I watched “The Year that Punk Broke”, a travelouge and concert video filmed by Sonic Youth of a 1991 European Summer tour which included Nirvana and a host of bands you remember kind of — Dinosaur Jr and any number of others.  I probably should not have, but I had my reasons.
Courtney Love made me cringe.

I made a sudden realization that I don’t especially like Nirvana.  Aside from their great panoply of hits, Cobain is just sort of atonal and obnoxious.  Whenever I have put Nevermind into the cd player, I’ve always programmed it to play about 6 of the tracks, which means that I think Nevermind is a great half of an album.
Depending on who you ask, either Nirvana or Pearl Jam is the one that is mentioned as having “changed everything”, shifted the grounds of rock music.  And one or the other tends to be named.  Indeed, it was a great affect:  one variety of corporate rock aping something slightly more authentic was replaced by a better brand of corporate rock aping something slightly more authentic.  Some good things were invariably lost in the changeover, but on the whole, we don’t miss the Warrants of the world much.

But I am left with a realization, years after the fact.  Turn on the radio, focus closely on the new artists of the “00”s.  Who sounds like Nirvana anymore?  The “Seattle Scene” faded away, Sub-Pop went bankrupt, Grunge is Dead.  Which leaves me with the question of what does everyone sound like anyways.  What album or band from the 1990s ended with the ultimate lasting influence Nirvana is said to have.

I don’t think Green Day’s brand of Mall Punk can be said to rule the roost.  Or that third generation ska of No Doubt and various watered down but inoffensively and joyful tuneful such that I heard on Top 40 radio in the late 1990s.

Actually everyone sounds something like Weezer.  Forget Nirvana.  Weezer changed the entire landscape of rock and roll.  Nothing was ever the same after Weezer came on the scene.  Come to think of it, I don’t remember where I was when I first saw that “Sounds Like Teen Spirit” video of that demented pep assembly.  I do remember first seeing the Weezer dance with the Fonze.
…….

Granted, this is a little old, but there is something telling about this National Journal Presidential horse-race rankings page.

Which is that it is completely wrong.

And wrong based on a sort of beltway-insider assumption of how that famed second debate worked out, and the dominate narrative the beltway-insider media took out and ran with.

Rudy Giuliani is placed neatly at number one, because “thrown a softball by Ron Paul, Guiliani hit a grand slam”.  Okay.  Noteworthy is that the rest of the entry on Giuliani dresses him down on how he’s not showing up terribly well in the polls for those first two states of Iowa and New Hampshire.  Actually his poll numbers have slid greatly.  Not that that is the final arbiter of these things, but seriously now, despite what some articles of late that have appeared in the New Republic and the Weekly Standard, the Republican Party’s politics have not gotten away from those cultural issues of Abortion and the like.  And it appears that Rudy’s choice to run full frontal forward as Pro-Choice, and really that would be what I myself would advise him to do — has pulled him down in the polls.  Thus his “grand slam” cannot possibly be a grand slam.  He “wins”, and he falters downward.

Mitt Romney is now supposedly the front runner.  Whoopie Kayack.  It is the conventional belt-way wisdom now, and this arbiter of conventional belt-way wisdom failed to lead the pace on that bit of conventional belt-way wisdom, leaving him at #3.  So the National Journal failed in their task of pegging these horse races.  Incidentally, surely we can all agree at this point that John McCain is #3, and perhaps even… #4.
My final note deriding this National Journal horse-race pegging concerns Ron Paul, left with that derisive note “Please quit emailing us.”  I don’t particularly care that the National Journal stuck him last — they can do what they want to.  It is questionable to immediately leave him behind Tommy Thompson and Jim Gilmore as a matter of course, which seems to be what the National Journal has decided to do.  But I do have to wonder — why the down arrow?  Certainly Ron Paul raised his profile somewhat with that debate.  Certainly he gained supporters.

If you flick over to the Democratic page, you see a bit of the same dynamic.  The positions for the Democrat seem to be in freeze-frame, but… why does it posit that John Edwards had a “difficult month”?  He leads the polls in Iowa.  I think I would go ahead and leave Chris Dodd there at #5, for the strange reasons that the National Journal have provided — and despite that “zero support in Iowa” incongruence which goes against everything that the National Journal seems to stand for.  But we see that beltway insider bias working with both Dodd and Biden up above Kucinich, and even at this point goddamned Mike Gravel.  It is all entirely arbitrary, but I can tell you who Kucinich’s supporters are and I cannot tell you who Dodd’s or Biden’s supporters are.  (Well, Dodd has Ned Lamont, but beyond that… ?)

Riding the bus, I had two thread topics running in my mind that I had intended on posting.  They are both momentarily steam-rolled away.
Headphones on, I was listening to Mike Malloy, formerly of Air America and formerly of something else before that, now with “NOVA M” radio and generally scheduled on radio stations that broadcast Air America programming.  It is a rebroadcast of a show run earlier in the year, one I probably never heard before.  It’s one of his “Youth Nights” programs, where he screens in and only has conversations with people between the ages of 13 and 17.  And so I hear a 13 year old call in about…

Her chat with a Lyndon Larouche supporter, generally hawking the new anti-Gore line, which had her a bit confused as it was next to the “Impeach Cheney” line.

None of which would be particularly noteworthy, and I would pass on it, except for the insanity that the “Lyndon Larouche supporter” was… 15.  And a High School drop out.  Because Larouche is the real education we need to save the world.

Fascinatingly, the 13 year old swerved through a discussion with the 15 year old high school drop-out LYMer, and, as she described it, the LYMer couldn’t really answer her questions on various political questions, up to and including what the heck Larouche’s program was, exactly.  The 13 year old spotted bullshit when she saw it.
Mike Malloy run through a lecture to the effect that one should be weary of people who advance a person — themselves — over any political goal.  And ended the call by saying that people who have acted as Larouche does, with the idea that He and He Alone Has all the Answers and Nobody else does — end up killing millions of people with that short jump to “And if you don’t fall in line with what I Know, then –“  Practical lessons on Larouche, Malloy informed the 13 year old caller that he served time in prison because of Credit Card fraud, stealing money.
And we jump to a commercial break. And I am left flabergasted on one matter.

High School drop out?  Huh???
I had intended on setting aside a couple quips from and concerning FACTNet postings for another day, and Hey!  Look!  A new thread!, but there is something I think is off — or missing the point — about the discussions on Larouche’s financing.  Actual Accounting ledgers of Expenses and Revenues are beside the point, in the paranoid view of the world, you have to be making credit advances to be discarded when you gain control.

Adolf Hitler.  Tax Dodger.  Do you see how that works?
It’s all very non-linear, if you will.

Here’s my rhetorical question: Is a new LYMer an expense or an asset?
……….

As an aside, I did a quick google search for “Mike Malloy” and “Larouche”.  If I am to believe the buzzards that swarmed around “Accuracy In the Media” and propagated out into the Internet, Mike Malloy — always dancing with conspiracy theories — was fired from Air America after having on a Larouchian guest, Webster Tarpley.  But it rings of spurious speculation.

ARRRGH!  Computer shut down after lovily crafting a beautiful post.  Second time within just a few days.  Okay… shorter and sweeter.

Monica Goodling’s testimony this past week?  Bizarre.  You already knew that.  She came out, and was a strange bubbly-headed figurine.  Yet, even within that bubbly-head exterior, she threw out plenty of incriminations.  Understand, it didn’t have the same impact as last week’s testimony from Comey — which was jar-dropping and of an order that Goodling’s typical political shenanigans cannot possibly match.

What should be immortalized is the grilling from the hands at Bobby Scott, which drew the headlines of “Crossed the Line” but also provided the straight ahead ammunition of clarifying “Rules.  Law.”  And again, no “Rules.  Law.”  “Rules.  Law.”

An interesting dichotomy Goodling did not want to mess around with.

The other explosive tidbit, which enforced her aggrivated parodic persona, came when she was asked what her qualifications were.  Her answer?  Student Body President.  (At Pat Robertson’s Regency Unveristy, naturally.)  Nuttily, when pressed for further qualifications, her second answer belied the truth behind the matter: yes, opposition research for the RNC.  This was the story of her testimony: she came out as an airhead, and said information that if you scratch away the presentation, is galling to say the least.

I begin to suspect that this slate article states the story behind the story well enough: she is crazy like a fox, and this was all an act.  I also suspect that what we saw was we get.  Either way it’s not a good scene.

From Ronald Reagan’s newly released diaries:

Tuesday, June 14, 1988: ‘Giuliani is talking of drawing up an indictment against Marcos. I think he’s crazy.'”

Interesting. We all expect the Republican candidates to all pose with the latest Reagan Diaries, but what I want to see is, when the Republican Primaries wind down and there are two or three candidates still in the race, assuming Giuliani is one of them, for one of the opposing candidates — whether that be Romney, probably not McCain, Fred Thompson, or the Huckabee — Brownback embargalo — to come out with a tv ad showing saintly Ronald Reagan and that quote, voice-over in dark intones “Ronald Reagan was not a Giuliani Man. Why should you be?”
Two points to whomever runs that ad.

(After I make a jab at one of those two recent slightly dazed Larouchites’ comments on re-entering college while “bringing the best of Larouche’s ideas with them”.)

I. “But Howie, didn’t you know that all the professors in the country have an anti-Lyn litmus test that’s part of their getting in to academia?”

One of the senior members once said this to me. The professoriat, you see, is deeply implicated in the system of thought control whereby the oligarchy runs history. The physicist and scientific community constitutes a “Babylonian priesthood” where silly practices like peer review and “blackboard mathematics” prevail. Paranoid thought is rampant in the organization, and not just with Lyn. On election night in ’04, when Kerry had won New Jersey or something the above-mentioned senior member said to me excitedly, “This is going to be seen as our victory!” Supposedly Lyn’s yutes yodeling outside the Democrat’s convention hall in Boston, had completely transformed Kerry and the Party. The ’04 convention has thus taken on the status of a sacred event in the organization’s mythos, where the vast power of the LYM was rolled out to such immense effect and Lyn became a “serious force” in the party. Equal parts delusion and toadying: Lyn has tried vigorously in the last few years to suck up to Bill Clinton and play for some pull in the Democratic Party. A lot of his recent initiatives can be explained by this. Also remember that it’s standard operating procedure to demonize and fearmonger: we must stop Judge Roberts and Alito from making us go Nazi and invade Poland. Continuous Demon Rollover is required, which has the normal effect of mobilizing the members to get out there and bring in some LPAC checks. If you fail, you are impotent. Quite a system… Of late the youth have shown their might by getting California’s and Massachusetts’ state Dem conventions to actually go on the record endorsing impeachment. Wow! I bet that was really tough. It’s interesting to try to forecast who might be the next demonic fiend.

II.  The Boston 2004 Democratic Convention is an important myth indeed.

This one-way romance was dashed quite recently, when Kerry said to a couple of LYMers at some public event, “LaRouche is nuts.” Ouch. It’s like when, back in 1988, then-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush said, in response to a question in Iowa or somewhere, “LaRouche? Isn’t he in jail yet?” Not then–but soon.

……………………

III.  Lyn has a new document in process, “The Rules of Survival” apparently, wherein it will doubtless be shown how indispensable Lyn is to the current strategic situation, and how he must be brought in to guide us forward if the world is not to be plunged in to the New Dark Age. Perhaps there are five hundred or a thousand previous papers treating of this theme. We hope this one is of the same illustrious quality as previous gems like the Dirichlet treatise. Maybe one of the youth could correct me if I’m in error, but I think the premise of that one was basically that the mathematician Dirichlet’s work proved how critical is the existence of the LYM.

Lyn’s editors maybe can’t heal his tortured, garbled unreadable prose anymore. In the 90’s his papers and books were much better. In the last couple of years even the published stuff has gotten increasingly unreadable. Where Lyn really shines though is in the unpublished briefing notes to the members. There we encounter really really horrible, slapdash junk, sentences so brutalized and syntax so tortured that you have to think he’s doing it on purpose. But the true adept/member/LYM leader/acolyte pores over it as the latest holy writ.

…………………….

IV.  Several things have happened to Lyn’s writings in recent years (even though I would say that everything he ever wrote had a tortured, artificial, and ignorant quality to it).
First, Lyn is definitely losing whatever tenuous grasp he once had on language (not to mention reality).
Second, he allows nothing to be edited or copyedited in the slightest degree.
Third, editors who used to sneak in editing changes have long since figured, who cares? So they let stand stuff that’s obviously crackers.
Fourth, the editorial staff is a skeleton crew, and no longer a very good one.
But, as charltonrom says, the tea-leaf readers will continue to find Lyn’s brew a heady potion.………………………..

I was thinking about something with Ron Paul, and his presence on the Internet. Understand, Ron Paul has moved to the top of the heap of Internet searches — look to the right-hand box at technorati, for instance. He dominates online polls.

And he is nowhere in the “real” polls. The news that the oddsmakers doubled his odds of becoming president reminds me of a promo I saw for this television network, seen called “Channel America” (the highlight of the network was this late-late night show of public domain cartoons) calling itself the “Fastest Growing Television Network in America”. Indeed. Ron Paul went from 200 to 1 odds to 100 odds on Sportsline.com. Which are inflated odds due to his libertarian views on gambling, and online gambling at that which attract (drum roll please) Online followers.

I find something striking here. Many things have changed in the long history of the Internet, and the Internet has expanded beyond its initial geek userbase of various misfits. But there is still a strange shift of focus outside the “mainstream” on the Internet which allows for Ron Paul’s online popularity. It’s not 1993 here, and yet… it is. If that makes any sense.

The Internet has opened up many things just out of mainstream currents — The Furry subculture, for instance. There is an intensity there for Ron Paul that does not exist for Mitt Romney that befits an Internet activist. To a lesser degree, and only because he was closer to the mainstream of his political party, this fit in with Howard Dean in 2004 as well.

Do you agree or disagree with Tajikistan President Emomalii Rahmon’s recent decisions to

(a) ban the ending “ic” to people’s names, which indeed forced Rahmon to change his name from Rahmonic.  This is an attempt to assert themselves from the shadow of Mother Russia.
(b) Ending elaborate end-of-school year parties

(c) limiting the number of people who can attend a wedding to 150 people

(d) limiting the number of people who can attend a funeral to 100 people.

(e) limiting the number of people who can attend a circumcision to 60 people.

There is a slippery slope argument to made here.  First you limit the number of people attending a circumcision , and the next thing you know you are cloning a sub-strata of humans for the purpose of harvesting organs.  Think about it.