Political fringe, meet lunatic fringe.

The Laroucheites are down in Harvard Square promoting Loony Lyndon's eighth run for president, according to Charles Dodgson, who spotted the following signs being carried:

• If Americans understood Beethoven, would George Bush be President?
• No algebraic formula can prove the necessary existence of five Platonic Solids!
• Only classical singing can get Bush and Cheney the fugue out of the White House.

and this rhetorical coup de grâce:

• If you can't double the cube, your degree is worthless.

It really is hard to beat the LaRouche folks for political humor. They don't much seem to be in on the joke, which, of course, doubles the yuks. Anyhow, just for fun, this is from the beginning of his address two weeks ago to his East Coast Cadre School, bearing the unassuming title, "This Planet Will Never Forget Me." The italics are from the original transcript.

All right, so, the three subjects are: First of all, how I changed history—all three of them—one, how I changed history from 1971 on; number two, how I changed world history, including causing the opportunity, which occurred in Germany, in Saxony, in 1989, which I caused in the period between 1977 and 1983. So, I made history.

You don't understand, what's happening in Saxony, today, in terms of what happened in Saxony in 1989, in the death of the D.D.R. [East Germany] unless you understand the combined effect of what I personally did, to change history in such a way, that these events have happened, in the way they've happened.

Short version: he and his wife Helga personally reunified Germany. And Schachtians are quackademics.

A little less crazy, but a much bigger stage: watch Alan Keyes flip out during a television interview. You know, as long as we're laughing at hopeless, nutball candidacies. I hereby declare the political silly season underway!