I believe President George Bush’s job approval ratings have only just barely eked above the 40 mark a couple of times in the past two years.  He has spent his entire second term mired in the 30s.  If memory serves right, Clinton’s approval ratings shrank into the 30s in his first few months, but otherwise coasted with a low ebb at around 45 — that, probably taking a point or two, being where he stood at his disasterous 1994 mid-term point, which promptly created the Time “Incredibly Shrinking President” cover and his “The President is still relevant” statement in his 1995 State of the Union speech.  In a previous life, 40 percent was seen as abysmally low ratings and a sign of a president in peril.  Today, it means a president on the rebound, gaining momentum, ready to “surge”, I tell you, “surge”.

Of course, Clinton was up into the 60s through most of the Impeachment debacle.  I suspect mostly by way of comparison, a foil of a foil.

Bush is stuck in a defensive crouch.  History may vindicate him yet, but that owes more to the peculiar biases of our historians.  I’ve been meaning to read over the 60 Minutes transcript.  I’ve heard some sound clips.  He accepts responsibility for Iraq not going as well as planned, stating that the public needs somebody to blame and if they don’t blame him they may blame the troops.  It is statements like that that make me consider the answer to the question “If you could ask or say one thing to President Bush, what would you say?” — “Go away.”

I understand Bush has picked up bi-partisan support for his quote-in-quote “surge” plan.  The name he cites is Joseph Lieberman — who, you will remember, lost the Democratic nomination and thus switched parties to the “Connecticut for Lieberman” party.  Bush has assembled a grand Republican — Connecticut for Lieberman coalition for the policy of punting the Iraq War over to the next president.

From Younger Than That Now, an interlocking couple of memoirs.  A significant but not overwhelming part concerns Ruth Williams’s nine month membership in the Caucus of Labor Committees.  Spliced more than I probably am allowed to post, some excerpts.  Part 1:  Joining up.  Part 2:  Proud full-fledged member.  Part 3:  Quitting.

Part 1:

“Stop thinking about your mother,” someone yelled.  “You don’t need mother’s magic.”  The thin, bearded man writhing on the floor nodded his head and struggled to breath.  His face was becoming blue.  In 1974, mmany people thought asthma was pshycosomatic, and I figured this man was
trying to overcome a neurosis, though it seemed an extreme cure.  But I became really alarmed when he began to lose conciousness.

A plump, blond woman was telling me that she was on her way to MIT, armed with several awards and grants for her unique mathematical theories and also with her fanatic devotion to the Labor Committees.  I put my hand on her arm to get her to stop talking.  “He’s going to die,” I protested.  She turned around to look and, almost reluctantly, said, “I’ll call an ambulance.” I was relieved to hear sirens even before she hang up — the hospital was right across the street.

Arlen, a tall, balding intellectual who seemed to be the leader of NLCL’s Madison cadre, knelt on the floor and held the head.  “You know asthma is a mother-induced illness, don’t you?  You know that.  We’ve discussed it.”
The man could no longer nod.  His chest rattled, and I saw bubbles of foam beginning to come from his mouth.  Arlen turned to the rest of us and said, “He’ll be fine.  Really.  He’s been doing a lot better lately, and it’s just going to take some time before he becomes a fully realized human being.  It’s hard work.”  The group nodded sympathetically.  Then three paramedics burst into the room and began to revive the man.  After a hypodermic and some oxygen, he was breathing again.  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled as he was carried to the ambulance.

I turned a horrified face to the MIT woman.  “What was that all about?”
“He’ll be fine,” she consoled me.  “It’s been a long time since he needed medical care.  It’s just a little setback.  Eventually he won’t have asthma anymore.”  She looked totally convinced of what she’d just said.  Evidentally NCLC members believed they could fight disease and human frailty as well as change the face of American politics, and they were already practicing psychology on their membership.  Why had the  well-educated, highly intelligent woman joined what I had thought was an insignificant fringe organization?  Was there more to it than I saw?

I let her put my arm around my waist as we walked to some chairs in the back of the room.  She knelt on the floor beside me and said, “You really love your husband, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I loved mine too.  But sometimes real human beings have to make hard choices.  I had to divorce my husband.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t join the Labor Committees.  Even after he heard Lyndon LaRouche speak in New York last spring — wait until you hear him, he’s a genius — he wouldn’t let go of his fears.  I had to move on.”
“Like Bill will, you mean?  If I don’t join?”
She crooked an eyebrow, a knowing “what else could he do?” look.  Then she said, “But that’s not what has to happen.   You can both be in the vanguard of a new American Renaissance.”
We seemed to be making quantum leaps, from this bare, basement meeting room to a renaissance.  From divorce to a vanguard.  My head was spinning.  She went on, “There’s one thing stopping you from joining him.”
“What’s that?”
“You have to forget mother’s homemade magic.  Forget Reverend Jorgenson.  Forget –”
“Hey, how do you know about him?”
“Bill and I had a long talk yesterday. 

………………….

Part 2:

 

Dear Jeff,
Much has changed since your visit and I hesitate to unfold it within the limited scope of a letter but it must be attempted if we hope to continue to communicate.  There are innumerable reasons to recoil in dismay from reality.  However, Bill and I have ruthlessly confronted those reasons and found them less than human, if not totally insane.  Throughout  our lives, Jeff, we have been surrounded with fantasy — TV, mother’s homeside magic, Vietnam and its deluded antiwar “revolutionaries”, the  myth of success, etc. — and we have responded with neurotic insanity, feverishly constructing more fantasy, performing propitiatory rituals to dead pasts.  Now the fantasies are melting away.

This letter is VERITABLY IMPOSSIBLE for me to write, so big is the gulf between yourself (who can write impassively of Rockefeller and William F Buckley) and myself (who is pouring my intellect, creativity, time, energy, probably my life’s blood into the battle for humanity against the bestialized filth of those men and their following).  Have you read about TRIAGE as suggested by Rocky’s Trilateral Commission?  If so, how can you possibly tolerate it and call yourself human?  Einstein,
Feuerbach, Marx, Luxemburg, Hegel, Oparin, Vernadsky — in essence break out of the controlled environment spawned by “higer education” and begin your education anew.  Bill and I have embarked on the excruciating task of finding the real
world and we are tempted to backslide daily, but the realization of the discovery of self-concious mentation of the type experienced by Descartes, “I think therefore I am”, and the responsibility it carries of negentropic growth constantly compels us to tear out the demons of our education.  Ie, we are confronting the “giggling, nervous infants of bourgeois fear” which grip and strangle the minds of most of our acquaintances, our families, our friends — and we arebecoming members of a new species, equipped to make the conceptual leap which is absolutely necessary if the human race is to survive an impending ecological holocaust.
Political, economic, psychological, personal, moral, scientific,
artistic levels — all the pursuits of mankind — must be conceptually raised to the next level of human progress.  We are in the process of an intellectual renaissance, Jff, and it is very real.  I would be less than equal in the demands of a truly creative friendship if I didn’t joyfully bring it within the grasp of your mind.  I’ve enclosed several clippings which I hope you will read.  They’re from NEW SOLIDARITY — you know, the paper you used to laugh at?  We are planning to leave Madison and will be organizing full-time with the Labor Committees in Milwaukee and Chicago.  I quit my job in November and have since been making intellectual leaps necessary to maintain the integrity of my decision to be a world historical being rather than Ruth Tuttle of Yazoo City.  I am beginning to locate myself by my mental coordinates rather than geographically.  Whithin me exists not onlly the experiences of 23 years, but also an intensifying sensuous grasp of the geometry of the universe and the laws and forms I am capable of imposing on it.  Of all my friends, you are the one I know best intellectually.  We have shared our minds much more than our experiences and for this reason, I am convinced that you have the intellectual integrity to grapple with your bourgeois persona and fear and to discover your humanity, your pride.  This will be very straining to our relationship because it calls for an honesty not accepted in polite society and is certainly far removed from the magnanimous apathy of the counterculture many of our peers have opted for.

So, there you have an infinitesimal glance into the burgeoning currents of my life.  Jeff, I feel like every human being can potentially feel.  I feel like God.  

………….

Part 3:

I told my version of the incident to the man on the phone, adding, “at the hospital the police told me the woman is known in the neighborhood as mentally ill.  She’s always hallucinating about the devil, and today she was tripping her brains out, too.  They were trying to contact a family member to get her committed.”
“And you believed that?”
“Well yeah,” I said.  “You don’t?”
“Look at the facts:  The working class is being systematically destroyed by Rocky’s Trilateral Commission.  There’s a psychological holocaust going on out there.  This is the direct result of Nelson Rockefeller’s interference in our daily organizing.  If you do your job better, the workers won’t be destroyed like this.”
“So it’s my fault?”
“Let’s go over this story again, only this time I want you to tell me more about what Rodney was doing.”
About ten people were gathered in the next room.  Some of them were talking.  Others sat quietly, slumped in their chairs.  What I saw when I looked through the kitchen door was a group of demoralized, drifting  souls.  We had become dumb animals with gaunt faces and dark-rimmed eyes, members of the same soul starved family.  There was only one person who seemed to be untouched by Labor Committee angst, a genial black youth named Teddy.
I caught his eye and he came into the kitchen.  While I talked on the phone, he stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders.  I think he knew what I meant when I hung up the phone and said, “I’m going home now.”
“Yep, I’m about done with this scene, too,” he replied.  […]

I was assigned to bring him along.  I would meet him at AO Smith during the morning shift change and hand him some copies of New Solidarity.  Within 20 minutes all his buddies would buy us out, the younger ones ribbing Teddy about his “white piece,” the older ones delivering advice with their twenty-five cents: “Boy, you bes’ be lookin’ after yo’ mamma, ‘stead of hustlin’ this garbage.”  Almost without exception they’d then toss the paper into the trash can next to the ramp.  Teddy and I just laughed it off.  The rest of the afternoon we’d hang out in a coffee shop, laughing — and sometimes crying — as we shared life stories.

Rain is God’s Urination.

Snow is God’s Dandruff.

The issue of the rights of homosexuals and the lack of rights of the heterosexual — for example, forced abortion and forced sterialization as “population control” measures — seems inextricably liked. The same individuals who would have our children indoctrinated with the notion that homosexuality is an alternative life-style, rather than a perversion, would use every other device in the book to limit population growth, including forced sterialization.

Who wrote that and where did it appear? Here’s a hint. It appeared in the same place as this:

The subversion of our young people by Satanic Cults is occurring on a far greater scale than most people are willing to believe. One morning, a parent wakes up to find that his child, or his neighbor’s child, has been murdered, the victim of some local peer-group-based Satanic Cult activity — or committed suicide while involved in role playing during some magical satanic cult activity. The shock to the parent is much, much greater than seeing his child become convulsive under the influence of illegal drugs. The numbing shock is that he really did not know anything about the depths of that child’s mind. That child and his peers are victims of an alien Satanic culture.

[…] One such game, Dungeons and Dragons, is a medieval fantasy role playing game, in which the fantasy character played by the adolescent indulges in murder, pillage, arson, and rape over a prolonged period (six months to a year is typical). Over such a period, with the behavioral reinforcements written into the game, the typical adolescent may become so wrapped up in the game that he loses touch with reality.

I do not expect you to know the answer, in large part because it is someone rather obscure. But the obscure person is in service with a more known person, who appears later in the same publication. Also, I half expect this all to be plagarized from another source anyway — at any rate, whole ideas and concepts ripped out and placed here.

With the faddish popularity of Anton LeVey, who played the devil in the movie Rosemary’s Baby, established the Church of Satan in San Francisco

Quick aside. I have seen Portland’s Church of Satan head, Rex Diablo, walking around the city on about three occasions. I don’t know what to do when I see him. He’s fairly conspicuous, what with Devil Horns implanted into his forehead. I smile and nod. He smiles back, or doesn’t. What else can I say?

and published The Satanist Bible; with the popularity of “heavy metal” rock groups which utilize both overt and backward masked lyrics to involve alienated youth in Satanic activities, and with the increasing popularity of games like Dungeons and Dragons, the WICCA-type underground network of Satanic “churches” has been expanding rapidly in this country. Scores of children, that fortunate tiny percentage that actually survived the experience, have reported to authorities that they were sexually abused and forced through rituals involving the drinking of human blood, cannibalism, and the sacrificial murder of other children.

I swear this book was promoted by Jack T Chick Productions.
The Satanist conspiracy which has insiduously working to destroy our culture, and has used our schools for this purpose, would rather see a Nazi-Communist world takeover Nazi-Communists? , than allow science and industry to flourish, because they despise our Judeo-Christian tradition.

Final hint: the solution to our educational dilemmas is to promote, in our schools — currently incubators of this Satanic Culture and Homosexual training grounds — the Creation of Martian Colonies — which will inspire hope in our youth to advance forward… to a new epoch… and will provide us with all the technology we will need for this next century… and on and on.

There. I gave the answer away.

I imagine Ronl Paul to be the Republican 2008 equivalent of the Democratic 2004 Dennis Kucinich. Reportedly, one might walk past Dennis Kucinich’s Portland campaign headquarets and hear an all night burner, Bob Marley and a drum circle, whiffs of marijuana blowing out, nobody really accomplishing anything per se but in the midst of a political cause nonetheless. Picture Ron Paul’s campaign with some Ayn Rand recording
in place of Bob Marley, discussions merging from the tyranny of the United Nations to the War of Southern Aggression and how Lincoln paved the way to continued government consolidation.

The rankers of such thing tend to have Paul as right about 50-50 on the liberal – conservative rankings. This is the necessary limitations of a ranking that would, for instance, toss Paul liberal points for voting against a budget cut on Head-Start, when Paul’s reason for voting ‘no’ is that the program shouldn’t exist in the first place — not prescribed in the Constitution. He’s also as pure an anti-war candidate as you will find anywhere, tossing the additional loop in there that he never has said a good word about the current Republican President.

Can Paul be denied from the debates? He’s not likely to endorse or support the eventual nominee — McCain, Romney, Brownback (wait — do I actually think Brownback might be the nominee? In lieu of anyone else acceptable to your Social Conservative, yes.) I think he’s the obvious choice for the Libertarian Party to pluck right out of the burners of the Republican primary season and show themselves a better profile than possible with anyone else. Mockingly, I say the Libertarian Party could have Paul as their Fusion candidate. Back to the Kucinich comparison, in 2004 John Hagelin, the 2000 and 1996 and probably 1992 Presidential candidate for the now defunct Natural Law Party had Kucinich as the end point for a Democratic — Natural Law fusion ticket. Not going to happen, of course, as Kucinich was never going to be nominated president. (The Natural Law Party loved fusions, such as their 2000 delapidation of the Reform Party.)
Maybe the Republican Party could shove him out of the debates unless he agrees to support the eventual Republican nominee, and not run on any third party ticket. There were 2 elected Democrats shoved out in such a manner in 1992 — a minor city mayor, who did end up in a debate but was then unceremoniously framed out of the AP photo — and Eugene
McCarthy — and Mike McGavick is 2008’s version of McCarthy 1992. (Incidentally, McCarthy in 1992 ran against George Bush the elder’s speech patterns. Go check back and you’ll see!) I’d think, however, the Republican Party would much prefer to frame out Tom Toncredo — and their framing outs bullets are perhaps limited.

Here’s a question. Is it better for Ron Paul to have a speaking slot at the Republican convention or run a campaign as a Libertarian Party candidate? A platform is what Ron Paul’s campaign is about. Ron Paul denies that, but I don’t believe him. I have think about that question for a minute before answering it, because I don’t immediately know the
answer.

No Comment.

Barbara Boxer, to Condelleza Rice:  Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young.  You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families.

This is interesting.  It’s a faux-outrage, but even the faux-outrage I find fascinating in showing cultural divisions of attitude.  See, I would skip right past that and not make a mental note.  But, to conservative bloggers and columnists the reaction is: “How dare you call Condi a Spinster!”

Culturally, I’m beyond that.  They’re not.  That’s all I have to say about that.

Did anybody notice that the US raided an Iranian embassy in Iraq last week?

U.S. forces in Iraq raided Iran’s consulate in the northern city of Arbil and detained five staff members, a state-run Iranian news service said.

Coalition forces arrested six people during “routine security operations” in the Arbil area, the U.S. military said in an e-mailed statement. The military didn’t confirm that the consulate was raided and didn’t say whether any of those detained were Iranians. 

That does the Iran Hostage Crisis of Carter’s presidency one better — ’tis the military and not those revoultionary minded.

The effect is startling.  It revives the “we’re going into Iran” talk that has been peddled by the Greg Palasts and Scott Ritters of the world — always with a certain date that come and go — the idea being we’re trying to provoke the “Gulf of Tonkin”, “Sinking of the Maine”, (shrug) “Pearl Habor-like Event” once again.  To surge another way.  Dualistically, I suppose.

Abondoned and tossed right next to a garbage can — in front of a convenience store — and by way of telling the precise location, at the end of the Yellow Max line — one package still tied together uncut from its yellow string, the other cut but untouched — there last night and still there this morning…

The two latest LaRouche pamphlets.  Supposedly $5, but there, as they always seem to be whenever the LaRouchites hover on over and take up shop — for the taking.  And if you really want it, you can have a hundred.  (I never quite get this part of the fund-raising part of the LaRouche syndicate.  Even though I understand it has never been a major part of it, it still strikes me as an incredible loss-leader.)

I have a mental picture of the paperback greeting “If you purchased this book without a cover…”, and this as the LaRouche version of that.  Unsold, they are discarded.  Since this is an evangelism movement, they are offered for anyone who cares to have one.  (At previous times, I’ve seen them left at the cut-off section at Borders.)  I assume this means that this is the end of the LaRouchite stint of keeping a card-table, and they’re onto other things.

I picked up neither pamphlet.  An umpteenth “LaRouche Economic Address” promising a plan that will get us out of the economic depression of ’06 and onto the glorious future of ’07.  The other was titled “The End of the Truman Era” — which I imagine fits into LaRouche’s current infatuation with FDR — ie: Truman betrayed the Roosevelt legacy and set up the systems that have destroyed our economy, and LaRouche’s Economic Program promises to take us back to the Roosevelt Legacy.  I suspect he is eking out his Communist past with that one — which is that Communists made up the lefter-most part of Roosevelt’s coalition, and generally accepted him — however mildly — in a “Popular Front” position — and Truman was just a boss’s politician — the Senator and then President from Pendegrast.  But maybe that would be giving the man too much credit, and really he’s just trying to evoke mainstream Democrats who don’t like the DLC.

What I want to know is — is Truman one of the “Beastman”s of “Children of Satan” fame?  I guess I’d just have to read the pamphlet to find out.  And I’m not going to do that.