Skull / Bones

It takes me a second to decide what I think about the New Yorker cover.  (You know the one.)  The problem is the problem with politics:  the more important question of something like this is not what I think but what I think this or that segment of the American electorate think.  In the case of thinking about this cover and its ramifications for the electorate, it amounts to basically this.

The interesting thing is to hear liberals parse the cover’s satire quotient.  It would be proper satire if it showed the subject of the focus — the believer of this image, I see tell.  If they say so, but talk about running into that “Elitist” land.  Someone at the Huffington Post suggests that this ain’t satire, it’s burlesque.  Indeed.  And… half a dozen of this — six of the other.  BRILLIANT ANALYSIS… let us find precise definitions and fight over terminology, please.

After watching the vice-presidential debate of 2004, I was asked who I thought won.  I started parsing out the meaning in terms of electoral debris, and then was stopped with the question “Who do YOU think won?”, which four years out occurs to me as a meaningless question.  Cheney won — he was an evil lier, but Edwards looked like an empty suit.  Does that matter much?  Hard to say.

Rumble through the political implications of The New Yorker cover.  Better still rumble through the implications of its a Focal spot light in the 24 hour news cycle.  And then ask the meaningless question of what I think of it.  The answer to that question is, Hm… I kinda like it.

The only thing I can say is that I spotted immediately with Obama’s presence in the fight that the election campaign was going to be full of these things — The New Yorker cover, some pundit referencing Oreo cookies, etc.  And here we are.  I give it all a bit of leeway.

I heard a news-soundbyte yesterday with someone stating that we may be heading toward a “historic Recession”.  Not exactly anything anyone wants to hear.  In 1933, Walter Lipmann, writing on the Great Depression, wrote something to the effect that this generation is “lucky” to get the chance to see “how history is made”.  This cues in my mind any number of famous Depression era photographs, which is to suggest that I’m sure that the Dust Bowl denziens and the 30 percent lingering jobless soup-line waiting masses enjoyed this great History Lesson.

It is, of course, absurd to compare our current Economic situation with 1932, except in spots and in passing.  I don’t know what a complete economic breakdown in the twenty-first century looks like, but this isn’t it.  The crux of the Phil Gram “Nation of whiners” line is somewhere floating in the comparison of bleak times with far greater bleak times of a previous era, and it not matching up.  Never mind what you have with Gram is the current state of “Let them Cake”, or to torture metaphors further “We’ll take this cake, and let you eat that cake over there.”  (Or maybe we’re in the land of “Not so much ‘Little Pink Houses for you and me’ but “Little Houses, and … let’s maybe skip the pink paint for now, eh?”)

The tug of war which made Dick Gephardt look absurd with the constant stating of the phrase “…since the Hoover Administration” has swung the other way.  It is a strange sea-changing battle which frequently flubs the Democrats who lose sight of Aspirational politics, which is that Americans don’t like to be reminded that they’re poor.  But now we see the George Wills and the Sean Hannitys of the world backing up the “nation of whiners” comment, which suggests that — at least in Hannity’s case since Will would gladly call himself an elitist– they’re not in much of a position to bandy about the term “Elitist” or “Elites”.

Maybe it’s equally ahistorical to categorically deny historical comparisons to far bleaker past moments and eras in history as it is to make those comparisons.  We are tripping into a transitional age of some sort, where policy should be dominated by preparing to move us past the current era which is precipated by the flow of plentiful cheap oil.  In this sense, Phil Gramm is correct — it is a mental Recession… the logjam we are in comes from not having removed the parameters of the past age.

I once compiled a list of Internet posted meanderings of some odd beyond fundamentalist preacher from some backwater mill somewhere around the South.  His name is Eldon Orr, and the quotations can be found here.

I mention this today because he has emailed me about it, offering that (1) ”Howie” took him out of context, (2) Are you Howie?, (3) I still agree with everything posted, (4) This page scared away some undesirible women friends of my wife who almost visited, so thank you for that, (5) I am now a Muslim, and (presumably because he has scary new things to post (6) This page could use some updating, and (7) I have published a book that people can buy.  (Um… Joy?)

When last I checked in, at the same time he was making Hebraic Interpretations of Lord of the Rings, I knew he was well on his way to finding that distinct variety of Islam, bridging his strand of Fundamentalist Christianity to his strand of Islam through strains of, among other aspects, anti-semitism.

I don’t know why I need to point to Mr. Orr or what there is to say about him and where his further studies take him.  A working theory goes that a Hellfire preacher might set himself up on Campus and get shock waves by blasting the Homosexuals as Hell-bound.  Where do you go when you mill about areas that would elect a Jesse Helms, say, and would nod in agreement with that?  You have to go… further.

The Democratic Congress’s nine percent approval rating is a wonder to behold.  It is a product of lowest common denominator electoral math, and perhaps the most stabilizing low approval rating in Democratic history.  By getting everyone angry through a program of inaction, capitulation, and punt-fugging Pelosi and company avoid getting the semi-respectable mid 30s to sub 50 approval rating that might greet any court of action — which would harden support but also greet more than the apathetic loathing that greets them right now.  Hence, the stability maintains such that nothing hampers their assured up-coming pick-up of somewhere between ten and thirty House seats.

Sooner or later, this strange alchemy will reach its limit, and Congress will have to actually act on the pressing issues of the day.  The bet seems to be that they will line behind the program of a President Obama.  In the meantime, Nancy Pelosi stares at that nine percent approval rating, and grins the grin of grins.

Gary Genazzio’s pen-work in EIR and such was a major thumb in the eye of the British Empire.  (Make that “Brutish Empire”).  Thus states the official line for the official obituary of the Lyndon Larouche organ at the Schiller Institute.  (And really, God bless poor Fredrich Schiller for getting dragged into this crap.)   The obituary was penned by Mr. and Mrs. Pechenuks — and by some odd happenstance and only slightly arbitrary a tangeant, I already posted the electoral history for Gerald Pechenuk.  As you see, it garnered a further explication on Gerlad Pechenuk, and a supposition that Gerald Pechenuk = revenire, something I have no thought about one way or another.

I gather that a write up on Genazzio’s death isn’t such an automatic thing — has John Morris been eulogized? — and I gather further that we have a bit of a template for the line when Larouche himself bites the dust.  Also we may have arrived at a point where obituaries come for these mid-level functionaries to serve the purpose of preparation and wind through the themes of Immortality Larouche needs…

… as, um, Mr. Ossifur continues his pursuit of cryonics to plan the cryogenic freezing for later re-animation?

When asked to expand on his comments about America being a nation of Whiners, former Senator and current McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm added, “And they’re also ugly.  Very, very ugly.”

Remember when you were, like, eight and you walked on a sidewalk and kept your eyes down on that sidewak to make sure that you did not step on a crack?

Well, in that same spirit, as pointed out by the American Prospect magazine’s blog – appropriate title “Road Trip From Hell”, four College Republicans are engaged in a Summer road trip from coast to coast while remaining in Congressional districts which have voted a Republican to the House of Representatives.  I imagine they were inspired by the 2000 electoral map (and you don’t really see any difference with the 2004 map) which showed that the vast majority of empty space (”Flyover Country”) voted for Bush, and the vision that this represents the “Real America” of “Real Americans”.  I guess the two things to study are this map.:

And this route.  As you can see, their feat is impossible.  I think they absolutely had to step on a crack in Georgia.  They have been soiled by a Democratic Congress-critter.  It also appears that they did not take the “road less taken” in avoiding some Democratic district in Tennessee — tsk tsk.

Other than that — It’s clear and circuitously awkward sailing, down and up and around various circles on to a thin splice of the Pacific Ocean.  Given their track record so far, I believe they will end up in any number of more Democratic districts.  I suppose it will be interesting to see which way they go in the fork in the road in Kansas — whether they swoop north through Idaho and Wyoming or South through Arizona and New Mexico en route to Southern California.

#1: He talks a bit off the cuff when he thinks he is off mic.  He did in 1984 and he does in 2008.

#2: So do we all, I suppose, whether or not that includes making Jewish racial jokes or speaking about castrating people.

#3: If you had asked me before this incident what Jesse Jackson thought about Obama, I would have offered up a complicated picture full of jealousy and support.  Which is what his remarks suggest.

#4: If you had asked me before this incident what Jesse Jackson thought about Obama’s Father’s Day remarks, I would have said he didn’t like them and was “talking down” to black people.  Which is what his remarks suggest.

#5: If you had asked me what Jackson thought about Obama’s “Faith Based Initiative” proposal, and Bush’s, frankly I would have no idea.

#6:  Berkely Breathed once suggested that his “Bloom County” strip could not deserve the reprinting which Calvin and Hobbes just had because the strips would be stale as Hell.   I offer that thought up with regards to thinking about Jessee Jackson.  Today Breathed does something of a xerox copy of a xerox copy of his 1980s strip.

I just saw a banner ad to a John McCain website (video) that read (ahem), next to a bold forward gruff looking John McCain

“John McCain:  Ready on Day One”.

Hm.

During a lag time on public transit, I pulled out my notebook and listed the American presidents.  I missed one.  I knew I missed one, and had to think long and hard for the rest of my trip to figure out who I missed.

So, my question is: Who did I miss?  I dub him the most obscure president in American history, and I tend to think if I gave anyone this exercise he’s likely to be one of the most skipped over presidents.

Answer I will give sooner or later in the comments section, whether anyone cares or not.