The Administration, he said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells; emergency contraception; sex education; or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to water down a landmark report on second-hand smoke, he said.[…]

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Dr. Richard H. Carmona said Tuesday in testimony before a House committee. During his 2002 to 2006 stint as surgeon general, Carmona said he was also ordered to mention Bush at least three times on every page of his speeches.

There are news stories that just sort of fly by, so saturated are we in news that some relatively stark items just sort of fly by.  The basic problem with a frequently updated blog is that its dual duty as a report of important or quasi-important events and a ledger of commentary clash: Here is an important item that I have no particular comment to make which everyone else has.  Unless I happen to stumble onto some other piece out of the zeitgeist where the whole of the two pieces are greater than the sum of the parts.
A group of Christian protesters tried to shout down a Hindu clergyman who was invited to give the opening prayer during yesterday’s session of the Senate. Capitol Police say they arrested three people after they stood up and started yelling “this is an abomination” when guest chaplain Rajan Zed invited the Senate to join him in prayer.

The protesters’ concerns, according to the website of a Mississippi group that was trying to mobilize opposition to Zed’s appearance, were based on the fact that Hindus worship multiple Gods.

“It was a shocking event for all of us Christians,” the Rev. Flip Benham, head of Dallas-based Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, tells The Hill. “For all of these years we have honored the God of our Founding Fathers. It wasn’t a group of Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims that came here. It was Christians.”

The protesters, two men and a woman, face misdemeanor charges of disrupting Congress, according to the Associated Press. “We are Christians and patriots,” one of the men told a reporter before he was dragged out of the Senate gallery.

Benham issued a press release that criticizes Congress for allowing a Hindu chaplain to join them in prayer. “Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood. They stood on the Gospel of Jesus Christ!” he says.

I do not exactly know what to do with those protesters, but after a quick spell I realize that these two stories are indeed related.  Start with the political current that results in the demands for a Surgeon General to abandon stem cell research or sex eduation — and as the case is with the Surgeon General appointee under the microscope right now — that the Gay is an abomination — and then move to the more stirring similarity of their immediate demand.  Bush had that surgeon general mention Bush at least three times a page, the Invocation of Bush’s name was that important to float into the ether and enforce the word of George W Bush.  For the “Christian” “Patriots”, the invocation of Jesus’s name was of utmost importance, the reason they needed to attempt some feeble groundswell of opposition to the Hindu ecumenical prayer (of which nobody much anywhere could give a rat’s butt) to enforce the word of Jesus Christ.

Now I better understand Bush’s evangelical appeal.

Every so often, a new batch of material from the Nixon tapes is released.  And we get a chance to focus on suddenly relevant topics which would have slipped through unnoticed at a different moment, such as Nixon ruminating on Fred Thompson and his belief that he is “dumb as a rock” and probably outwitted by the Democratic half of that investigation looking into Watergate.

And then, it always seems, that the news media reports that the new tapes “reveals Nixon at his most crass”, which does not make sense to me unless each new tape release shows a crasser side than the last, which it doesn’t — it’s always about the same.

For instance, we now have Nixon balking at the idea of hiring a token “house Jew”– and determing that Leonard Garment was “the House Jew”.  This is shocking!  Who knew about Richard Nixon’s rampant anti-semitism?  Surely this hasn’t come out in the previous tape releases!

……………..

And then there’s this:

The documents span a wider period and include a memorandum that may intrigue students of Nixon’s character. In the document, written in December 1970 to H. R. Haldeman, a top aide, Nixon expresses both anger and pain that his aides have not been able to establish an image of him as a warm and caring person. He makes several suggestions about how this could be accomplished, warning frequently in the single-spaced 11-page document that it must appear that the examples of his warmth were discovered by others and not promoted by White House aides.

With regard to the “warmth business,” the memorandum says, it is important to emphasize to anyone who may write an article that the president “does not brag about all the good things he does for people.”

Any number of professional prostitutes have gone on record to the effect that their weirdest clients — the ones who need to get dressed up in chicken suits, and so forth — are prominent people in politics.

Probably not a Pinkwater passage he would ever figure would be quoted in much of any context, but what are you going to do?  It is stuff like that that explains why that particular book’s has been allowed to lapse into “out of print” status, FSR not letting it into the 5 Novels compendium.  But I am sure somebody else somewhere made that point just as succinctly on paper, that just happens to be the most immediate source for a quotation like that I have available.  (I would think Kurt Vonnegut would have had to have written as much.)
But the word on the street is that David Vitter, Senator from the great state of Louisiana, wore diapers during his stays to one of two brothels.
I wonder what is wrong with me that an ad campaign which makes prominent use of a politician’s family repels me, while apparently not repelling significant proportion of the (ever dwindling) electorate.   But then again, I live in a state where a candidate that uses the phrase “[State of Origin] Values” does not wash — a phenomenon most common below the Mason Dixon, but also common throughout the midwest.  Oh, they’ll use their family, which is interesting because it flies in the face of the rule that in any legal proceeding a family member is not considered a reliable character witness — for obvious reasons — so why should I pay attention to this man’s goddanged children?
The New Orleans Madam has gone on record that David Vitter was a great client, treated his sex workers well, and it would be a shame if the electorate of Louisiana puts this against him.  But the New Orleans Madam should not be speaking and broaching the privacy of her clients.  She doesn’t even have the reason the DC Madam did so — which was an attempt at blackmail to stop the legal proceedings against her — release the records to show up powerful individuals.  (And shorten Larry Flynt’s investigative process, as the case turns out to be.)

I wish there were a magic wand that could be waved with this phone number cache, which would automatically remove all the numbers of figures out of public eye, and those figures in the public eye who make no political hay out of “Family Values”.

One more thing: a primary opponent apparently made the claim that Vitter had relations with a prostitute.  It was dismissed as a slur.  I think Vitter should resign and be replaced in the interim by that primary opponent of his (Treen, I guess his name was), who — what do you know — was basically correct.  (Or, reading that article, his surrogate was.)

To make a very narrow point about Michael Moore…

… which has nothing to do with the accuracy or intellectual honesty of his politics and work…

I hear reference to a “standing offer” of 50,000 dollars to anyone who can find an inaccurate statement in Fahrenheit 9/11.  And I hear chest-thumping that nobody has claimed it…

…as though that means anything.

As a suggestion of why this is meaningless, I invite you to look over Kent Hovind, “Dr. Dino”, Creationist Scientist Extraordinaire, and his $250,000 (upped from $100,000!) for any evidence supporting Evolution.  Lo and behold, nobody has managed to get past Hovind’s committee of experts looking at the submissions to win the claim and take home the quarter of a million dollars.

And, yes, a few Fundamentalist Christians have trumpeted this fact in playing up the veracity of “Dr. Dino”.

I have never seen Fahrenheit 9/11.  I suspect it’s mostly true, and I assume our politics align closely enough.  I have seen and heard enough to know a couple areas of disagreement, largely in terms of what different events signify.  But this is all irrelevant.  My point is simply that nobody should be blathering on with this particular Michael Moore stunt, and if you do so I will wince and shake my head.

………………………….

The first few paragraphs of the cover feature on Moore in the latest issue of the Nation are as good a summation of the contours of Moore the Personality as I have seen.

I note that the idea that Ron Paul might pull of a shocker in New Hampshire and/or Iowa is becoming one of those conventional unconventional wisdom.  Joe Scarborough has come out in saying “He is going to shock a lot of people in New Hampshire” — a bold enough prediction, and thus this conventional unconventional wisdom has wormed its way into establishment types (Cable mcnews?).  I will keep half an eye open to see if this bit of conventional unconventional wisdom floats forward from here.
It’s a prediction for people who want to be cleverer than thou, and it will either make the prognosticator of such an idea come across as absolutely brilliant, or will lead them to be complete dunderheads in a “What the Heck were they thinking” way.  You will note, if you go back to “You Read it Here Third”, that I set myself up to be truly brilliant in the case of such a thing happening, with the “no big deal” if he stumbles to that small percentage point slumber.

I do not know what these things will get him.  Perhaps he will be able to ride his way to the end of the debate season (if those in charge of the debates can get back to stomaching the idea of including him) as did some moderately impressive third place showing for Alan Keyes allowed him in 2000.

In the realm of the vaunted National Journal rankings  — I think I would insert Paul as #5 — behind the fledgling John McCain, who — embarrassingly enough has raised less money than Paul and embarrassingly enough has a much higher burn rate– can still trout out the line on where Kerry and Clinton were at this point in the campaign, roughly stumbling just as he is.  But even that is a tough call.  As for the figures National Journal has stuck between the “Rudy McRomnpson” beast and our erstwhile buddy Ron Paul — the knock on Ron Paul, particularly from National Journal, is that his support is “Internet Support”.  I suppose maybe and perhaps, but granted that, but that’s more than can be said for those four others.

………………..

One more note to Ron Paul supporters: I hate to say this, but as I see still floating out in cyberspace the mean-spirited list comparing Paul supporters to Larouche supporters, and I see the news about Ron Paul’s fund-raising prowess: in the 2004 race at a comparative time, Lyndon Larouche either lead the field or was second — right behind Dean — I do not quite remember and will have to look it up.  (It’s what you get when all of your supporters send you the $2000 maximum, dedicated to you as a God-like being.)  It’s an interesting enough dynamic, and probably only worthy of the loosest of loose parallels — dedication in terms of ultimately a minority.

Scott McLemme wrote something. And then he wrote some more things.

A different phrase from that review of Dialectical Economics stayed with McLemme than stayed with me. So it is “one man party” — of which the world is out of step — where I keep using from that review “‘Me for Dictator’ type”. Either one, a remarkable insight from a very puzzled reviewer who did not quite know the nature of what he was reading.

I get the feeling things are off course in Larouche-land right about now. On Sunday, I sat down, looked at the latest posts on FACTNet, and thought the story of Susan Bowen — an otherwise anonymous “wacky” stray person featured in a photograph posted at flickr– was worth passing on. I am very much tempted to just cut and paste that part of the entry and stick it to that flickr page (though I guess I would have to register with flickr first)– it is a sort of pause that humanizes some individuals one otherwise dismisses out of hand as sort of autotrons, and autotrons with no back story — out of place and out of time.
As I was getting ready to log off, I refreshed the factnet page, and read that daily briefing. And I knew immediately I had to repost it here. Later, Jeff Steinberg provided more comments. It strikes me as a rather significant item on where Larouche and his “movement” is at this precise moment in time.
Lyndon Larouche is sweating hard right about now. Now, I take Larouche’s personality to desire crises more than anything, so it may well be for the best for his perverse sense of pleasure. The briefing came from maybe a week he posted a barrage of materials linking everything and everyone to the BEA Scandal, and hyped the BEA Scandal to world historic impressions. What is the BEA Scandal? Well, there are non-Larouche news sources that have covered it– it appears to be a blip. It’s a minor British government scandal, and that is about all I have to say about it. But, I took this frenzied assault to be an assault on the senses of the Larouche faithful — crisis mongering to whip them into lock-step behind a mission — a clouding of the mind. I have come to learn — and came to learn rather quickly– that this a tactic that Larouche has employed for the past three decades whenever he is facing outside scrutiny and/or inner turmoil from within his organization. (Or, in one infamous case — and a supposed origin of where Larouche turned completely bonkers and swerved his organization off course, but I have my doubts about such an analysis– in his personal life.)
Dissension, or at the least weariness, within the ranks to be exploited for generational-conflict, naturally.

So he brow-beats the “Baby-boomers”, ostensibly for their refusal to recognize the Historically important webcast on BEA. It’s part of a pattern from these baby-boomers who dared to be less than infused at his calls of crisis leading up to, and probably leading right past, his Y2K warnings of imminent stock market collapse — which I guess manifested in what any sane person would accept as standard boom and bust cycles of the Tech Stock bubble bursting.

But really, their mind is set more toward the haunting death of Ken Kronberg, or if it works toward the economic situation — the current economic situation of Larouche, Inc — which can’t print anything anymore. (I would say that I would like to get a copy of the transcript for that “historic webcast” in the next Larouche pamphlet, but dagnabit — the “Internet Strategy” gets in the way of hard copies — printed by PMR?) Larouche cannot acknowledge this, so he goes back forth to their supposed perfidy in dismissing some of his predictions.

The baby-boomers’ body language are all wrong? I will have to take his word for it. And I will have to suggest that this is a good sign. I ought to revisit that mildly ponderous, and probably misfiring in terms of actualities, post of mine “How to Dissolve a Cult”.
I do not know from Jeff Steinberg. I would not be able to spot him in a line-up, but if everyone has come to the conclusion that he is currently setting himself up for the intermediate future of Larouche’s passing, where he will pick up some pieces — old and new — and carry on with a Steinberg-ian cult, all I can say is that that fits Oscam’s Razor in terms of reading his response. Tied to the Larouche party line, but needing to find where he can soothe the needs of tired and worn out baby-boomers, he offers a couch to lie down for psychiatric sessions with Gerry Rose.

I often wonder how some things read to the non-initiated. I throw out weird references. 1974!, I post, as though that could possibly strike anybody as meaning anything, and as though I can offer up personal remembrances from several years before I was born. Well, there is a history of some less than stellar psychiatrics in the organization, and it doesn’t come out well. Reportedly there was an exodus of membership right about then. As there ought be right about now — good and bad news for Mr. Larouche — anyone fleeing the ship can be accepted in true-ex-Larouche fashion as being simps who “Didn’t Get It” and didn’t have the stomach for Changing the World.

History repeats itself.   I can’t say that in terms of Larouche that “it repeats as farce” because it was farce the first time it happened.