I was sitting in a room that was teaching novices How To Use The Internet.  It befuddled me a bit — the instructions were perfectly superfluous and only served to mystify the Internet where the point of thic class, it seemed to me, was breeding familiarity to a group of tech non-savvy people.  The instructor reached back and bore through the Internet as being developed by the Pentagon for the purpose of sharing information between, breaking the word “Internet” into “inter” meaning “between” and “network” meaning “network”.

We went through that phase as a culture in the 1990s.  But it was superfluous then as well.

I saw somewhere a reference mocking Senator Ted Stevens’s “Series of Tubes” comment in explaining the Internet in his debate on Net Neutrality as his misplaced role sitting on a Senate committee on decisions that affect the Internet.  It struck me that this comment has replaced the Bush debate comment about the rumours “all over the Internets” — that’s plural in case you missed it.  I’m not entirely sure that the Internet isn’t a series of tubes, or can be conceptualized as such, which would put him ahead of Bush in this category.  Nonetheless, a year ago the derisive comment would hit Bush’s “Internets” comment and not Stevens’s “Tubes” comment.  I wonder if a year from now who will make the next comment of that type…

…

I cannot quite peg what Chuck Hagel is planning on doing.  The word on the proverbial street is that not only is he planning on forgoing a run for the White House — he can’t really figure out an opening from the Republican electorate — but he’s thinking of simply ending his Senate career at the end of his term.  Mind you, this doesn’t really mean a thing for adding a Senate seat to the Democratic Party — when I hear that Chuck Hagel hates Nebraska Democrats, I realize that basically means he hates Senator Ben Nelson, the sort of half Democrat who is about the only Democrat standing in that state — reportedly we have the most uneasy state Senate delegation relationship with Hagel and Nelson.
This would put a dent in Thom Hartmann’s on-going conspiracy theory which slides Chuck Hagel from stealing an election — the upset of 1996 — by dent of his ownership in a computer voting company, and rising up to take the presidency, perhaps cleverly and counter-intuitively having positioned himself as a sort of anti-war Realist (of the George Herbert Walker Bush camp… he’s Bush Senior’s man because it was in his administration that he came into politics.)

But then I see that there’s talk that he’s mulling a third party independent run for the Presidency.  This is unfortunate — he is clearly a Republican, notwithstanding him being at odds with the Republican Party of the moment, and it’s a bad sign that someone squarely fitting in the party under Bush I and Dole doesn’t fit now.  He would, I suppose, be running under that “Unity” heading that’s seemed to be the vehicle of the wacky New York mayor Bloomberg’s wacky presidential hopes, and ultimately hasn’t much popular support — though it does have some support amongst various elites who would very much like to consolidate the two parties and tidy up politics.  So maybe Thom Hartmann’s beloved notion hasn’t fallen away just yet, and we’ll still be in the hands of the Bush Presidential dynasty under President Hagel.  I’ll just have to watch and see.

#1: I’ve started to attend one of those meta-churches. A lot of critics say that these churches’ constant self-referencing take the layman away from God, but I find it works well.

#2: The perpetual campaign is merging into each other with no breaks. It is one race after another, report on one move to the next. Someone needs to announce that they are forming an exploratory committee to look into a 2012 presidential run already. And someone else needs to form an exploratory committee to look into the possiblity of forming an exploratory committee.

#3: A Chicago Bears — Indianapolis Colts Superbowl would be an interesting Superbowl match-up, as it would pair one team with an excellent offense and a suspect defense with a team with an excellent defense and suspect offense. Unfortunately, it’s not a perfectly complete circle. The Colts’ run defense is what has sucked in the past — the Bears’ quarterback’s passing is what has sucked in the past. So, on second thought, never mind. I’ve lost interest.

“Post more Larouche stuff.  This other stuff sucks.”

Yes.  I’m certainly following the dictates of that post from several months ago.  If I had a bit more time, I’d go ahead and read just and move  toward completion of the “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know” page I’ve set myself out to do — only deadline being that I want to have it done
before the man passes away — replete with a heck of a lot more than I had when I finished last year’s blogging with this morass.  I now have a bunch of gaps filled in from that series of posts — vaguarities made less vague.

It all starts to make perfect sense.  Here.  I have more.

In 1965, LaRouche launched a struggle inside the Socialist Workers Party (a Trotskyite organization), with Carol Larrabee — also known in LaRouche land as Schnitzer or White.  She would run off to Britain with a new co-hort, which is when LaRouche is believed to have gone off the remaining bit of a rocker he was on.  They had an elitist view of how the Revolution was going to come about: we need professional revolutionaries, intellectual leaders are not going to spring from the fabled “Workers of the World”.  The ins and outs of their sectional had them join Gerry Healy and the “American Committee for the 4th International”, which they later bounced from over to the “Spartacist League”, a splinter
from the “4th International” — which in turn was a splinter from the “SWP”.  Not getting anywhere, his enormous ego not being gratified and genuflected enough toward, LaRouche quit these “4th International” organizations, LaRouche wrote a letter declaring that all factions of the 4th International were null and void, and now LaRouche was setting out to establish the “5th International”.  Which makes as much sense as
launching the “Democratic Policy Committee”.

“Operation Mop-Up”, where LaRouche either conciously or unconciously aped Hitler and his “brown-shirts” in storming Communist meetings and swinging machettes around, starts to make sense.  Control and hegemony over the Revolution would be consolidated and taken from the “vanguard left” — who were all Rockefellar’s agents, mind you, bcause they diverted attention away from the true revolution and to stupid issues of gender, race, etc, and once that was accomplished, the control over  conciousness of the proletariat would be wrested from the Bourgeoise culture as a whole.

I’ve wondered about LaRouche’s mother problems.  I recommend everyone, college students in particular, who LaRouchites have granted the privilege of gracing with their presence, to walk up and say, “I’m thinking of joining the LaRouche Youth Movement, but I think I’ll pass the idea
by my mom.” and see what happens.  (Other ideas:  walk by with a friend and make it so they overhear the casual conversation “I try to model my life after Aristotle.”  Or “If you think Doubling the square sharpens the mind, wait until you TRIPLE the Square!”)  I’ve generally suspected that LaRouche simply intuits that moms are a barrier and competing
influence; they’d tend to try to talk their young ones out of joining “cadres” of any sort.  Also, it’s psychologically a way of having them declare them their own person at a crucial point in their life.  Beyond the tactics of the affront, I’ve shrugged and figured that maybe Larouche’s strict and religious up-bringing lead him to hate his mother.  But there is one other possibility.  Fred Newman, another political cult leader of long standing, currently largely holder of the reigns of the remains of the Reform Party, whose configuration was somewhat obstensibly a sort of a psycho-analytic Marxist confirguration — had his group join the NCLCs for a year.  Insanely enough, Newman wanted to take over the organization.  I had figured that LaRouche’s “brain-washing” reprogramming, launched when Carol flew off to Great Britain, was a product of his circa 1960 computer programming career.  It may well be, but the timing of events suggests as much that LaRouche picked up his psychotic “reprogramming” from his dalliances with Fred Newman.  As well, his “mother complex”, and degrading issuances that his followers’ failures in organizing came from sexual impotence.  (It all comes back to those “vital fluids” of Dr. Strangelove lore, doesn’t it?)

I am reading through a 1988 issue of “EIR”.  Insane though it may seem, Portland State University has three “special issues” (education, AIDS, and the Gulf War Crisis of 1990) of EIR in its library — apparently donated by LaRouchites, the cover pages stamped with the imprint “Donated Material”, which is good because it sets aside the frightening prospect that $700 — yes, the pricetag on these 3 issues of “Executive Intelligence Review” come up to $700 — of tax-payer dollars went to the type of writing that is obstenisbly sold for $5 on street corners, but is generally conspicuously littered about.  $5 is about $7 too much.

So we have a transcript of the AIDS issue froma LaRouche informercial in 1988.  “Many are asking, ‘What does Lyndon LaRouche know about AIDs that Surgeon General C Everett Koop does not?’  Many are saying to themselves, ‘I thought LaRouche was an economist.  What does an economist know about AIDs?’  My profession is a little known branch of science, called physical economy.  That is a branch of physical science developed 300 years ago by…” and on it goes as the viewer says, “Wait a minute!”, since nobody’s free-word association starts off with “LaRouche” and “economist”.

As for what LaRouche knew about AIDs that C Everett Koop did not:  LaRouche had been watching for a biological plot for about a decade, and when AIDs hit he was very suspicious, sho he pulled together a crack research staff to investigate.  AIDs, it seems, was accidentally prodcued in the 1960s by experiments with human tissue.  It is not primarily sexually transmitted, but there is a conspiracy to make the public think it is so that they can push pornographic sex education in our schools as well as pushing special rights for the pervers lifestyle choice of homosexuality.  Also, a Mathusian plot exists to use AIDs as an excuse to clear out the, by the evil ones’ perspective, the unwanted blacks.  AIDs is a highly transmittable disease, which can be spread through mosquito bites, and if left untouched will decimate the population (which, by the way, the wacko environmentalists — “enthropists” be they, would love to see happen because they hate people and love the Earth instead), so we must wage WAR on AIDs, all expenses necessary, and thus we need to screen the population and test everybody, and isolate those with AIDs (or, humanely, provide plenty of hospital beds).  If elected prsident, Lyndon LaRouche will make AIDs HISTORY!

The acronym for LaRouche’s organization which pushed his ballot measures in California was– appropriately enough — “PANIC”.  The acronym for the organized opposition was “CALM”.  The ballot measures failed by a two to one margin, but caused health experts serious head-aches.  It is here, reading over his AIDs booklet, that I see the evil of the man, somewhere beyond the kookery, and understand the Dennis Kings of the world’s insistence that you can’t simply dismiss LaRouche out of hand as a simple inconsequential crank.  Granted, for the most part I do, but at least I see where King is coming from.  LaRouche has on repeated occasion posited the manner in which he may become president without an election.  A crisis hits, simply economic crisis in general, but fret not — AIDs is usable as an issue as well.  In 1987, when the stock market tumbled and commentators made allusions to 1929, LaRouchites descended down Wall Street to declare how they were right.  In 1998, when the Asian Markets tumbled, LaRouche wrote an open letter to Bill Clinton urging that Clinton appoint LaRouche as economic advisor and declare emergency powers which “every sovereign state has available”.  He cited China as “one of the best governments in the world today, in terms of quality of leadership, the kind of leadership required to get through crisis.”  Today I note that LaRouche praises Vladamir Putin’s rather autocratic government in Russia.  As for AIDs, LaRouche insisted, naturally, that he be the one in charge of manning his AIDs program.  In LaRouche’s mind, he will be right there when the economy unravels.  There is a review for his 1974 quasi-Marxist book which includes the line “Judging perhaps unfairly from his controversial manner, Marcus impresses at least one reader as a Me-for-Dictator type to whom it would be dangerous to entrust the task of drawing any boundary between the domain of freedom and that of necessity or order.”  Amazing precient for a reviewer who did not know what a “Lyn Marcus” was.  (Martin Bronfenbrenner of Duke University writing for the “Journal of Political Economy”, Feb. 1976).

So we have some parallels for how LaRouche postures for power to Adolf Hitler.  Basically the problem is all I can really do with that is smirk and say “Nice try, idiot.”  Simply put, he hasn’t gotten anywhere and is not particularly likely to do so.  But he does seem to have it in his head.  If he is following the path of the Fuhrer, the problem is the path of the Fuhrer is narrow and steep and tenuous.  He is a Hitler with a silly paper hat.  If you look and see a Hitler, you see that paper hat.  If you look and see that silly paper hat, you pause and consider that you still see a Hitler.

Dubious conspiratorial source though it may be…

Former New York City police detective Bo Dietl was Neil Cavuto’s guest today (January 17, 2007) on Your World. Dietl appeared along with Imam Hassan Al-Qazwini, of the Islamic Center of America, to discuss a January 7 incident in which Northwest Airlines prohibited a group of 40 Muslims from boarding a plane in Germany, after a pilgrimage to the Hajj, on their return trip to Detroit. The group said that Northwest’s action was discriminatory and threatened to launch a boycott, whereupon Northwest apologized and agreed to pay for any expenses incurred as a result of the “snafu.”

At one point Cavuto turned to Dietl and said, “Bo, you have a problem with Northwest apologizing, right?” to which Dietl responded:

No, I have a problem because things have changed, Hassan. We have to look at — a bunch of Irish guys are not going to get on the plane now and blow themselves up or put themselves into buildings. The fact of the matter is, I mean, you don’t watch ’24?’ On Fox TV? They’re out there. They’re out there. There are cells out there. We have to protect ourselves against them as Americans.

That’s not the first time I’ve heard 24 cited in such a manner. Luara Ingraham once cited the popularity of 24 as evidence that America supports Bush’s definitions on torture.

So if Jack Bauer dies. [LOL], who will be foremost and most overt in taking up on the mantle on that post 9/11 meeting Hollywood executives had with the Bush Administration to create propaganda vehicles for our government actions? I mean, Threat Matrix tanked in the ratings.

The World Evangelical Alliance has applauded the agreement reached this week by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to cease all hostilities between the Khartoum government and rebel groups for 60 days as they work towards a durable end to the conflict in Darfur.

Okay.  Bill Richardson has brokered a temporary cease fire — fragile and apt to be broken any minute now though it may be– in Darfur.  Just for the sake of prospective presidential candidate check-ups… what have Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards done in the last week?

I look through the ads in the back of the local alternative weekly, and see, trying to remember if it would be appearing in the other local alternative weekly and deciding it probably wouldn’t be*, an ad for… The Goddamned Menopause: the Musical.

I would not think anything of it, and I’ve seen this ad here for months, except for the blurb at the top of the ad.  “Final Months”.  Plural.   Months.  Not the final weeks.  Not the final month.  The final months.  As in, indefinite.  Months.  No end to sight.  Maybe there’s light at the end of the dark tunnel, but we can’t see it yet.  I would think that this thing would run its course by now, but no… no… it’s just like “What the Bleep Do You Know”, which you can assign a “final months” to and continue for another year.  In fact, somebody should do a mash-up of “What the Bleep” and “Menopause”.

Actually, any opinion of “Menopause: the Musical” is immaterial.  The “Final Months” bother me in terms of its promise of finality (hurry up and see it because it’ll disappear) without stating finality.

The other innovation on the ad, made months back and to my memory not appearing at the start, is a burst saying “Men Love It Too!”  No.  No they don’t.  Men love lots of stupid things, but this is not one of them.  I presume there’s a cadre of women, with a lot of repeat customers — attracted to the “fun baby-boomer soundtrack” I heard the radio advertisement proclaim — wacky parody songs of songs from the late 60s turned to being about menopause–, who bring along their husbands and boyfriends, but no… no… this is marketed to women, and to deny otherwise is to insult everyone’s intelligence.

*The Portland Mercury.  The Willamette Week.  Figure it out yourownself.