanist kick.

* Mental note:  I need to compile a number of these sort of things.