End of an era

With a dozen candidates from both parties currently competing for their chance to be president, it's hard to remember all the names of the mostly interchangeable politicians. However, in the all the confusion, something important has happened. For the first time since the 1972 presidential election, Lyndon LaRouche will not be running. To anyone only familiar with his name, the wikipedia entry is a must-read. To roughly summarize, LaRouche's political views are another piece of evidence that fascism and socialism are matters of degree.

To get a fuller picture of the LaRouche empire, this article in the Washington Monthly is recommended. The most amazing aspect is the amount of money LaRouche managed to receive from the FEC as matching funds for campaign contributions. Due to massive amounts of fraud and faulty accounting, the U.S. taxpayers actually supported LaRouche's crusade to spew paranoid nonsense during every presidential election. For that reason alone, I'm happy to see this era end.