I keep half a thought in reading King’s book on what I could drag out onto this blog.  It seems most of what I’d want to settle from his book onto here, for … oh… Chris?  … I’ve already done and dealt with, independent of goddamned or godblessed Dennis King.  But some things pop out, the mainstream media of which I had relied on was not paying attention to some things, some things that pop out in Larouchian discourse today.  Witness:
Item #1:  an encounter I recently had trying to cross Commonwealth Avenue. Somebody (who looked and sounded like a German exchange student) approached me and said, “What are your plans for the development of the solar system in the next fifty years?”

Hans wanted to know why I didn’t have plans to develop the solar system.
I tried to explain that with the time and distance involved, it wasn’t practical, and that more importantly, I didn’t particularly care about developing the solar system.
Hans wanted to put 200 billion people on Mars. Then he started talking about how modern science was a conspiracy against human progress. Then he asked why I hadn’t read the complete works of Kepler. Then he talked about Bush and the Right-Wing Conspiracy. I think all my professors were in the conspiracy as well.

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Item #2:   One of those fascinating items from our history is Operation Paperclip.  It is something worthy of speculative and uneasy conspiratorial fodder.  The United States and the Soviet Union inarguarted the Cold War by scooping up Nazi scientists, and employing them in our military industrial complexes.  Cheekily, we can credit the advantage the Soviets had over the Americans in the early Space Race with the fact that they happened to have nabbed better Nazis than we did.

The uneasy conspiratorial speculation runs along the lines of — to what degree did they infect their host nations with their nazi ideologies?  If I were thinking a bit more darkly, I would contemplate that the nazis had a sort of alliance across the two spheres of influence, and continued to plot and proceed plotting with their dreams of the 1,000 Year Reich.  This is sort of dashed quickly, because it seems we more easily had two sets of Dr. Strangelove types.  In the American case, advocating SDI not so much for defense, but for offense against the Soviets.
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Item #3: From Dennis King’s book (You know the one), pages 80-81 or thereabouts…

FEF = Fusion Energy Foundation, Larouchian advocacy organization.  old-timers = ex-Nazi scientists, here in the 1980s.  Kraft Ehricke (*)

In 1985 the old-timers held their fortieth reunion at the Alabama Space and Rocket Museum beneath a giant picture of von Braun. Linda Hunt, a former Cable Network News reporter, recalled a darkened auditorium full of aging Naziss eagerly watching a slide show of the latest laser-beam weapons. She said taht when the lights went on, the FEF’s Marsha Freeman went to the front and delivered a tirade against the OSI to ahearty applause.

This event was mild compared with the Krafft Ehricke Memorial Conference held that year in Reston, Virginia. Sponsored by the FEF and the Schiller Institue, it united support for SDI, defense of Nazi war criminals, glorification of Peenemunde, and a messianic vision of the conquest of outer space. Fusion boasted that participants included “military, scientific, and diplomatic representatives from four continents.” Former top Nazi cientist Hermann Oberth sent greetings from West Germany hailing Ehricke’s “vision of Homo Saphiens Extraterrestris,'” the New Man who would leave behind the “flaming harbors of the Earth.” Speakers included Admiral Zenker and Peenemunde rocketeer Konrad Dannenberg. Larouche gave the keynote address, entitled “Krafft Ehricke’s Enduring Contribution to the Future Generations of Global and Interplanetary Civilization.” Resoultions were passed calling on President Reagan to adopt Laourhce’s crash program for SDI and halt the Justice Department’s investigations of the old timers. Since the only timers being probed were those allegedly served at Mittelwerk, the FEF/Schiller Institute’s hoopla about underground factories on the moon and the spirit of Peemunde in space technology was suggestive, at the least.

Over the next two years LaRouche assumed Krafft Ehricke’s mantle. He outlined plans for cities on Mars and in the asteroid belt — an extension of his earlier earthbound citybuilding schemes so reminiscent of the SS plans for Aryan colonies in occupied Russia. His prototype design for a space city was based on the geometry of cosmic spirals. He said his inspiration had come from the work of German scientists who, at the end of the war, while “awaiting reassignments” had amused themselves by drawing up plans for rebuilding the Ruhr.

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Item #4, from an ex-Larouchite posting at FACTNet, a fairly quick clip on how these associations damned legitimate technological goals:  Democracy is not a strongpoint for Lyn, and no matter how valid some of his views may seem they reflect the worst aspects of Plato’s philosopher king ideal. To this day, I still support the idea of fusion research, although again Lyn treated it as a catchall, and I have no idea whether the fusion torch will be around in less than another 50 years.

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(*) Great.  Even Larouche’s kooky ideas are lifted from elsewhere.  Damnedit.

Y’know.  I have to pause and reflect on something.

John Cox.*  He can inspire enough passion as to allow for someone to have an email address replete with “theanticox”?

Well, there’s a yahoo group.  Who knew?  4 new members.  3 new messages.  Join today and post up a message so that it will be 5 new members and 4 new messages.

Not to be confused with 1920 Democratic Presidential Nominee James Cox.  Who you have never heard of, and whose name you will not retain within fifteen minutes.
*For what it is worth, Thom Hartmann has interviewed him a couple of times.  Because that’s the kind of thing Thom Hartmann does.

There aren’t a lot of people who’s death provides me a smile.  Jerry Falwell is one of those few, and I now wonder how one celebrates this occassion.

We watch the Republican presidential candidates and the White House give out carefully worded statements that appear to be complimentary, but when you look at them are not.  McCain, Romney, and Tony Snow all have done so.  There will be a number of politicians, those with a heavy religious right contingent of a constituency, who will go into somber and lovey dovey responses of merry mirth.  Watch for them.  Political wise, it may be worth checking in and keeping a list of those politicians who opt not to make a comment on Falwell.  They receive a point.  It is too much to ask anyone to give a derogatory comment.  Any who do get two points.

So… Tinky Winky, what say you?  Christopher Hitchens — What say you?  Larry Flynt — what say you?

Y’know, I’ve technoratied “Lionel” with “Air America”, to guage the scope of opinion on Air America’s new “Lionel” show, and the opinions are in…

I found a poitive review somewhere in there. Really, if you look and shift around, you’ll see one.

But other than that, the mood is set with atrios asking “Are the people who run Air America on crack?”
A shame. I didn’t hear it, and probably never will. I always thought he was better than average, which is — in terms of things to have on the radio in the background — what counts for Absolutely Brilliant. But for something like Air America, picking up Lionel makes sense as a move of desperation, which I suppose it is. Sam Sedar was easily dropped on stations in favor of, say, Stephanie Miller.  There’s an advertisement that has appeared in the pages of the Washington Monthly for a station — I guess in Washington.  Once upon a time it showed a picture of a handful of Air America hosts.  Perhaps at some point Ed Schultz edged into the picture.  For the past few months, the ad has showed their talent for 6 am to 3 pm EST: three Jones Network hosts — Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, and Ed Schultz.  That strikes me as significant for troubles with Air America.  So, needing to plug something that might work to expand perhaps a network situation and perhaps a syndication situation, Air America management looks around the radio landscape for proven talent that is if not liberal than sort of liberal-minded and all they can really see is goddamned Lionel.

This doesn’t affect the local station here in Portland — at least not much (I think changes of sorts are in store for what they air on the weekend, if anyone cares), but witness the diametrically opposed new directions that are showed with their reformatting. You have Lionel, who is completely separated from anything of a “movement”. And you have something called “The Air Americans”, which combines a bunch of hosts with a very concerted attempt at branding into “Movement Radio”. Neither direction looks particularly appealing, actually, and while I would like to hear Lionel it does strike me as jarring to go from Lionel to… what would be on after him? Thom Hartmann and goddamned Randi Rhodes? It’s jarring enough for the liberal bloggers to ask… “WTF?”

I imagine Lionel will have to shift to fit his new listener base in various ways. Not least amongst them justifying his existence.
Ah well. I will place my disclaimer that I am obliged to have when discussing Air America. Morning Sedition, starting roughly a year into its run, was the only thing that counted for “Appointment Radio”, and the only thing that was particularly Original and Innovative. And I like Rachel Maddow. Everything else is mixed at best.

Far be it for me to defend the Republican slate of presidential candidates, but I have noticed something bubble up into the surface that kind of bothers me.

It is a line.  A derogatory reference to “ten middle-aged white men.”  A quick google search and you find, right at the top, this.

Now, the Democrats have… um… five middle aged white men (unless you want to slide one or two into the “elder” camp),  a black man, a white woman, and a Hispanic.  This is the most diverse slate of candidates any party has ever spewed out at us, prodded up by the fact that the front-runners are, indeed, not a middle-aged white man.

Prior to that, all we can go on is the temporary existence of Elizabeth Dole in 2000 — who, to be fair, I believe dropped out later in 1999 than the hyper-early May we have right now.  (A bit more serious a contender than whatshername was in whatsthatyear.  Refresh my memory.  There was a female Republican presidential candidate in 1968.  Or 1972.  Kind of.  Sort of.)  We have a small mixture of black candidates never quite taken seriously as presidential contenders — the source of not taken seriously as a presidential contender Joseph Biden’s praise of Obama as “clean” and “articulate”.

And we have a whole lot of middle-class white candidates from the start of the Republic to today, of which every single elected president and vice-president has been culled from.

Hence the existence of anything other than a bunch of middle class white men as serious presidential contenders is a brand new phenomonem.

And it seems pointless to thump the Democrats’ chest for suddenly, in this election year of 2008 (actual calendar year 2007) to have something else.
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Besides which, there are at least 11 middle aged white men:

John Cox has asked a federal court to stop next week’s G-O-P presidential debate unless he can take part. Cox claims in a lawsuit that the South Carolina G-O-P and Fox News Channel rigged their selection process to exclude him.Ten candidates have been invited to the debate next Tuesday in Columbia. It is sponsored by the South Carolina Republican Party and Fox  .At issue is a requirement the two organizations used to decide who could participate in the debate. The groups required a candidate to earn at least one percent of support in state and national polls.Cox’s lawsuit claims his name was –not– used in the lone state poll that was used to gauge voter support.

Well, to be fair, if Giuliani’s name was exluded from the list… actually he would probably receive more than one percent in “write-in” votes.  Sorry Cox.  You don’t have a leg to stand on.

Um. Heh.

Okay. Favorite part. “Check this out. Gore’s Hedge Fund Partner. His name is Blood.” “Too good to make up.” “Yeah, you can’t make that up.”
Cue the photo from the pamphlet — I don’t know “Gore’s Global Warming Hoax and the International Synarchist Implications of his Sexual Congress with the Beast – Men”, or something to that effect — and… an indescribable photograph found at minute 6:07.

I was tempted to very slightly defend this Larouchite, in the sense that it is common to have political conversation in line with more standard political spectrum — or less cult-induced people with the same outlandish realm of conspiracy theory — and it sometimes comes across as just as silly. But, um… no. Besides which, if I am to believe something posted at FACTNet, Larouche has issued an order for Larouchies to not reply to any web postings, so… ALL HANDS ON DECK and UNLOAD!!

“What do you think of the art school?”

“I think they’re kind of de-generates. They’re not trying to create a Renaissance.”

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A shout-out to hey now, brownpau. While I don’t make it a point to link to any and all people who link here, I don’t make it a point not to link to anyone, and in this case I need to respond to and extrapulate on the excerpt he lifted. I did not coin the phrase “Me For Dictator”. That came from a book review for Lyn Marcus’s “Dialectical Economics”, the reviewer having no awareness of just who the author was came to the conclusion that “The author appears to be a ‘Me-for-Dictator’ type that I really wouldn’t trust handing over the economy to.” (I’ll get the exact quote if forced to.)

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A word on how the Larouche pamphlets are written.  Although, to be frank, there’s only a smidgeon of insight I didn’t gather out of hand.:

His reading is basically done by looking at the cover, jackets a chapter and then , now this is important, a summary by the staff. In NYC we had a dozens of people who knew a lot of things and did research. A guy named Peter Rush did a prioject where he took as many papers done by members and indexed them in a library of sorts. What caem of that was an embarassment of sorts. it seemed that if you looked at any of Lyn’s writings you figure out the formula. You take a subject of current politcal value like Ted Kennedy. You then link him to what ever is the main fundraising issue such as a KGB/Russian takeover of the world. you now take one of those research papers and find the key thesis and link it to that. So the end is a centerfold article where about two paragraphs mention Kennedy, more pragraphs mention some historical situation adn then you fill it up with the standard 5000 years of conspiracy, throw in Aristotle and then some new tid bit the poor LCer found and declare it a magnum opus that needs to be put out in a pamphlet or book for the masses. Read enough of this and you too can write this stuff for the LC. The poor LCer who did the long hours of work in the library does not even get a footnote and ends up cooing for Lyn’s wink instead of yelling that his or her hard work was stolen by this charlatan. The standard MO for us is that the phone organiser would make some issue sound reasonable so he would not be hung up. Once you snet them some of our lit, forget it. We would try hard to NOT have Lyn do meetings with our contacts because of how they would end up with Lyn demanding that they bankroll him or some crazy statement about the Queen of England or such.

Wait.  Larouche doesn’t write his own material?  Dagnabit!

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I have finally read Dennis King’s book, in drips and drabs. I’m trying to figure out what is most pertinent to post for the mish – mash of imperatives I have in bopping up to Larouche. I think I’ll go with some items of concern from Chapter 10. So look for it… coming up… soon.

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Ken Kronberg stuff:

I can go to almost any subject the LC and Lyn writes about and it will end up that way. Even with this, people in the FEF had some respect as they had degrees and did no talk like maniacs. they had a life where they could interview people, write articles and produce a magazine that did not look half bad.

For Lyn, it was real bad. It was bad because in a cult of personality, Lyn is the focus, nothing else. So in the early 1980s, Lyn issued a memo which made clear that unless your activity involved him, it was not allowed. The way it was worded was very clever in that it demanded that persuing the Larouche presidency was the only thing and every front group and publication had to support that.

You liked the Fidelio magazine. Ever wonder why it was not mailed out and promoted? Ken Kronberg created that and tried to make it something which was not crazy. There are reports of endless tirades by Lyn against Ken for trying to do that. The blood vessels would pop in Lyn’s head as he denounced Ken as a boomer over and over and then ended it with a demand for endless printing with out a single thought of how to pay for this. Oh, let me correct that. .There was a single thought , it was called have someone else run up a debt for supplies and have the members do it for nothing.

AND… a run-down of 1970s-era Larouche versus 2000s-era Larouche, from a 1970s-era Larouchie to the ambivalent Larouchie who I posted the words of a couple of Larouche-related posts ago:
Us Jimmy Carter worse than Hitler
You Al Gore Worse than Hitler.

Us Impeach Carter
You Impeach Cheney

Us Give money to stop KGB
You Give money to stop Synarchists

US Methadone pushed by Nuremburg Criminals
You Video games pushed by Nuremburg Criminal.

Us The world economy is going to crash.
You The world economy is going to crash.

US We are in a depression.
You We are in a depression of the physical economy.

Us Rockefeller runs the world
You British and the Jews run the world.
Most of us were in when the LC made the transformation from Rocky to the British and the Jews running the world. Most of us left.

Us 3 Mile Island was a hoax to eliminate people.
You Global warming is a hoax to eliminate people.

Us Chris White brainwashing done by Rock to stop the ICLC from taking power. Hoax by Lyn.
You Duggan death, hoax done by Cheney to stop LYM from taking power.

Us David Rockefeller and his family run the world and all that is evil.
You Cheney and his wife run the world and all that is is evil.

Us Leesburg Real Estate collapse will bankrupt the banks when people can not pay the notes.
You Lyn does not pay the notes on LC real estate to the banks and our people collapse.

Us Supporting Solar power is stupid and won’t work.
You Supporting solar power is evil and will kill off humanity

Dear Steve Novick,

I am already sick of that line about “a fighter with a good left hook.”  Actually I was sick of it, if possible, the first time I saw it in that introductory Willamette Week piece, for no other reason than the realization that I would be inundated with the line every time your name comes up and with every campaign appearance.
I can’t say that solving the problem of my antipathy toward your campaign slogan is worth the multitude benefits of the line, I being just one person floating out in the ether.  Perhaps I am a bit tired at the moment, and perhaps that is the only reason I can say that I can’t for the life of me think of what clever line Gordon Smith could use to combat the line.  I suppose he can just say he hooked you or something, but coming from him it’ll come across as just mean.  So you have the “fighter with a good left hook” angle cornered.

Just the same between you and I, if — say — Earl Blumenauer is running in the primary against you — or whoever — I’ll likely vote for him/her simply to avoid several additional months of “Fighter with a good left hook” line.