I've gone through life dimly aware of Lyndon LaRouche. I always thought he was some sort of wacko, vaguely cultlike figure, and when I came across his followers on the street, standing behind tables, I tried not to make eye contact, much as one does when confronted by those bright-eyed young men outside the Scientology building. Yesterday, however, I got a call from a friend at 6:15 telling me, rather breathlessly, to turn on the TV. LaRouche had bought a half hour on Fox 5 here in DC (preempting The Simpsons, no less), and he was broadcasting a speech he had given in December. I watched, and my friend was kind enough to take notes. Here are some of the highlights:

We should earmark at least $6 trillion to rebuild the infrastructure of our cities so that everyone can get to work in less than a half hour. This will involve magnetic levitation.

The monetary system may crash before the broadcast of the speech is over. (It didn't.)

Hitler was created by bankers.

The medical practice should get lessons from the Norman Wars.

The Democratic Party will "die" if it doesn't recognize LaRouche as a candidate, because in a poll nearly a year ago, an "unknown" Democrat had better odds of beating Bush than any of the established candidates.

That's enough of the bullet points. Onto LaRouche's presentation: he has this weird stream of consciousness style of speaking in which he jumped from topic to topic without ever really explaining anything. I believe he said Howard Dean shouldn't even be in this country, but never really mentioned why. Then he was onto the Peloponnesian Wars or something. It was at least timeslot appropriate: I felt like I was listening to Grandpa Simpson, only with more historical references. It was kind of a disappointment, actually, though - I was expecting a little more charisma, perhaps a crazy new laser based mail system or maybe something involving aliens and a secret handshake. I mean, LaRouche was strange, don't get me wrong. The magnetic levitation thing was great. I was just hoping he'd go a little further over the edge. It's like when I wandered into the Scientology building. I was a little under the influence, and I thought I'd see what they'd try to do to me - give me a psych test, get me to sign over the rights to my refrigerator, something like that. Instead, they just gave me a tour and tried to sell me some books. It was a pretty big letdown. Where was the indoctrination? The charismatic recruiter? Why wasn't I being lowered into a pool of something? They did invite me to L. Ron Hubbard's birthday the next night, but I decided not to go. Religious cults, like fringe candidates, are never quite as much fun as you'd imagine.