MORE ON ANDREW BREITBART’S OFFER OF $100,000 for the JournoList archives. My thoughts:
(1) If, as Jonathan Chait says, there’s nothing there, why not relieve Breitbart of his bucks?
That’s what Col. Möller said as he poured apple brandy from a crystal decanter into my snifter, handing it to me, then poured some of the pale gold liquor into his own snifter in turn, rolling it around the bottom of the glass expertly with his hook hand as he replaced the decanter on the teak tea cart. Möller stared looking glum for a moment before straightening and addressing me with a level Prussian gaze.
“If you have nothing to hide, von Em,” he asked, not unpleasantly. “Then what is your obsession with privacy?”
His tone bore only a hint of impatience, but I knew that I could not give the answer he needed — the names, the intercepts — and knew that the tone would rise much higher before the evening was long into night, knowing also the grievous distance through which a night can compel one to travel, when the path is made hard toward morning.
“You are not having your brandy?” asked Möller.
“Oh no, I am,” I said, gulping it.
I realized too late that I could have asked for a light first, then not swallowed the brandy, and then blown fire at Möller when he would not have been expecting this, as is mostly the case with people.
I gestured with my snifter. “May I have a light and another brandy?”
“Foosh” replied Möller, blowing fire at me.
(2) If you’re worried about your own stuff being released, you don’t really safeguard it by not selling out to Breitbart — you just ensure that if one of the 400 other members does, you won’t get the $100K.
We think The Joker tried this with two boats wired to explode.
(3) Here’s your chance to be Deep Throat — and maybe to settle some scores along the way…
Glenn’s moral skeleton went bendy a long time ago, but it’s still a shock to see this gelatinous being squidging past on his way to or from some petty errand of incitement, and to think that he was once a leader of our group.
It’s hard to imagine an economist being provocative, but Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner, has managed to do so.
Above: Larry Kudlow
Paul Krugman has managed to imagine an economist being provocative? I’m reading the rest of this story, and I’m reading the rest right away of it!
In his June 28 New York Times op-ed, Krugman argued that since governments around the world aren’t willing to double-down on Keynesian policies meant to stimulate the global economy, the United States and the rest of the world are facing a third depression. But on CNBC’s June 28 “The Kudlow Report,” host Larry Kudlow asked if Krugman’s premise were true…
Why, this is Krug-mania, with the arguing.
A premise? That comes before a mise. Some mises are the comprehensive kind, or ‘compromise,’ and the overall kind as opposed to the underall, i.e. ‘surmise’1 as opposed to ‘sous-.’ A miser fashions these through heat or snow. Some other mises are Ludwig von Mises. So Krugman’s premise, as we now see, is that governments around the world aren’t willing to double-down on Keynesian policies meant to stimulate the global economy. But, says Larry Kudlow, if that were true…
…how come none of the measures being applied, which Krugman advocates more of, have failed to have any effect on the current economy.
Yeah, uh, if governments aren’t willing to double down on the policies, then how come none of [the measures that Krugman advocates] have failed? Answer: because opposite?
But maybe he got the notion of ‘premise’ wrong, and meant Krugman’s conclusion. Hmm.
‘If the United States and the rest of the world are facing a third depression, then how come none of [the measures that Krugman advocates] have failed?’
Yeah, I don’t think that’s the solution either. This is like that firefight in the mud next to the bombed-out airfield where Kowalski bought it, with the mortar rounds through the treetops. I wonder if Kowalski ever fixed up that airfield? Oh heck, there are harp glissandi and a kaleidoscope pattern and I’m having a flashback.
Let’s call this what it is: A new bull market in stocks has emerged from the ashes of the financial meltdown and the deep recession that followed. And it’s signaling the onset of economic recovery. Free-market capitalism is more durable, resilient, and self-correcting than its detractors would have us believe.
[...]
Consequently, I want to change the agenda. This is much grander than what most commentators are describing. This is a new bull.
[...]
My guess is the economy will grow by 3 percent annually or slightly more in the second half of 2009 and the first part of 2010.
Oh, right. It doesn’t make sense and they’re all stupid. How did that ‘new bull’ work out, Larry?
The key question facing investors right now — on the anniversary of a record-breaking stock surge, the best in 75 years — is whether we’re headed for a second bull-market year.
Unfinished joke: Something about Kudlow winning the New-Bull Prize, perhaps in Ecchonomics.
1 Although not all men find their destiny, or having found it prove equal to it, Poor’s is to form a partnership with colleagues named Saul, O’Terry, Nast, deBrudis, and Short. (Cf.)
2 It’s ‘Frank’-ly We’ve Got a Lot of ‘Gaul’, our irregulaire column on the language of our Frenemies, the French. Number sept-vingt-mille-dix et huit, or le Temp la Gargantu-Petomaine de Choucroute in the post-Revolutionary, immediate pre-Napoleonic time system:
Bon jore, or as the French say, achoo. Well, it’s been an interesting week for… What’s that? Oh, the little crochet-de-pied or footnote up there. Wee-wee or ‘yes’ — ‘surmise.’ That’s a French word, and like many of those, it can be changed into English by doing nothing. The suffix, -ise, is the past pumpernickel of the verb, mettre (to put), such that a surmise is literally something that’s put above another, and tellingly, that other thing in French is often suspicion or sous-pêchent (i.e. ‘under-fishing,’ through which you might hook a ‘soup can,’ or soupçon). Surmise: something placed above suspicion. Ah, but then take something down from there and you’ll get a surprise.
No, that was the entire joke, or le joking. Uh, funny because why? Funny-why because -prise is the past Percival of prendre (to take). As in, a sur-prise is something that over-takes you.
Fine, then: I’ll take my soda and go sit over here while you have no soda. [blatz, foosh] Ça plane pour moi, you shook up my soda with le shaking.
† This ‘ruling class’ critique of the left has been around since Tom Wolfe’s New York magazine article, ‘Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s,’ and as Wes notes, it is currently being plied by Angelo Codevilla, a writer and thinker who differs broadly from Tom Wolfe in sucking at writing, and particularly from the early Wolfe in sucking at thinking. Viz:
[B]y what means can we consider anyone’s claim of intellectual superiority?
Conventional wisdom about Barack Obama’s and Sarah Palin’s intellects illustrates the question. I have not heard Obama’s opponents describe his intellect as anything other than “high” and him as “smart” or “very smart.” Nor have I heard Sarah Palin’s supporters describe her as bright. What can be the basis for judgments so widespread and stark? Keep in mind that none of those who pronounce themselves on Obama’s and Palin’s intellects have the slightest knowledge of what they may be relative to one another, never mind in absolute terms.
If you’re simply gaping at that paragraph, perhaps still pouring lemonade from a pitcher into your overflowing glass with a record skipping on the turntable, perhaps as two guys in masks carry your TV out the door unnoticed behind you, then that’s what I’m doing too, with an unnoticed string of drool running out the corner of my mouth, and crows and magpies taking all my shiny things as the wastebasket blazes away unnoticed. “Wow,” I think without realizing it, “that’s freaking dum, spelled d-u-m-n,” gaping as a marching band blares through the room and out the other door.
Here’s the deal — you can get a room discount (it’s at the Rio) if you sign up today. Sorry for the late notice on that. Anyway, Bradrocket and yours truly will be speaking on a panel Saturday at 4pm, tentatively titled ‘Who The Fuck Are These Guys And Where’s The Box Office For Tonight’s Carrot Top Show?’
Actually, it’s called ‘Bringing the Snark after Winning Elections,’ meaning any wisdom we impart on that topic will have an expiration date of November 2, 2010. So be warned. Our co-panelists are some real-life Internet celebrities and truly funny people — Amanda Marcotte, Jesse Taylor and Sady Doyle.
Also, Roy Edroso.
Here’s the full agenda of seminars and panels and such. Personally, I will not be missing ‘From Facebook To British Petroleum: Radicalizing The Post-Situationist Agenda From A Trans-Normative Social Networking Perspective’ with Owen Gleiberman and Al Franken.
In Watkins Glen, NY, a place with few Hispanics, this holiday neglected in Mexico is merely an excuse for drink specials. Ahh, and what message does that send the illegals?
* If seeing Cinco de Mayo signs at “several eating and drinking establishments” is the last interesting thing noticed by Jim “Tex” Terry, the very man who clattered, as we imagine, on an IBM Selectric in a knotty-pine basement office with old issues of National Geographic somewhere evident, to produce the line, “I celebrate holidays made in America, about America, for America,” then an interesting thing that we just noticed is that Juneteenth seems to have swung around and missed him this year, fancy that.
ABOVE: Jim Terry (center) and Mini Daddy (Adriansito) El Nino Mas Bonito*
Usually the columnists over at RenuMurka.com seem to be stuck back in the early nineteenth century, at least the more progressive ones do, with the others more firmly lodged in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. So, it’s quite refreshing to find Jim “Ugly American” Terry stuck only in early May.
Apparently he’s been mulling over the indignity of Cinco de Mayo since, well, Cinco de Mayo and finally got around to writing a lengthy column to get it all off his chest.
Our story starts in scenic Schuyler County, New York, in early May:
Schuyler County, New York is a beautiful area of the state. Watkins Glen, our ultimate destination and the county seat, sits at the south end of Seneca Lake. …
The forested hills which rise from Seneca’s shores are dotted with … vineyards. The Finger Lakes area of New York is wine country, and Seneca Lake is home to more wineries than any of the other lakes. …
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Schuyler County’s estimated 2009 population was 18,720, down about 2.6 percent from the 2000 census count. The 2008 estimate of white population was 96 percent. The 2008 estimate of persons of Hispanic or Latino origin was 1.5 percent.
Ah, yes, what travelogue would be complete without a prominent mention of the relative absence of brown people, taco stands and garlic breath? This is probably our first clue that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong with Terry’s column.
We arrived in Watkins Glen late Sunday, May 2, and my wife and I checked into the hotel. As the week progressed we noticed signs at several eating and drinking establishments about the upcoming Cinco de Mayo celebration.
Sheez, even when you go out of your way to vacation in a place without any beaners, the sneaky little cucarachas sneak up on you anyway.
About one third of Texas’ population is Hispanic or Latino, the majority being of Mexican ancestry. We know about Cinco de Mayo in Texas. I asked a woman in Watkins Glen if she knew anything about Cinco de Mayo. “No,” she said. “Only that it is a reason to have drink specials.”
Whew! Just drink specials. Old Jimbo was getting worried that the town might bus in a bunch of poncho-clad Mexeecans from Juarez who’d get all liquored up on tequila and then go mariachi-ing and chimichanga-ing down the streets of Watkins Glen, trying to shove their thick pork quesadillas down the unwilling throats of decent white folks.
That gives us time for a little history lesson from Jim who, you’ll be surprised to learn, is quite the expert on the history of countries where dark people live:
On May 5, 1862, the Mexican army defeated a French force at the town of Puebla. Cinco de Mayo is observed in the state of Puebla, but it is not a national holiday in Mexico.
Ah yes, the well-established rule that only national holidays can be celebrated elsewhere. Wingnuts are always complaining about rules being shoved down their throats by the nanny state, but at least those rules sometimes make sense.
I wondered: Why is Cinco de Mayo celebrated in Watkins Glen, New York, 2000 miles from Puebla, Mexico and with an estimated Hispanic population (with no estimate of nationality) of fewer than 500 persons in the entire county?
The smart kids can see where this is going: we celebrate Cinco de Mayo in tiny little mostly-white villages in order to encourage illegal immigration
Many of the people who complain about the [illegal immigrant] problem are not beyond going to the local drive-in grocery, where out-of-work illegals often hang out, and raising two or three fingers to indicate how many workers they want to take home for cheap yard work. They then pay in cash, … and … they have encouraged to bring in more illegal foreign entrants/occupants with the hope of unreportable income. What message do America’s businesses send by adopting a minor foreign holiday which the majority of the population of the country of its origin doesn’t celebrate?
That’s right. The message we send is come on in, Mexicans, because if you do, then once a year near the beginning of May you can watch the gringos get silly on $3 Coronas and cheap margaritas while listening to bad mariachi music. Frankly, I’m surprised that given this opportunity there are any Mexicans left in Mexico.
If Weigel, even if in jest, could privately call for an informal information boycott of Byron York, then his exposure and destruction [popping of thousands of beer cans] [cheers, braying] [hushing shh! shh! whispering shh!]. . .uh, sad day for privacy [guy belches "woot"] um, Internet with the cyberspace.
Is that you, Andy? Where on earth have you been? I was getting worried about you! Seriously, dude, I was.
Reacting to the diatribe against America that Faisal Shahzad launched into at his guilty plea . . .
Guilty plea? Andy, did you say “guilty plea“?
Reacting to the diatribe against America that Faisal Shahzad launched into at his guilty plea earlier this week, the NYPD commish said, “The threat from radical Islam shows no sign of receding.”
Well, indeed you did say “guilty plea.” In fact, you mentioned Shahzad’s “guilty plea earlier this week.” Hmmm, that would be the guilty plea that Shazad entered four days earlier on Monday of this week, on June 21, 2010, at about 4:30 p.m. to be precise.
And just what, pray tell, Andy, where you doing just hours before that guilty plea? If I’m not mistaken hadn’t you just published an article — if I may be so generous as to call it that — at America’s Shittiest Website™ on Shahzad. At 11:30 a.m. to be precise
After the initial spate of chest-beating, we hadn’t heard much from the Justice Department about the case of would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and the many ways it illustrates how splendidly the criminal justice system performs in terrorism cases — even the cases of enemy combatants who could otherwise be held indefinitely and interrogated for intelligence purposes.
Now comes word from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York that Shahzad has been indicted. . . . This is a strange development.
Attorney General Eric Holder has been telling anyone who would listen that Shahzad is cooperating and providing valuable information. Civilian due process has been no obstacle at all, Holder insists . . . Yet it is highly unusual to indict a cooperator. . . . [T]he standard practice is to strike a deal, complete with a cooperation agreement and a guilty plea. . . .
That must have been just a teensy bit embarrassing for you, Andy, to be opining that Shahzad would never enter a guilty plea just hours before he did in fact enter a guilty plea. There you were dissing the Attorney General for insisting on all this useless due process folderol when he should have been water-boarding Shahzad in the bowels of the Justice Department until Shahzad revealed the details of his plan to build a nuke from lime Jello, kerosene, a glow-in-the-dark watch dial and four D batteries. And then it’s wham, bam, shazam, and Shahzad pleads guilty. How humiliating.
Of course, a real man would do a solid and admit his mistake. But, oh no, not Andy, who ran out of the room like a scalded dog and went into hiding until at last, days later, he scrounged up the stones to mention the embarrassing fact of the guilty plea that was never ever going to happen and even then only to suggest that the guilty plea was not a good thing but was further proof that the Mooslims were still eating Eric Holder’s lunch.
You know, the Obama administration could hunt down bin Laden and parade his head on a stick down Pennsylvania Avenue, and Andy would complain that the stick was too short.
1 The day might already have arrived on which someone could publish a conservative column made up wholly of banal observations like “socks go on feet,” and “gee, it looks like rain,” and have anger rise to the boil.
It appears that an attractive-baby-making service — BeautifulPeople.com — has drawn in a lot of dumbasses. Some 600,000 customers from 150 countries, in fact.
The concept is simple and intuitive, if you have a very rudimentary understanding of genetics: take the jizz of two very attractive people, and the resulting baby will be even more attractive.
But this is not how genetics works. This is not how real-life experiments in genetics work. There are demonstrable factors like reversions to the mean and genetic drift that make a simple mating of the most-attractive couple not necessarily likely to produce the most-attractive child. Not to mention that the theory of natural selection does not hold that the conditions that define today’s beauty/strength/child-bearing capacity/wit/smarts will define tomorrow’s beauty/strength/child-bearing capacity/wit/smarts … in fact, quite the opposite. It’s a bit of a crap-shoot.
Only dumb and pathetic dumbasses are lured by this sort of pseudo-science. And there are a lot of them out there, so my advice is to invest in BeautifulPeople.com — it’s bound to make tons of money.
So I’m at the Nvidia campus today to check out the new GPU whatchajiggers that are going to change the face of computing … and I’m under strict NDA, but these thingamobs are pretty ace widgetry, to be honest. No problem there.
And that’s not the story. The story is that part of the day was a series of breakaway sessions that involved heavy petting with the likes of the Weta Digital crew that made Avatar, and some Euro company that jacks up the Ferrari customer experience via online ray traced bread and circuses, and Adobe, which many of you may know as makers of expensive licensed shite that you use to fuck around with pixels on computers.
That last company is important, as it is the subject of the current story. And more specifically, the Adobe mouthpiece who delivered said story and in doing so, made me hate Adobe more than I already do as a dedicated hater of things that make other people happy and/or money and/or what’s the diff?
What follows is a lesson for marketers and PR types in how NOT to engage your audience if you have pre-determined that it possesses a fraction of a brain collectively.
1. Do not open your preso by declaring that your latest product (about which few in attendance give a crap) is a ‘game-changer’. That will be determined by readily available statistics later. And it’s a terrible cliche.
2. Do not ask the reporters in the room if they have heard about your latest product (CS5 in this case, if you must know) and what they think about it. People do not like to be put on the spot when all they are expecting from you is free coffee and some corporate swag. People who can later rip you a new one from bully pulpits are particularly the sorts of people you do not want to engage in this manner.
3. Finally, and most importantly, do not brag that your company has had a hand in literally *everything* your audience has ever touched. This was actually said by Adobe’s agent at today’s event. And in the sterile modern setting of Nvidia’s headquarters, it made a sort of sense. All of the labels and signage and iconography on all of the many very new things that surrounded us were *probably* realized in some way via an Adobe image manipulation product.
But to say, as the Adobe person did, that ‘it’s so totally great to work for a company that has had a hand in EVERYTHING you encounter in life’ (her example: the Cokes we were drinking at the time), is to make any reasonable person who knows about pine cones and asphalt and human artifacts fashioned before 1990 very, very angry and resentful indeed. And very possibly dismissive of everything useful you might have to say following that outburst of transparent evangelism.
So let that be a lesson to you, corporate marketers. Treat the (however borderline) intelligence of grumpy assholes who can later write about you with at least a modicum of respect.
The summer after 5th grade, we got that book out from the library. We read it excitedly through our horn-rimmed Dexter glasses while listening nonstop to Perry Como’s Como Comes Alive.
So the Democrats have…
This is going to be something that reflects poorly on them, we can just tell.
So the Democrats have finally admitted they will not produce a budget plan this year. This is the ultimate in political cowardice. To understand how cowardly, one must understand what a budget plan really is.
A plan. A plan for a budget? This is when you plan to make a budget, or is a plan that is made on a budget. That’s infinity cowardly.
Well, glad we cleared that up. The penultimate in political cowardice is probably triple or dipple infinity.
In short, a budget is an outline, a roadmap, a guide for future spending and revenues. It does not actually spend anything or take any money in itself. It’s just a blueprint.
So in long, it’s just a budget plan. But in short, it’s a blueprint plus hummana-hummana-hummana-wordity-yakkity-bla.
One thing is for certain. Here we find the true and factual statement that when you make a budget, it does not go straight out the door and get in your car and start the engine, then release the parking brake and put the car in drive, driving thus to and fro, stopping hither and thither, flouncing and pouncing both higgledy and piggledy, over dale no less than hill — to spend or take all your money in itself, or any other elf, let alone all its ilk. That’s what a budget doesn’t do.
Dude, I just frickin’ asked you to let those ilk alone.
Aah, well, that joke worked in theory. Back to Erick:
Think of how you do your family budget. You may budget to spend $100 a week on food, $40 a week on gas, and $20 a week on entertainment. Big categories.
As opposed to trifles like shelter and medical care.
You don’t have to budget for Cheerios versus eggs, or regular versus super unleaded, or movie night versus mini-golf. Those detailed decisions come later, as you go along in life.
We’ve just found out why Erick’s soufflés don’t always come off well, his car runs lousy, and he can only get a few minutes into Braveheart each time before being asked to pick up his recliner and ottoman and move out of the way of the #7-hole putt-putt prairie dog jamboree.
But the family budget sets the parameters for big categories of future spending.
The ultimate parameters are one of the most unique, um, criterion of phenomena.
No, seriously. You budget big categories like food, but detailed decisions like Cheerios versus eggs comes later in life — and this is what sets the parameters for big categories of future spending?
A hot wind blows your hat off, and the Speedball Express comes roaring past on the Chattahoochee-to-Wichita run, snagging a canvas mailbag as it whooshes into the live-rock tunnel under the foothills of Old Baldy. Inside that mailbag was my brain.
The same is true for a budget resolution in Washington. It sets the parameters for big categories of spending—say, “transportation” or “international affairs.” The details of which dollars go where come later in the appropriations bills, tax bills, or direct spending bills.
In other words, a budget resolution is the most basic fiscal legislation that Washington can produce. And get this: it’s not even binding! A budget resolution does not go to the President for signature and thus does not have the force of law.
As Wikipedia explains: “A budget resolution, which is one form of a concurrent resolution, binds Congress, but is not a law, and so does not require the President’s signature.” Huh. So Erick can hike stuff, and all he has to do is change the wording and make facts wrong? Sweet.
The budget resolution serves as a blueprint for the actual…
A blueprint, yes. Welp, let’s take the cap off this 1.5-liter bottle of cheap gin. [dook-dook-dook-dook] Ahhh, shmooth. [sound of body falling to floor]
So let’s recap: the Democrats have just admitted that they are not able to pass the most basic, almost simplistic fiscal outline that’s not even binding anyway.
Re-uncap tha damn bottle, ya big red [hic!] galoot…
Notes:
* Began as a pun on ‘budget,’ wandered, lost narrative. 1 Wants a picture of that outlaw menace Spider Man for the evening edition.
How many Clintons does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one, but there aren’t many interns who nickname their pussy ‘light bulb’! Zing! Zam! I’m here all week! Try the veal!
On this day in history, that first sentence could be the one that’s the most dense-packed with stupid of all sentences in an Erickson post, and therefore, until proven otherwise, in all of human discourse. “Continue to screw consumers with laws against business” is almost beautiful. It’s a stark, unadorned construction of ideas that required literally decades of work by the postwar right, first in the building of institutions and infrastructure,2 then in releasing payload after payload of bad-faith claims and contorted analyses into the atmosphere, until at last, a sufficient degree of besozzlement was realized that a sensible moderate-income American might expect to encounter such a phrase outside of the nearly plotless string of laugh-lines that make up a Sinclair Lewis novel.
For here is George Babbitt at the breakfast table reading the newspaper: “Why, here’s another thing. They continue to screw consumers with laws against business.”
Here’s Babbitt again, down at the Elks Club with the gents:
Well, banks have been giving free checking accounts, but then charging irresponsible check holders overdraft fees for drawing more money out their accounts than is there.
“How’s that again, Georgie?” said Vergil Gunch, Zenith’s biggest coal dealer.
In other words, only the spendthrifts pay.
The almost-beauty of Erickson’s word-sculpture, and I’ll repeat it: “continue to screw consumers with laws against business,” is that anybody with a lick of, and I quote again: “basic economic sense,” knows that consumers and business are inherently, tautologically, by the nature of what ‘consumers’ and ‘business’ are, opposed in their basic interests. For example, buyers want low prices, while sellers want high prices.
In a larger sense, the great project of the right in America since the reaction against Jacksonianism, or fundamentally since Hamilton, has been to advance the interests of the propertied and wealthy, the employers and sellers, in a system set up to respond to the will of the majority, who necessarily will mostly be employees and buyers.
This is not possible to achieve except by fooling the majority that their interests are different from what they are, manipulating them to exert their political power in various foibles and whoopsies: to shoot wealth away in a circus cannon; to be maneuvered into quarrels with the Blacksons next door and the Juanses around back; to put the car in gear and have the garage door pulled off by a sneaky chain, and that night to have the car driven off skidding and beeping from the wide-open garage; to find clowns switching your water and sewer lines, then run out to have other clowns switch the sewer and gas, then run in and someone flushes the john and blows out all the windows, then run out as clowns enter through the windows, then run back in, etc.
But Congress now says banks cannot charge overdraft fees without first getting the consumer’s permission. Fat chance that will happen. So banks are going to start charging fees merely to have a checking account.
Hey buddy, tough chance, fat luck. Congress says clowns can’t rifle through your pockets without permission. Who’ll give permission!? So clowns are banned from your pockets! That’s how you just got screwed.
Where will you get your negative clown money now that your pockets have lost the guaranteed right to have clowns in them?
No, I mean WTF!?
This is not an unintended consequence. This was quite foreseeable except to Democrats.
Democrats did this thing, and it was not unintended, and it was quite foreseeable, except to Democrats.
There is a small, round figure standing on the moon-slatted sidewalk down by the corner, under the sign that says “bus stop.” It is holding a little suitcase with a little shirttail sticking out of it. That is my brain.
2 Actually, ‘first’ for the right was to delouse from Fascism. Among the forgotten sagas of the American right is a funny culture war between American admirers of British civilization, and American admirers of Germanic civilization, that was first bruited this way and that way in the years leading up to WWI, but that broke out with rancorous oompah and bagpipe in the ’30s, as a proxy battle between groups that could without great imprecision have been termed as ‘not Nazis’ and ‘Nazis.’ In the latter category was much of the right, while another large portion of the right still imagined the future through the corporatism of Mussolini. The distinction was chiefly in which arrangement was seen as the better way to combat Bolshevism. The delousing lasted roughly until Russell Kirk.
Obama believes in the rule of law — his law. No other law is relevant. No other law matters.
‘But no president can reason,’ we objected.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Lamb, ‘there is one that can.’
When Obama speaks, he expects the world to obey.
In his Tuesday night performance, he said ‘I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business …’ ‘Inform him?’ Where does Barack Hussein Obama get the authority to issue orders to the CEO of a private corporation?
From his bloodthirsty pagan Moon God?
There is no such authority in the Constitution. There is no law that empowers the president to ‘inform’ the CEO of any corporation how he will spend the corporation’s money. Obama couldn’t care less about the Constitution or the law.
There was no Constitutional authority for him to essentially take over General Motors and Chrysler, or the banks. Obama couldn’t care less about the law. When he speaks, he expects the world to obey.
Don’t believe it? Why just the other day, Lamb overheard this telling exchange between Obama and the world:
Obama: Honey?
World: What?
Obama: Where’s my super suit?
World: What?
Obama: Where … is … my … super … suit?
World: I, uh, put it away.
[A helicopter explodes outside]
Obama: WHERE?
World: WHY do you NEED to know?
Obama: I need it!
[Obama rummages through another room in the White House]
World: Uh-uh! Don’t you think about running off doing no derrin’-do. We have been PLANNING this dinner for two months!
Obama: The public is in danger!
World: My evening’s in danger!
Obama: You tell me where my suit is, woman! We are talking about the greater good!
World: ‘Greater good?’ I am your wife! I’m the greatest GOOD you are ever gonna get!
You go, World! But we digress and thankfully, Lamb will no longer be silent, Clarice:
Obama can’t comprehend any limitations on his power. The moment Arizona enacted a law that empowered state law enforcement officers to check for citizenship, Obama bad-mouthed the state legislature and Governor — without even reading the law. There have been arrogant presidents before, but none that can compare to the sickening self-centered narcissism that exudes from this man.
We heard Obama replaced that bust of Winston Churchill with a sculpture of himself. Covered in a mirror. That has a string that you can pull and it says, ‘I complete me.’
Obama’s declaration that America must end its addiction to oil misses the point entirely. America is not addicted to oil at all; America is addicted to the life-style made possible by the most efficient, abundant energy source yet discovered.
You say I’m addicted to Vicodin. Hey jackass, what I’m addicted to is the sweet embrace of numbness made possible by the most abundant pad of blank scripts yet discovered (by my brother-in-law in the trash containers behind the VA clinic last Tuesday). To-may-to, to-mah-to.
In a capitalist society such as America, government’s role in the market is limited to providing a level playing field for the entrepreneurs who risk their own assets to provide a product or service in hopes of making a profit.
Which is why Obama has NO BUSINESS meddling with what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, which is a body of water and clearly not a playing field. Except maybe for yachts or speedboats, but still.
The reason the nation has not switched to solar or wind, or other alternative energy sources has nothing to do with our addiction to oil; it has everything to do with cost and convenience.
Ah, yes, those old conservative maxims: ‘No pain, gain’ … ‘Let’s take the easy way out’ … ‘Put a little elbow grease into it — sorry, did I say “elbow”? I meant “bacon” …’
Obama has decided that cost is irrelevant. He wants to wean America from oil and bond the nation to exotic alternatives, regardless of the cost. When Obama speaks, he expects people to obey.
Okay, we get it already, Lamb. Obama’s a liberal fascist martinet hellbent on destroying America, blah blah blah. Why don’t you say something really fucking crazy?
He is ready to artificially and unnecessarily increase the cost of carbon fuels in the form of taxes and fees, in order to fund subsidies for wind and solar energy sources. It doesn’t matter to Obama that the environmental disaster that will be created by the solar farms and wind farms is much greater than the Gulf oil spill.
