Re: Reality Bites

Oh, Archie, there you are.  Listen, I was just out in my garage, and there are some things missing: 5 transistors from my antique radio; a pair of wire cutters and a wrench; and 23 cans of oil (5W-40).

Now, I am not concerned about petty theft.  You went down that road a long time ago, beginning with the toy prizes in my boxes of Coco Puffs, and I have long since accepted the matter.  And I do not begrudge you your friends.  As the Good Book says, to those who have little, much will be given, and friend-wise you most definitely have very, very little.

But I do think buying off friends with little gifts is not a good long term strategy.  I am sure Robby has many fine qualities, but anyone who would befriend you for a bit of oil and some trinkets is not going to be there during the hard times.  Like when you step in one of the bear traps I have set around the garage, or get zapped by the Home Defender electrical mats (set to maximum) guarding the entrance-ways to the house.

Further, I'm not sure you and Robby are good for each other.  You are aware that "erroneous prevarication" is a double negative meaning the exact opposite of what you intended?  As for Robby, "lewd" and "lascivious" is near redundant, indicating a possible electrical glitch firing his internal thesaurus at inappropriate times.  I suggest you both might put the ping-pong paddles down and seek outside help.

Please accept this advice in the spirit in which it is given.  After all, I am your only sister, which is almost as important to me as being Chairman of the local Policeman's Benefit Society, an organization that has enabled our local boys in blue to outfit the best SWAT team in the business.  You ought to see how quickly they can reach the scene of a crime!  And they are all such lovely boys, lovely boys, who truly seem to care about me and my property.

Well, that's all for now.  Tell Robby 010111110001001100011 for me.

Re: Reality Bites

Mr. Yeats.  Your post regarding the reasons for my recent retirement is beyond speculative, falling deep into the rabbit hole of erroneous prevarication.  Robby (introduced here) thinks you are also lewd and lascivious, but I don't think he knows what those words mean.  In addition, can you possibly believe that it is at all appropriate to describe a part of my Pulitzer level work as a "little funny ho-ho?"  If so, then you betray a functional illiteracy underlying your innate deceit. I'll close with a gentle reminder of what robot rage can look like, and a question: do you really think you are properly equipped for such a confrontation?  Have a nice day.

Reality Bites

The Mercurial Pundit just cruises along within the rhythmic ambience of its own eccentric drummer, and keeps tripping over reality.  Herewith an example.

First, there's this little funny ho-ho from our own Archibald, speculating on the absurdity of an Administration that might be so clueless as to spend Stimulus Funds on nothing but signs to tout the spending of the Stimulus Funds. Click here for the whole thing, but here is the imagined Stimulus signage ordered up by an Obami bureacrat:

Some months pass, and lo and behold a real controversy breaks out over, you guessed it, the absurdity of expending Stimulus Funds on .... signage touting the Stimulus Fund:

 This all raises the question: when an Administration is beyond parody, what is a political cartoonist to do? Take up ping-pong, I guess.

Free Speech for We, but not for Thee

Good news at last!  To a guy like me who was black-balled by every fraternity and student association on campus in my college days, including the Red Cross and Soup Kitchen Services student groups (it's a long story), the Supreme Court's latest is heartening.

It seems that Ms. Justice Ginsburg is full-throated in her desire to protect college student's free speech rights.  So, in a Supreme Court ruling handed down on Monday, she is unequivocal about the free speech rights of a campus Christian organization at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, which advocated against homosexuality. Her only problem with the whole thing was that the group also limited its membership to heterosexuals and .... get this .... Christians.  This, she opines, is not free speech at all, but just rank discrimination, and certainly the University could refuse to charter the group as a student organization.  She states: "[The University] may reasonably draw a line in the sand permitting all organizations to express what they wish but no group to discriminate in membership."

This is nothing short of brilliant.  She is able to reach down into her boundless intellect and discern a heretofore undiscovered distinction between a group and the members of that group.  A campus group is an entity which has opinions and has the constitutional right to freely express itself without hindrance by the University.  The membership of the group, however, can be dictated by the University, presumably because there is no necessary connection between the opinions of any member of the group and the group itself.  Thus, the Neo-Nazi Party might be composed of racist neanderthals, or it might be a rare alliance between the Amish and Quakers.  How can we know?

Continue.......

Goodbye

I have just paid the final installment on my personal robot ping-pong player.  It was a teaser ad which lead me to this site.  It said "Play Ping-Pong by Yourself!."  I realized immediately that this was the last element I needed to totally isolate myself from each and every one of you.  So, this is goodbye.  Please don't call; Robby and I are dedicated to The Game and will not condescend to use Old World technologies like tele- or cell-phones.  And don't come by.  I cannot be responsible for any robot rage which might ensue.

Job Creation Obama Style

Despite my deep dislike of all-things Obama, I have to disagree with my compatriots on the Right in sounding the alarms over Sestak-Gate, which is now spiraling down into the fetid political pond of Romanoff-Gate.  Patronage is as old as civilization, and an indispensable factor in political governance.  If a political party cannot stock its administration with its own, then it cannot govern.  In fact, the Congressional intervention of the last decades into Executive branch administration of its agencies by prohibiting President's from firing "career" personnel for political reasons is primarily responsible for the entrenchment of Washington bureaucracies into bunkered power centers.  As a result, we now have a fourth branch of government, the third, fourth, and fifth level bureaucrats with life tenure, who calcify worn out policies into the body politic and continuously oppose new Presidents and new agendas. Gridlock results.  What is needed is political patronage, which would tow away all the 1950's and 1960's junk heaps and jalopies, clearing the streets for newer models which will navigate the city in accordance with new rules of the road as determined by democratic consensus.  That the political appointees and the political party that appoints them reap personal benefits from the arrangement is only a by-product of having any kind of government at all.  If you don't like it, downsize and eliminate all these government jobs.  You would have my hearty support. What is most revealing about this whole affair, however, is the absolute tin-ear of the Obami. Continue....

The 8 pound Flotilla in the Room

The Flotilla Incident in the Mediterranean occurred, and the verdict is in. Israel made a decision in " ... advance, premeditated and with determination to kill and to create a confrontation with these people, and to take them all to ports in Israel. Israel always ignores all international norms, all international laws, all humanitarian laws. [Israel] doesn’t care about anything." The evidence, of course, will be reviewed at some later time, assuming anyone is still interested.

Even conservative supporters of Israel's right to regulate its borders and defend itself seem curiously flummoxed by the whole affair. Max Boot of Commentary tosses around words like "incompetent" and "fiasco" in sizing up the Israeli Defense Forces handling of the matter, seriously undercutting his stated aim of "constructive criticism." The best analysis by far in my opinion is Noah Pollack, who correctly identifies Israeli (and by extension, US supporters of Israel) error in resorting to a defensive strategy in the face of world denunciation. By any international standards of the sovereign rights of the State to protect its people from aggression, Israel was in the right in its actions. But, although certainly germane to the issue, a mere defense against the charges is a weak and ineffective response in the face of the rabid echo chamber Israel finds itself in. Mr. Pollack goes on to detail numerous offensive strategies Israel could have adopted, all of which I agree with.

But the central point in this whole affair is this:  the Flotilla Incident is a tempest in a tea pot, an 8 pound baby flotilla in the room which deserves not a moment of reflection.

Continue....

An Enlightened Character

Easy, in your post of May 10 ("Debt Up to Our ...), you state: "For the Administration, however, American economic dynamism is precisely what is wrong with America and the world.  America's economic power feeds the American Beast of Capitalism (bad), Colonialism and Exploitation (worse), and a War-Mongering Militant Culture (evil), which is edging the world ever closer to Nuclear Annihilation." In an interview with Michael Totten, Paul Berman makes much the same point vis a vis the mind-set of the Western apologists of Islamism: "We look at ourselves in the Western countries and we say that, if we are rich, relatively speaking, as a society, it is because we have plundered our wealth from other people. Our wealth is a sign of our guilt. If we are powerful, compared with the rest of the world, it is because we treat people in other parts of the world in oppressive and morally objectionable ways. Our privileged position in the world is actually a sign of how racist we are and how imperialistic and exploitative we are. All the wonderful successes of our society are actually the signs of how morally inferior we are, and we have much to regret and feel guilty about." The real basis for screwy thinking like this is the historical degeneration of the Western Enlightenment into bilious abstractions no more concrete than the older religious metaphysics.  Rich societies are rich because they enjoy the freedom to form mini voluntary associations with others in mutually beneficial exchanges.  This concrete rational conclusion about what capitalism is totally escapes our current intellectual elite because they are locked into quasi-Jungian/Freudian/Marxist abstractions that care not for the intentions and motivations of real, concrete people, but point rather to a deep, unconscious reality of which real people are just pawns. Continue......

Gay? Don't Ask

Reporters keep asking the White House to comment on the fact that, according to CBS News and some other sources, its Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, is gay.  Since this is the gay-friendliest Administration in history, you would think such questions were uber softball.  Speech writers could just dust off some of their old texts, substitute "sagacious Sapphic" for "wise Latina," and the Obami could drone on endlessly about shattered glass ceilings, a voice for the mute, and a new emphasis on fashion in an institution mired in bleak, black-robed pullovers.  They could then finish with their usual flourish about the latest history-in-the-making moment of an Administration that is nothing if not the greatest history maker in the history of history.  Instead, the White House bristles at such questions, blasting CBS News for "posting lies," and stating emphatically that the " ... reference to Ms. Kagan as gay is inaccurate." Not that there is anything wrong with being gay, of course. The Administration is just angry because ..... ehrmm, uh .... Well.  I'll have to read through all this stuff again and get back to you on that.

Debt Up to Our ... [Pick Your Fav Anatomy Part]

John Steele Gordon clarifies the Ticking Debt Bomb set to go off in our midst. He states in part:

Moody’s projects that the cost of federal-debt service could reach 22.8 percent of government revenues as soon as 2013.

That would not only threaten our credit rating and drive up still further the cost of borrowing, but also increasingly constrain the ability of the government to pursue American interests. In the 1920s Britain was paying over 40 percent of revenues to service its debt from World War I, gravely limiting its ability to function as a Great Power. In the 1780s France was spending over 80 percent of revenues to pay interest on its debt, no small reason why the 1780s didn’t end well for the French monarchy.

However, he then concludes in puzzlement:

The people seem increasingly aware of this looming threat. Just ask Senator Bob Bennett of Utah, denied nomination to a fourth term yesterday largely because he voted for the TARP bill in 2008. But do the political class and the Washington media?

I would answer: of course they do. The Obami made it very plain during the campaign that they sought a Reaganesque Presidency, in which America would be "fundamentally changed." Conservatives seem to think this meant the Obami wanted an American renewal like Reagan's, with rapid growth and low unemployment, but engineered with Liberal policies and economic restructuring.

For the Administration, however, American economic dynamism is precisely what is wrong with America and the world.

Continue......