I have had sort of half an eye out toward news reports relating to the disturbing formation of a consolidated “Youth Movement” around Vladmir Putin. This blogger brings me to this.
To Nashi, young people are neither the lost generation of the turbulent 1990s nor the soulless consumerists of Generation P (for Pepsi) imagined by the writer Viktor Pelevin in 2000. They are, as Nashi’s own glossy literature says, “Putin’s Generation.”

“Why Putin’s generation?” Nashi’s national spokeswoman, Anastasia Suslova, asked at the group’s headquarters. “It is because Putin has qualitatively changed Russia. He brought stability and the opportunity for modernization and development of the country.” […]

Nashi’s platform is defined by its unwavering devotion to Putin and by the intensity of its hostility toward his critics, including his former prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, the former chess champion Garry Kasparov and a nationalist writer, Eduard Limonov. Nashi’s members denounce the opposition leaders as fascists with a fervor that can be disquieting.

One of Kuliyeva’s applicants to Nashi’s summer camp – two weeks of sports and ideological lessons beside Lake Seliger outside Moscow – noted that in Russian the first two letters of each man’s name spelled out the past tense of the verb to defecate.

[…] Although Kremlin officials have tried to portray the groups as independent players, Nashi and the others owe their financing and political support to their status as creations of Putin’s administration. They are allowed to hold marches, while demonstrations by the opposition are prohibited or curtailed. Their activities are covered favorably on state television, while the opposition’s are disparaged or ignored.

More ominously, opponents say, Nashi has conducted paramilitary training in preparation for challenging those who take to the streets to protest the Kremlin. Ilya Yashin, the leader of the youth wing of Yabloko, the liberal political party, said the goal was “direct intimidation of opposition activists,” citing an attack attributed to Nashi supporters against the headquarters of the banned National Bolshevik Party, led by Limonov.

No. I’ve got nothing.

I admit to being somewhat nonplussed that Senator David Vitter of Louisiana was uncovered on that “DC Madam’s List”.  There are times when I do not really know how to access American politics, and am never quite sure if the legions of “Family Value” voters who pumped Vitter into office really believed Vitter with some of his rhetoric on the sanctity of marriage, more importantly the sanctity of his marriage.  Exposed for seeking the services of a prostitute, he gets around to stating that he apologized to God twice and to his wife, and God accepted the apology twice and his wife did so as well.  And I don’t know if I care.  I suppose a big part of his constituents should by dent of their professed values, but I don’t know if they truly care either.
But then, this quote is tossed out at us from his wife from the era of Bill Clinton and Bill Livingston (whose seat he won after Livingston’s extra-marital affair torpoeded his credibility in his anoitation of Speaker of the House leading into the Impeachment of Bill Clinton over his extra-marital affair), spoken by his wife:

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary.  If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

Hell-O!

I would say that “That’s what they all say”, but I don’t know that to be the case.  It is the type of bridge one crosses when they must, and all plans and statements of what one would do in her situation end up meaning nothing, for good or ill, when confronted with the situation in realities as opposed to hypotheticals.

The DC Madam and Larry Flynt shall be providing us with much gutter-level amusement to our political class, and that’s about the extent of observation.

If you would like to shift through the numbers to attach them with Senators, Congress-critters, high level lobbyists, or white house officials — well, you already have the website if you are so dedicated.

I saw a bumper sticker which read:

“Support the Troops
Find the War”

The message confused me.  Until I realized that the bumper sticker was cut off at the bottom as the window bent out of site.  It would read “End the War”.  Still, “Find the War” brings with it a bit more unease, which may be something someone prone to use bumper stickers may want.
I regularly see a particular car with this other bumper sticker, which is interesting enough sitting next to another bumper sticker.  The bumper stickers are from the Ron Saxton campaign for governor in 2006 in his unsuccessful campaign against incumbent Ted Kulongoski.  So we have one saying “Where’s Ted?” and another with the “Ron Saxton for Governor” or something to that effect.  I really want to tap the shoulder of whoever owns this car and reply “Ted is in the Governor’s Mansion.  Now, where’s Ron?”

You know, I never did hear a fairly obvious observation when Vladimir Putin came for a visit with the Bushes, our current president and his parents, last week.

It is a meeting of the CIA and the KGB.

And there is something akin to post Civil War get-togethers with Union and Confederate generals, something that some cynical figures (Frederick Douglas) looked askew at and saw something amiss.

Oh, sure, George Wallace Bush was there too. But he would be the equivalent of the child who just graduated from the kids’ card-table and now has the opportunity to listen in to the grown-ups…

… the KGB and the CIA.

Actually, for an interesting observation of American standing in the world and what it is motivated to do. During his presidency, Jimmy Carter visited Poland, talked with Polish leaders, and then made the cursory press conference where his words on wanting to “learn about the Poles’ desire for freedom” was misinterpreted to wanting to learn about their “Carnal Lust”.  Bush can’t even really attempt that soft-sell of demanding to learn about the peoples of different nations’ carnal lust these days.  The Chinese included, the Russians included. Too many market openings.  (Meanwhile, we do the Hard Sell to learn about people’s Carnal Lust in, say, Iraq.)

Somebody at redstate.com linked to the entry about the Ron Paul — Rudy Giuliani debate skiffadle. It was probably not a “front pager”, and it was a quick hit of a few links, not deeply dissecting any of the three blog posts, with the title “Far Left Self Parody”.

Which is within anybody’s purview.

Robert Schrank wrote a good book about life in the “Far Left” — Wasn’t That A Time? He shifted away from his dogmatic past at some point in time, no longer a Communist.
Another interesting book about life in the “Far Left”: The Prophet’s Child, which ends up describing a mess of sectionalism as groups of a few dozen peoples argue over which of them is the rightful heir to the intellectual movement of Trotsky.

In a gray areas between a line dissecting “Left” and petty liberal is I.F. Stone. In a sense, the definition depended on who was his foil: if confronting Adlai Stevenson and the Democratic Party hierarchy — LEFT; if having to argue against 1960s Student Radicals besieging an anti Vietnam war Senator — Liberal.
Our language is bastardized a bit, and I am forced to work this way forward with the divisions we have been handed. There are two types of Americans, you see, and we proceed accordingly.
Then there’s the opening salvo to a quasi-defense of the Scooter Libby commutation:

Like all good liberals you’re a day late and a dollar short.

To his credit, he swerved off the script and didn’t land at Marc Rich. But his focus might as well run toward a pissing match between the virtues of Clinton’s pardons of an assortment of unknown convicts and Bush’s pardon of a bootlegger, which almost would be a refreshing change of pace.

But he loses ground at sentence #1. “Like all good liberal”.

Save that line for when public approval is not with liberals. Polling date from American Research Group: Democrats: 76 percent disapprove; 13 percent approve. Independents: 80 percent disapprove; 19 percent approve. Republicans: 47 percent disapprove, 50 percent disapprove.

I have evolved my response of “BUT Clinton” with the retort of referring to him as the “17th Greatest President in American History,” which is as much a response regarding one of those dregs of the two party system that I was wandering around on with that post on Libby. I can quite easily thread that needle of why Bush’s commutation — in lieu of what will be the 11th hour pardon — aggravates me where I have no strong interest in the pardon of Marc Rich (Or Eisenhower’s record thousand pardons, for that matter) — which is… you know… what lies at the center of the periphery journey out toward the investigations that lead to the obstruction of justice verdict on Scooter Libby… um… THE IRAQ WAR.

… currently enjoying the approval of probably the same percentage as the approval for Libby’s commutation… and eventual 11th hour pardon (and there will be plenty of Marc Rich types I will have no choice but to shrug at lest I feel the wrath of cries of HYPOCRISY for not treating it the same manner as the 17th Greatest President in American History).

#1: What can I possibly say?  Am I to infer that the cast of Star Trek: Voyager was a group of sex crazed maniacs?

#2:  It dawns on me to wonder: did the “European Leadership” quit, were they fired, “You can’t fire me — I quit”, “You can’t quit — You’re fired” or…?  Tangled webs.
#3:  Everybody has a story.  The story of the woman photographed here — who did not a’know who the heck Patrick Fitzgerald was, something I assure you anyone at, say, a moveon.org meeting trying to figure out how to impeach Cheney would know.
The person at the card table shrine may be a long time member named Susan Bowen according to people who have viewed the picture. Sue was recuited more than 30 years ago to the LC. This picture looks like it was taken in Chicago. In the briefing it is reoprted that a “flying squad” was sent from Detroit to reopen that city for money and bodies. Chicago used to be a big deal for us and was run by a couple named Cheila and Terry Jones. [few paragraphs all very interesting, and describes the cultural surroundings of Susan Bowen.]

Susan Bowen I would guess is over 50 years of age by now. She went from being a field hand to a phone team fundraiser for many years. Susan’s husband is a big guy named Bob Bowen who now runs the Detroit LYM. Since he too is a boomer, that is only a temporary title in the cult. One of the worst comboa a married couple could have is being a “power couple” where the guy is a local or regionla leader and the wife is a fundraiser. For some strange reason, men in the LC prove how good they are by how much money their wives raise. I should have paid attention in those early Beyond Psych classes to figure that out. If your wife did not make the bucks, then the local NCs would go after the spouse, who in turn would go after their wife when they got home. This is on top of a very late night meeting with the local NC with the female fundraiser about how her blocking in raising money may casue Lyn to get assasinated and humanity wiped out. By the time this all ended, a woman like Susan may be finally getting to sleep at 3 AM and have to get up the next day for another 9 AM to 11 PM fundraising gig.
No none has mentioned anything which Susan did which can be construed as abusive. I have a soft spot for her predicament as I was reminded of a special meeting she may have been at in 1981 or there abouts. This was a special meeting Lyn had with the local field membership in the NYC/NJ region.
It was held at Lyn’s townhouse on Sutton Place, a few rows down from E 58th street. The locals were all being starved and money was all being sent to the National office . The talk was about the upcoming campaign by Lyn and one exchange always sticks out by members who were there. After Lyn came down stairs he rambled on about how important the field work and fundraising is by the regions. All sorts of intitiatives were announced and how we running the globe. At the end of this, one member asked if this means that most people (including the person asking) were ever going to stop being at card table shrines. Lyn responded that of course you will because that is how we change history. A few people looked at each other with a puzzling look while trying to show a good face. Many people who were there eventually left, except for Susan Bowen.
So here we are, a QUARTER CENTURY later, seeing a Susan Bowen at a card table shrine on a Chicago street.  […]
Looking at that picture of Susan Bowen, I wonder if she ever thinks about that one morning on New York’s fashionable Sutton Place where Lyn finally told her the truth about her life?

Many people also wonder if Susan Bowen ever wondered how Lyn could testify under oath in his trial that he has no idea of where the money for the town house, armed guards, food, utilities , transport, clothes and other expenses came from? This truly is a Bizarro moment for Susan Bowen as she and others were patted down and searched before being allowed to enter Lyn’s classy townhouse. Lyn appears in front of her and says that she and others have to raise the money and work those phones and card table shrines even harder. One of the phrases Lyn liked to use was that because of all of the assassination threats against him, he was a prisoner in the townhouse and only left for travel. Each night the NEC came by for a NEC meeting which included the daily income totals . The cult’s expenses and budget was discussed nightly and Lyn has the final word.
Yet, he claims to not know how he got to Sutton Place , the Penthouse, the Riverdale condo, Ashburn or Club Ibykus, or how how the money came about when he was prosecuted for tax fraud. Most people would call those addresses pretty expensive places to live. During the trials we called them safe houses and then later said they were open to the whole LC to merrily wander through and park you butt on the sofa when you felt like it.
A QUARTER CENTURY later, Susan Bowen is parking her butt at a card table shrine, just like Lyn forecasted. Then again, based on the people who tell me that she was a regular at being browbeaten by the leadership, maybe it is more peaceful outside for her.

#3A: From the Harvard Crimson, 1984:

Three members of a radical political group were evicted from a University of Pennsylvania classroom after calling economics professor Lawrence Klein a Nazi and accusing him of promoting genocide.
“This man’s model is Adolf Hitler!” cried one of the three supporters of the Lyndon LaRouche presidential campaign who disrupted the class.
“This is an outrage–a Nazi on campus. He is currently plotting the destruction of Israel. This man is an anti-Semitic genocidal butcher,” he added.
Students in the class were not amused. “How can you come here and call him a Nazi? He’s teaching an introductory economics class,” said one of the students to the demonstrators’ claim.
Klein said, “I insist that you are a bunch of screwballs and will please get out.”
According to LaRouche supporter Susan Bowen, Klein served as an advisor to the Monterrey business-financier group which she claims was responsible for destroying the Mexican economy by forcing the country to cease government industrial projects and social services.
Bowen and another group of LaRouche Campaign members demonstrated outside the building where the class was held, toting signs reading. “Stop Klein’s Racist Nazi Genocide” and “Feed Africa.”
#4: Regarding Dianne Bettag, a quick google search shows sometime after popping up here, she popped up there with, oh-so-importantly “Out in the Streets Organizing” (uh?):

We don’t just expose, we’re out in the streets of the nation organizing to destroy Gore, so that the Democratic party will not be distracted from impeaching or otherwise giving the boot to first Cheney and then Bush… so that the nation can ally itself with Russian, China and India in creating a new monetary system modelled on the old Bretton Woods system, to develop industry, water, energy, agriculture and transportation projects all over the world. […] Gore with his bs on Global Warming, profiling the party to react on that issue instead of taking care of the collapsing economy a la their FDR tradition…

The response I find amusing, but is unrelated…

I visit the LaRouche site though LaRouche should forus more on Huey Long style Democrats than that FDR who sold us out by letting Prescott Bush and the Boys remain at liberty on American soil.

Actually there is an odd contingent of Huey Long supporters out there, I have noticed.  But then again he modeled his corruption after a previous Louisiana governor, and also had a bit more windfall to the poorest.  FDR’s slide from bad to good came with his change from Marxist to erstwhile Democrat, but what I have always found interesting is that at all stages of his game, Harry Truman gets to remain an Enemy.  I think of Harry Truman somehow as akin to Einstein’s old “Cosmological Constant”, at least in terms of Larouche’s jabs at contemporary American politics.  (Later referred to by Einstein as his biggest mistake, wasted years and years working with something that he determined to be an artificial artifact.)  Interesting to note, Einstein is now on Larouche’s “Good list”, which is a very swift whip-lash.
#5:  Because the world is demanding more internal briefings from Larouche?
MESSAGE FOR AM BRIEFING
FROM LYNDON LAROUCHE

As our own experience of the results of such cases has shown us, such forms of hysterical denial of reality can be deadly.

Such types of reactions are almost always associated with certain clinically significant kinds of hysterics in manner of speech, facial expressions, and “body language” generally. These usually
have forms of body-language and related expressions we would associate with efforts to “shout down” anything which frightens the victim of such pathological incidents. Sometimes, literal
shouting occurs; but, as we know from experience, there are other varieties of this, such the kind of bare-faced lying which Hartmut Cramer showed in his broadcast lie in defense of Uwe’s
complicity with Fernando Quijano, in resigning from his post of treasurer. The case of the not-always-candid, money-grabbing Uwe Friesecke’s essentially habitual practice of such bare-faced lying, is also notable as among clinically relevant typical expressions of witting lying as an habituated form of denial of obvious reality.

The important thing is: never capitulate to such forms of denial. Do it compassionately: “I am sorry to learn that you are too frightened to face reality in this matter. We can discuss this
later, when you have thought over the reasons for your denial of this reality.”

Somewhere or other, the matter of John Kerry’s Skull and Bones involvement came up.  Specifically, the annoying clinging to the rule of Skull and Bones that thou shall never say a word about it — Bush and Kerry both belonged to a secret society that they refused to talk about.

So Kerry sat there on Meet the Press, and did this.

That tight-lipped “Can’t talk about it”, followed by a moment of awkward silence as it went on, and then the awkward shift of topic with “I’ll tell you what’s not a secret” to the cursory jab at Bush.
It was a disorienting moment, and at a certain moment I wonder if a margin of Kerry’s defeat could not have been made up if he hadn’t done this.  The appropriate answer is pretty easy to conjure up, to the effect of: “It was a good experience in college, met lots of friends, had a lot of good times, good memories.  And, yes, a few of the traditions  were sort of silly.”

BANG!  A percentage point and a half the queasy feeling one gets in staring at two candidates who seem to be in a perpetual inside-joke that they refuse to let go, and continue on with when in Powerful Places.  (Bush pulled the same thing on Meet the Press.)  KERRY WINS!
But then again, perhaps the all powerful Skull and Bones hierarchy would have destroyed him right then and there.

It is in seeing the image of this poster that one understands the purpose of that “Poochie” episode of The Simpsons.

No baggy pants?

I read somewhere an explanation for the two recent live-action CGI-enfused Garfield movies.  The CGI Garfield movies were specifically designed to do only so-so in the box office and avoid any major buzz, the better to make money without saturating the public so that Jon Davis and his Paws Inc. company can continue making money well into the future with Garfield.

I do not know what Alvin and the Chipmunks, surely in the same genre, is supposed to be doing.  In terms of box office power and nostalgia tweaking, I would think that it falls a bit short of the new Transformers movie.  (Incidentally, I hear that you are probably better off watching the 1986 cartoon movie.)

Curiously, the wikipedia article on Alvin and the Chipmunks has not been updated to include a decent explication of the nature of the Chipmunks awkward update.

Fox 2000 Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox Animation and Bagdasarian Productions announced a live-action/CGI adaptation of the original 1960’s series, though no information has been released since the project was announced. It is unknown if production has stalled due to complications arising from the aforementioned contractual debacle, but as of yet it has not been officially cancelled. The project is now in pre-production and is set to open December 14th, 2007.  But it does inadvertedly offer a point of departure to arrive at their peculiar updating.

In 2006, Bagdasarian Productions sued the creator of “Chipmunkz Gangsta Rap”, a parody featured on Newgrounds. The lawsuit is still in process. Also, The Chipmunk Adventure was released on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment, then later Trick or Treason, A Chipmunk Christmas: 25th Anniversary and A Chipmunk Valentine. The Chipmunks Go To The Movies was released on May 22, 2007.

As of January 2007, Fox 2000 Pictures has greenlighted the live-action/CGI film of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Tim Hill, the director of Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, is in talks to direct the movie. Actor Jason Lee has been signed to play Dave Seville.^[1] The movie poster was released July 3rd, 2007. The movie will be released on December 14th, 2007.

This is a decent point on how one would look to, if forced at gun-point, make these “hip” changes to the Chipmunk characters.
Simon was supposed to be the nerd! They could have made a tall, slender, hipster chipmunk that would have had dork girls swooning! Instead, they’ve given us DJ Jazzy Sizz-imon.

No.  Really.  Geek Chic.  A stylish hacker type.  Was there anyone young enough to be able to come up with during those committee discussions?

If you go down on that “best week ever” site, you will see references to this destroying childhood memories, and teases on what one might do to Strawberry Shortcake.  I cannot say that I have any particular fondness for Alvin and the Chipmunks — I am waiting for a full scale Alf revival — something better than that mini-revival of a few years back — but I will note that the movie has the effect of raping two generations’ childhoods — it being a product from the late 1950s / early 1960s — and that rehashed cartoon.

Meanwhile, I can’t imagine any child of the current generation doing much with the movie — its hipness is dated, after all, read all the references to Run DMC — peculiarly enough dated right to the middle of their Saturday Morning cartoon show.

… Poochie?

I think it’s a common idea to play the role of Rip Van Winkle — to, say, be frozen for a hundred years, or thereabouts (give 80 years and take a thousand), and when thawed be able to look around, assimilate a number of things, get a feeling for how the world around you has changed, see what concerns from your age have proven to be just silly and on, and then to do that again.

In the Year 2525 was appropriately enough the #1 song during the summer of the first Moon Walking, though probably a lousy song, and it commits a sort of deus ex machina of shifting from 6565 to 7510 — seemingly because they ran out of rhymes for “Five”. I suppose the thoughts that “some of those things have come to pass a heck of a lot quicker than those thousand year intervals” falls by my wayside and is replaced with that thought of words with the “I” sound that Zager and Evans could have continued to use.

I once turned in a bad “C” paper in a class concerned with issues of Bioethics, but really with a perimeter beyond that, where I had difficulty expressing a number of fairly accepted conclusions. I do not quite know how to express a few gut feelings, which follow along the lines that we are going to find out that we are asking a whole bunch of wrong and meaningless questions, which in terms of the class seemed like a cop out, non-engagement, and stubbornness of allowing information into a set mind.

But look down the inventions offered to us in the past at the Paleo-Future blog, realize that such artifacts animated our past, and assimilate the disconnect into any discussion of Where Something Will Take Us.

So I quietly dispute something, a graph for which I cannot remember the name, which exponentially propels technological growth forward at a rapidly exponential rate — suggesting that for thousands of years, everything remained static and sedate, but in today’s world of hustle and bustle… I suspect adding to this affliction is a study in faulty perspective I can simplify with how one might compile a “Best of the 70s” record of pop music against… what would you do for the entire eighteenth century?  (Or… List the history of innovations of the Computer, and it’ll plop forward with multitude items in latter years, most of which be clearly not worth listing when we get 20 years forward.)
… From the vantage point of 10,000 years, we will be seen to be re-assimilating a lot of old technologies, and probably just as well re-jiggling the Wheel. The I-Phone is not a new invention, having little that was not there before. The Internet is a composite of old technologies.

Sorting through our current realms of fears of still far-out impositions of our doomed species: the fear of jiggering the dna of humans in utero and ending up with two classes of humans — natural and biological wunderkinds, I suspect the “Naturals” would hold up because the nature of human progress is as much artistic and scientific.

How about if Mike Gravel walks the path, comes to a fork in the road, and takes the path less traveled?

Likewise, Mike Gravel could avoid walking in the middle of the road?

OR He could take the high road while the other candidates are taking the low road and he will get to Scotland before them?

Maybe Mike Gravel could hit the bullseye with his bow and arrow, and we can just be invited to stare at the target for a couple of minutes?

What if Mike Gravel puts a stick of gum in his mouth, and then walks as he is chewing gum, proving that he can walk and chew gum at the same time?

Perhaps Mike Gravel could be in a room full of a dozen clocks — all with different times on them, and he could walk around and coordinate all of the clocks to what we presume is the correct time, but at any rate the same time?

Mike Gravel could point up to a flying bird?

He is standing in a barn, where he watches the eggs in a hen’s nest crack, and then he counts the chickens AFTER they hatch!

The list is endless.