The Shape of Things to Come

21. September 2012 · Comments Off on The Shape of Things to Come · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun With Islam, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!, Veteran's Affairs · Tags: , , , , , , ,

It’s been another one of those weeks, blog-fans … now, I do want you all (all both of you) to put your hands together and welcome back Radar, a contributor from away back, who has decided to get back into long-form blogging again. Yay, Radar! Welcome home!

As for the rest of it … well, welcome to interesting times. Now it is something like six weeks, give or take a handful of days until Election Day, and honestly, it cannot come too soon for me. Every week and every day there’s some new bit o’drama inflated by the lapdog mainstream media into something that spells Certain Doom for Romney/Ryan, and Glorious Victory for the Dear Leader. A sooper secrit recording of Romney talking to fundraisers and being bluntly honest that a certain percentage of potential voters probably wouldn’t vote for him and upset their entitlement applecart … oooh! Gaffe of the week, according to all the talking and editorial heads. That a good number of the conservative-libertarian blogger types taking note of all this would not have disagreed with this insight – although the exact percentage might be open for discussion – appears to be something that the usual media lapdogs have chosen to ignore. Also – that the tape was edited, and Jimmy Carter’s hapless grandson chose to do his bit for the Dems … jeese, doesn’t he have a real job to go to? Apparently many of these Millennial’s don’t. The Daughter Unit, better known as Blondie does – having several different jobs to go to, none of which offer health care benefits. Not a shock, considering that some of them are part-time, and for the rest, she is an independent contractor – and is qualified to go to the VA.

OK – back to election matters – wish I may, wish I might – know why Mittens Romney is the party of the clueless, disconnected rich, Thurston Howell-type … whereas, a candidate who has a fund-raising event at a venue owned by a fabulously wealthy rap music* entrepreneur and his performer wife featuring a tower made of $800 bottles of champagne and charging $40,000 a plate for the privilege is a defender of the downtrodden middle- and working-class. This is probably one of those mysteries, like that of Hollywood blockbusters which never turn a profit to pay off the hapless actors and writers who signed contracts for a percentage of the net profits.

But $800 bottles of champagne, all in gold – Talk about ghetto fabulous. I’ll shudder over the gross vulgarity of that and move on, while noting that if the stuff tastes any better than Crystal, I’ll be mildly surprised. And Blondie has sampled Crystal – through the offices of a date with a surfer dude she met in Ocean Beach, once upon a time. She tells me it didn’t taste any better than the $6 supermarket champagne that we buy for celebrating the New Year.

It does look as if the O-Man did, in his rounds of entertainment and talk shows, actually stumble into some real reporters, prepared to ask hard questions instead of the usually softly thrown Nerf ball. Just a hint, big guy – the local Hispanic community does care very much about what has been happening south of the US border for quite a while. Fast and Furious has managed to kill hundreds of Mexican citizens, many of them innocent bystanders to the drug gang wars. Meanwhile, the rest of us look at the Middle East going up in flames, and wonder if a brand-new Obama campaign motto and a logo featuring a re-imagining of the US flag with stripes bearing a curious resemblance to the dragging finger-marks made in blood on the doorway of the US consulate in Benghazi was all that good an idea. Your mileage may vary, however.

Let’s see … is Twitter a means for hapless celebrities to reveal themselves once and for all as utter morons and/or bigots? I guess so; the evidence is compiled at Twitchy. Alas, it looks like Bette Midler joins my steadily lengthening list of stars and personalities who have so pissed me off that I will never pay money for anything they are in. Bette, Bette, Bette … we do not, in fact, have a blasphemy law in this country. Citizens may not be arrested for saying things that embarrass the government or an established religion … and if they were, then Andres Serrano and the producer of The Book of Mormon would be in big, big trouble.

And that was my week – yours?

(* insert viciously skeptica quote marks around that word)

On the Defense of Free Speech

13. September 2012 · Comments Off on On the Defense of Free Speech · Categories: Fun With Islam, Media Matters Not, My Head Hurts, Politics, Rant

OK, so call me retrograde, old fashioned, a bigot or the ever-popular ‘raaaaacist’ but I actually believe in free speech and free thought; for everybody, not just the ones that I agree with.
There is the caveat to this, of course. If you depend upon the larger public finding your persona, your manufactured or intellectual output appealing enough to purchase it … well, there might be potential customers disenchanted and disinclined to do so, should they find your exercise of free speech insulting or offensive. They are perfectly free to refrain from partaking in your product or purchasing it … it is still, so I have been assured, still mostly a free country. Buy Chick-fil-A, or not. Listen to the Dixie Chicks … or not. Read the New York Times … or not. Watch Game of Thrones… on not, depending on how much you feel strongly about personal opinions. The right to speak is, has been, and ought to still be paramount.

Concurrent with that is the understanding that others disagree, or even be offended … but they do not have any right to silence the offending speech. Not with threats of violence, or the law, or even a faux-appeal to manners or to the perversion known as political correctness. The deity knoweth that Christians, Jews, Mormons, Baptists and all have taken their various lumps from comedians, artists and movie-makers in the last decades, or more. Why should the ever-offended elements of the Religion of Peace get a pass? Oh, yeah – because they go rabid, and blow up stuff and cut people’s heads off, and burn embassies every time someone looks at them cross-eyed. Look, this just won’t do, and it’s a serious problem, but it doesn’t look like going softly-softly is getting us anyway. If free speech can be abrogated by threats … well, then, it isn’t free speech any longer.

I find it bloody appalling that certain pundits, politicians and high military officers have had the bare-faced gall to suggest that in order to placate Middle Eastern mobs that criticism and mockery of Islam by free citizens of an independent and democratic republic should be off the table entirely … and in fact should be prosecuted legally. Again, are we, or are we not a free people? Do we surrender one of our founding principles that easily? Some years ago, in considering the Affair of the Danish Mo-toons O’Doom, and the alacrity which which our advocates of a free press declined to publish a set of relatively inoffensive cartoons, I wrote this:

There is an old saying, to the effect that the most binding chains are the ones we put on ourselves. And the most insidious and effective censorship is that kind that we also put on ourselves, the censorship that strangles the question before it can even be asked … thoughtful people, earnestly wishing to be polite, tolerant and sensitive of others, began moving down that path that eventually ends— if we are not aware— with our wrists humbly held up for the manacles of imposed censorship to be firmly snapped on. A drift that began with good manners ends with limits imposed by maladroit legislation or a baying mob, maybe even both, and all the important issues of the day, which ought to be discussed— vociferously, noisily and with all the thrown crockery at our disposal— are removed from the arena where they ought to be, to fester and simmer away in odd corners. What has been more insupportable in recent years, is that our courtesy in this respect is not even reciprocated: the vilest sort of caricatures and insult imaginable regarding Westerners, Christians, Jews, Americans and others too varied to mention have free and frequent circulation in Muslim and Arab-oriented and funded media.

That most of our print media outlets punted on the question of publishing the Mohammed cartoons told me all I really needed to know about how deeply they really felt about their much-vaunted principle of ‘freedom of the press’. Now, our government and media are telling us how really, really deeply they are attached to ‘freedom of speech.’

Look well, oh wolves!

(Cross-posted at Chicagoboyz.net)

See Here, Mohammad

12. September 2012 · Comments Off on See Here, Mohammad · Categories: Domestic, Fun With Islam, Good God, GWOT, Politics, Rant, World · Tags: , ,

It appears that once again, Sgt. Mom has to bring out the Mallet of Loving Correction that she has shamelessly copied from John Scalzi, and explain the whole concept of ‘freedom of thought’ and it’s fraternal twin, ‘freedom of expression’ to the inhabitants of those (mostly but not always) quarters of the world usually known as ‘Islamic-run hellholes.’
See here, we in the western world are known for a good many things – some of them good, some of them bad – but one of them is a sense of logic, and another is the freedom to speak our thoughts, suppositions and criticisms on any matter. Openly, freely, and through any medium available to us … without fear of prosecution by the forces of law and order. Unless, of course, we are inciting violence … umm, which to put it plainly, you guys seems to have a problem with. Actually, some of our own very dear Established and Housebroken Lapdog Media have a problem with that too, but that is an issue for another day.

And the range of topics which we may freely discuss and criticize includes practically anything, and everything; the current television season of the Alphabet Networks, the fiscal policies of our current administration, the horrible dress sense of the Kardashians, and the messy love lives of celebutards and neighbors … and religion does not get a pass. Scientology doesn’t get a pass, Catholics and Evangelical Christians don’t get a pass, Mormons don’t get a pass, and Islam especially doesn’t get a pass, much as you appear to wish otherwise. Yes, I know that the lickspittle media, our equally lickspittle State department, and Administrations past and present all made polite noises about the so-called Religion of Peace, and that Ibrahim Cooper and his CAIR-bots go off on a royal toot, and that Saudi Arabia have bought themselves into various academic establishments and existing mosques at the drop of a Danish Mo-toon … but Islam as currently practiced in such charming locales as Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia, Iran, Lebanon, Thailand, Indonesia, Detroit and certain cities in Britain and France is not in the least attractive to those of us in the Western tradition.

I don’t care how many museum exhibits, or how many TV documentaries about the marvelousness of the Golden Age of Islam get thrown at us like so much expensive confetti. The misogyny, the brutal practice of sharia, the Jew-hatred, the ignorance, the backwardness, the prosecution of other faiths, all speak louder than the occasional public relations offensive. … So we have critical things to day about it. Especially after seeing the stacks of dead bodies left in the wake of militant Islam. A lot of us can’t help noticing, and wondering – if Islam is so damn peaceful, how come all the dead bodies? For the sake of good manners, most of us refrain from saying so bluntly to those of our acquaintance who we know are Muslim … but what does our good manners get us?

You see, my dear little Libyan and Egyptian chickadees; we are going to discuss this, and we are going to be critical – on line and in home-made movies, in lectures and in books. Have tantrums all you like. Go so far as murdering ambassadors, blowing up tourists, inciting riots and inciting the murder of artists, writers, bloggers, Christian activists for exercising our rights of free speech – even speech offensive to you – and at some point in the near future, we might not be quite so polite. Those media, academic and political figures who have been the worst toadies … they might very well stop being polite also. Not holding my breath on that one, though.

Something on the internet is disrespectful to Islam? Have a cup of coffee, Mohammed, and get over it.

Is It Safe Yet?

06. September 2012 · Comments Off on Is It Safe Yet? · Categories: Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant · Tags: , , , , , ,

To come out? Oh, no – probably not yet, with the Dem political convocation going on. Well, as long as they are having fun, the bed-bugs are biting, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is still conditioning her hair with mayonnaise (Deb, sweetie … you’re supposed to rinse the stuff out, after it sets for a bit), and the DNC/Obama campaign is paying their bills on time. Perhaps they are not, which is one of those straws in the wind. My daughter says that Charlotte is a fairly couth little city, with plenty of ok-to-nice-to rather-more-than-nice hotels and motels on tap, so why they had to book various news orgs into those with hot and cold running bedbugs and drug dealers and hookers in the parking lot servicing their regular clientele is a mystery … Ooooh, I know! They didn’t want to spring for the nice hotels, or couldn’t spring for the nice hotels, or maybe they just wanted to treat the working press mainstream division like the …umhumms … that they are.

Or … since they are already in the bag for the O-man, why bother spending anything more? Anyway, as a desperately cynical libertarian/conservative Tea Partier, I already know where the establishment media stands. When I want to get cogent reporting and commentary I go to various online sources, and if I have a mad pash to read a newspaper, the Daily Mail is full of laughs. I think their American correspondents don’t give a toss as to whether the White House gives them access at all, so their political coverage is rather refreshingly unhampered by residual consideration for the finer feelings of the Chocolate Teleprompter Jesus … or his better half, who … I am sorry, no matter how you slice it, she is not the second coming of Jacqueline Kennedy. (Her sense of fitness and fit in the garments draped about herself is sorely underdeveloped, and the expression that her face customarily falls into in moments when she appears to think herself unobserved is not a pleasant sight.)
Moving on; I was bitterly amused to note that Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy are apparently championed as the defenders of American womanhood. Apparently it’s all about the purity of intention … not the actual conduct when it comes to interaction in the corporeal world with real, flesh and blood American women. In such actual interaction with real, live, flesh and blood American women who had the misfortune to be perceived by these gentlemen* as of a lower social class – they conducted themselves with astonishing and well-recorded piggishness. I shouldn’t really be surprised about this: Al Gore, John Edwards, the Sainted JFK, and LBJ and even going back to FDR … many are recorded as having been rather ghastly in their private conduct towards women generally and female underlings in particular. Their wives were and are, alas, the better part of them. Say what you will about Richard Nixon as an otherwise dysfunctional political paranoid, he appears to have refrained from humping the help, the interns, star-struck film documentarians, on-call hotel-masseuses and passing attractive female strangers.

*triple-plated industrial-strength sarcasm

In this Election Year, I Wish

28. August 2012 · Comments Off on In this Election Year, I Wish · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Politics, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!, Working In A Salt Mine... · Tags: , ,

… that there was some kind of secret high-sign or signal that we could give to other conservative-libertarian-Tea Party adherents in casual social situations. Even in Texas, a mostly red-state and stronghold of prickly independent free-marketers, there is enough of a leavening of blue-state Dems and Obama worshippers that one need be constrained in discussing politics … by good manners, if nothing else. Especially in the neighborhood where one lives; there are, I know, at least a few Democrats sufficiently enthused about the One to actually display bumper-stickers and yard signs. One of them is a very sweet and cordial gentlemen dog aficionado; he and his wife always adore and pet our dogs, when they see us, and we recently mourned together when they had to put one of their own dogs to sleep. He and his wife are nice people, decent people; good neighbors, home-owners who keep their place beautifully – they fly the Texas and American flags, and a military service flag with two stars upon it – but… But on the back of his truck he has a home-made magnetic bumper sticker implying that the Tea Party in combination with the GOP equals the screwing of America. So there is one thing that we can never talk about, not without risking neighborly amity, and I just don’t want to take the risk. He had an Obama-Biden yard sign the last time out, anyway, so we can’t say we weren’t warned. The nice older couple with the lovely garden just down the street from them were precinct-walking for a Dem candidate this year, so any casual conversation with them also must avoid politics. My own next-door neighbor, an irreproachably middle-class retired civil servant of African-American heritage has an Obama tee-shirt that she has worn now and again, so there again … a careful avoidance of my Tea Party sympathies.

But now and again we have stumbled into a potential political minefield in conversation, most often when the other person ventures an opinion to do with the economy, race-relations, or the upcoming campaign, and then hesitates, looking at us nervously until we assure them of our own libertarian/conservative Tea Party leanings. This happened most recently last weekend, during a venture into the Hill Country, and a stop in a small shop featuring vintage Americana. The place was empty, and the owner was probably very bored, when Blondie and I wandered in. Soon we were comparing our favorite episodes of American Restoration, mutual in our wish that they would show more of the actual nuts and bolts of the restoral job, instead of the manufactured interpersonal drama. Then Blondie mentioned a similar show – Abandoned, which features a couple of guys spelunking through abandoned buildings, looking for stuff they can refurbish, refinish, or repair and sell at a profit. I said how I thought it was just tragic, these factories and churches like the neo-gothic monument in Philadelphia featured on a recent show were just left to ruin, where once they had been the pride of the cities and towns where they were located. In the 19th century and early 20th, people had spent good money to build solidly and well, had manufactured good and useful things, paid wages … and now, it was all left to rack and ruin, and the rag-pickers, raking through the ruins looking for something to sell. The shop owner sympathized, and made a remark about eastern and rust-belt cities which the political leadership had essentially trashed … and then he got a very nervous look on his face, obviously fearing that he had said too much and possibly to the wrong people. Until we assured him that we were Tea Partiers from way back. And then we had a nice conversation, speculating on the eventual outcome of the various campaigns … and really, that is why I wish there were some kind of secret handshake or signal that we could give, so we know right off the bat when it is OK to risk being open about political leanings.

(Cross posted at chicagobotz.net)

Late August Musings

24. August 2012 · Comments Off on Late August Musings · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time, That's Entertainment! · Tags: , , , , , ,

You know, I meant to do this on Monday, for part of my Monday Morning Miscellany series, but I had a deadline or two, and the time and writing energy just got away from me … but all to the good, for the last five days have actually provided something to muse upon, in these dog days of summer. (Fittingly called the dog days, as one of them is curled up underneath my desk at this very moment.)
The first of these is that Newsweek – tottering towards it’s nearly inevitable doom – has either recovered something of its journalistic backbone, or thrown caution to the winds and tried to win back those droves of disgusted conservatives and libertarians by doing a cover story suggesting that it might be best for all if the Dear Leader start packing. I couldn’t have been more astonished to hear the White House Press Corpse-men suddenly break out singing, “Hit the Road Jack, Don’t You Come Back, No More, No More,” in four-part a-capella harmony during the morning White House briefing . Not surprised that a pop historian like Niall Ferguson should say so, but in Newsweek? The deeply cynical opine that it’s a sort of “Get out of Jail” marker, against future accusations of being biased in favor of the Dear Leader – so at a later date, they can say in their defense, “We did too criticize him, so there!” I wonder if it isn’t one last vain attempt to cut themselves free from the sinking USS Obama, seeing that the ship is going down by the head, the engine room is flooding rapidly, and the last lifeboats are being lowered.

Further indication that the White House Press Corpse is perhaps less enamored of the Dear Leader lately is this recent picture … captured by a Reuters photog. Further comment would be superfluous … but somehow one senses that the bloom of enchantment with Dear Leader is pretty much wearing off with the working press stiffs.
And as for our own Mittens, our hero in the upcoming joust in the 2012 campaign lists … the phrase “Bless your/his/her heart” is a somewhat loaded one, in flyover-country-speak. It can be a mild and gently charitable wish for the person of whom it is said to have a nice day … but when said in a certain tone of voice and under certain circumstances by certain practitioners of the passive-aggressive arts (usually but not always Southern ladies of a certain age) the unstated meaning is a suggestion that the person referred to should sodomize themselves with a rusty chain-saw … or something even more painful and humiliating. Glad to clear that up for my bi-coastal and international readers. Moving on …

And it seems to be true that the Obama campaign is stiffing host communities on paying for the additional expenses attendant on hosting a Presidential event in their dear little towns. Whereas the Romney/Ryan campaign is paying up front, even paying in advance. Seriously, I wonder how long this kind of thing – stiffing cities and municipalities for the extra expense of having Dear Leader swoop into town for an event – can go on without serious repercussions. A pattern? Do bears perform ablutions in the woods? IIRC, Los Angeles commuters got pretty darned tired of the Presidential motorcade making traffic a nightmare … or more of a nightmare than usual, whenever he attended a Hollywood event.

The Todd Akin rape kerfuffle … hard to know what to say about that; he is not running for office in a district where I vote, and the suspicion remains that if a sentiment so dubious and so clumsily expressed were mouthed by a candidate with a D after his or her name, it would get the full-enable treatment. Still – a clear pitfall, in the question posed to him and a bad response to it. Seriously, if you need follow-up explanations, clarifications and footnotes about what you said – then you have not put the best foot forward … unless that foot is comfortably lodged in your mouth up to the kneecap. I note that the gentleman in question is a long-term establishment Repub, which in my way of thinking is at least one strike against him. The other strike being that if you cannot enunciate what you mean, clearly and unmistakably, without legions of commenters arriving on gossamer wings on a mission to disentangle you from your thoughts … then perhaps you should consider another career, outside politics. One mush-mouthed, gaffe-producing and deeply confused career politician of Social Security age at a time, please – and that slot is already filled bountifully by Joe Biden. Alas, the only useful suggestion I have for GOP/Independent/Tea Party voters in Mr. Akin’s district is to consider a write-in vote, and to campaign on that basis over the next two months and a bit.

And finally, Prince Harry in the tabloids after a loosing round of strip pool in Los Vegas. Hmmmm, yes. Very nice and thank you, sweetie. Now put on your trousers before you catch your death of cold, as your Gran is going to be pretty pissed for a while.

And that was my week; yours?

Here’s a Pretty How-de-do

17. August 2012 · Comments Off on Here’s a Pretty How-de-do · Categories: Ain't That America?, General Nonsense, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

And with the issuance of two announcements this week regarding the upcoming Presidential campaign, the usually interesting quadrennial race just got a little bit more … interesting? Bizarre? More than usually contentious? All of the above and more, to judge from this week’s surfing across the oceans of the internet. So Mittens discovered the existence – heretofore unsuspected by the larger public – of his fiscally responsible and constitutionalist backbone and tagged Paul Ryan as his running mate… that makes for a snappy bumper sticker right of the top of my head; “Time for a little R & R.” Said prospective VP nominee had never swam across my ken as a possible, but then Mittens himself had never seemed to me to be a likely prospect for the top o’the ticket either … altogether too bland, to nice, too establishment GOP … but then I am only an interested amateur and Tea Party enthusiast. All props to him for seeing that the fiscally responsible, strictly Constitutionalist and relatively free market segment of the libertarian-conservative public constituted a powerful voting block.

So … Paul Ryan; hope that he and his family, all of his friends, neighbors and and everyone that he has ever known are all battened down against the coming onslaught headed his way from the usual media crowd, also known as Pravda on the Potomac. Frankly, no wonder at all that Paul Ryan or his people didn’t want in the least to be interviewed by a whiny regular at Salon.com. Mainstream media establishments have proved comprehensively that they were so deep in the tank in the tank for Obama last time that they probably needed a deep-sea diver’s helmet and someone up above feeding them oxygen. And nothing much has changed – yet again, they seem dedicated soul and body to drag his tottering Juggernaut over the finish line. At least those who still have a job and whose organization is still functioning will be dedicated to that project, although it would seem that at least some of them must be entertaining doubts.

Yes, established media organs – you have showed us where your loyalties lie. I wouldn’t want to talk to you either. Over the last four or five years, you have dedicated yourselves to trashing Tea Partiers, libertarian-conservatives, and traditionalists generally. So, no – we really don’t want to talk to you. Not you, not the pollsters that call incessantly: who knows who is really asking, and what will that information obtained from us really be used for? No, we don’t trust you, and we certainly don’t trust this current administration. Look at what happened to Joe the Plumber, to the owner of Gibson Guitar and any number of others … and include the owners of Chick-fil-A, too. Don’t’ forget about how the Department of Homeland security made grumbling noises about veterans and tea partiers being potential terrorists, too. And we don’t much want – unless we are a stubborn and stalwart sort – to even go out and joust in those wide open public internet spaces available to us … since, in a lot of cases (notably this one) the administrators are pretty obviously biased. Pity, that.

We’ll vote in November – that’s all that I’ll admit to at this present time.

The other announcement – that Joe Biden, the one-man walking gaffe machine would still adorn the bottom of the ticket. Knock me over with a feather – I thought sure that the announcement would concern health issues and a desire to spend more time with his family. But whatever – the man’s got a gift … and the gift is to the Romney-Ryan campaign, especially if Biden makes too many more appearances. Of course, the man at the top o’ the ticket seems to have stuck his beautifully polished Gucci loafer in his mouth a good few times, too. The ‘you didn’t build that’ meme seems to have gone down like a whole pineapple enema with the small business community … which, as sources like the Chambers of Commerce never tire of reminding us, are the engine running the whole American middle class economy.

Yes, a small to medium business of their own, and being their own boss is one of those things that just about every American, or prospective American with a bit of hustle and drive in them aspires to. Count me among them – as I have just spend the last week tediously transcribing a 19th century ledger book for a client – and thanked the deity every morning that as tedious and exacting as it was, I’d rather be doing that at my own computer in the corner of my own little home office, then climbing into the office business drag and driving across town to someone else’s office to spend the next eight hours. Way to piss off just about every striving American and independent consultant, President Obama. Do, by all means, stay loyal to Joe Biden, and whoever is strategizing your campaign. Encourage your administration bureaucrats and officials to be vengeful, you media minions to be ugly, your local protest element to be ugly and threatening, and all of them to be irrational. Every instance will be reason for any number of quiet Tea Partiers to decide that R & R is good enough on November 2.

Me, I think this is the beginning of the preference cascade – that moment that everyone who has been made deeply unhappy by the policies of this administration looks around, and discovers that they are not alone.

Musings on l-Affaire du Poulet Filet

05. August 2012 · Comments Off on Musings on l-Affaire du Poulet Filet · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Good God, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time

Taking it into my head to go to the local Chick-fil-A last Wednesday was another one of those odd things, like getting involved in the Tea party which happened because of a friend. In this case, a purely on-line friend; the friend who inveigled me into attending an early San Antonio Tea Party planning committee meeting was a blog-friend whom I had actually met on a couple of social occasions, so when he said, ‘Hey, we need someone to write press releases and stuff, and you’re a writer and you were a broadcaster, so can ya?’ And being a stubborn independent libertarian-conservative sort, it seemed like a good idea. That the planned event very shortly turned into an all-Texas blow-out with 15,000 to maybe as many as 20,000 in attendance … well, I didn’t have anything much to do with that … I just kept my head down and sent out the press releases and made myself available for local media interviews.

So, I got caught up in Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day in the same manner, when Sarah Hoyt, another writer-blogger (who is in favor of same-sex marriage) wrote a long post condemning at length the way the militant pro-same-sex marriage advocates were going about it. She held that ganging up on Chick-fil-A was an appallingly bad move, being based upon not much at all save a mild remark by the president of the firm regarding favoring traditional marriage in an interview published in an relatively obscure denominational publication. She predicted that this would alienate and infuriate people across the political spectrum, and that it would backfire hugely … which seems to have been the case. It is only fitting that she would be a writer of science fiction, a genre which lends a boost to ones’ powers of accurate prophecy.

I wonder myself if the better than huge turn-out in support of Chick-fil-A isn’t at least as much of a cultural seismic shock as the various Tea Party gatherings in 2009 were to the political arena. Certainly there was the same air of friendly cheerfulness and purpose about the other customers in the Chick-fil-A outlet where I went on August 1 as I remember from the first huge Alamo Plaza Tea Party rally. No kidding – it was a fun gathering, like the world’s biggest and happiest block party. There were whole families there – and it was as if the plaza was full of good friends whom you had never met before. So was the Chick-fil-A; and from the comments and posted reports on the internet it was pretty much like that all over. The illusion that it was some kind of grotesque grotesque and hateful mass exercise in gay-bashing must be difficult to maintain, in the face of so many actual participants who saw nothing of the sort. Just so the Tea Partiers were constantly accused of being dumb, disorganized, violent red-necked racists. This meme was so constantly pushed by mainstream media over the last three years – against considerable evidence to the contrary as well as the experience of actual participants – that a good portion of the public now readily believes the worst of the Tea Party. It goes without saying, such is the weary cynicism of experience, that the mainstream news organs of course painted the militant gay advocates who responded to Support Chick-fil-A Day in the most favorable colors, in spite of vandalism, harassment and generally distasteful conduct … just as the Occupy Whatever Street activists had breathlessly positive press in spite of turning their various occupied locations into unsanitary, lawless and repellant hellholes. I’m not even surprised by this tendency on the part of the mainstream media any more.

It is interesting that this all happened just as the self-organized, social-media savvy Tea Party adherents are managing to elect more and more fiscally-responsible, free-market favorable strict Constitutionalists into political office. I disagree with those commenters who hold that the Chick-Fil-A thing was brief distraction from the series matters at hand; this might be one of those huge turning points. The chain may be just another national fast-food outlet – but their local franchise owners are deeply-embedded in their communities, where apparently they do a lot of quiet good works, and are looked upon favorably by loyal customers, and their employees. To cynically and carelessly malign and insult them, just as the Tea Party is maligned and insulted is every bit as much a blunder as Sarah suggested. Beware the cold anger of quiet and patient people who have been pushed once too many times. Those who stood patiently in line for hours for a chicken sandwich and waffle fries to make a point will also be standing in line to vote in November. Depend on it.

Crossposted on www.chicagoboyz.net)

Annals of Summer 2012

16. July 2012 · Comments Off on Annals of Summer 2012 · Categories: Ain't That America?, Literary Good Stuff, Politics, Working In A Salt Mine... · Tags: , , , ,

Darned if I’m not coming up on my ten-year mark as a blogger; my, how the time flies when you are having fun. I made my very first post in August, 2002, after the fun of being a solo blogger apparently burned off for the original founder of this blog, the semi-legendary smart-ass known as Sgt. Stryker. And then, I just got into the habit of it. Things happened – a war, for one. And after a bit, and a couple of years of producing content and of getting very, very tired of working for other people and corporate organizations (some of whom although not all were – not to put too fine a point on it – raving loonies or singularly unappreciative of my mad and various skilz) I began to think of myself as a writer (and independent contractor) who did a little office and administrative work on the side, rather than an office administrator/secretary who did a little writing on the side. Since then, I’ve brought home the bacon as an editor, writer and publisher, having written seven books, counting the first one, which was my ‘training wheels book’ and mostly of reworked blog-posts anyway. There have been bloggers who have done even better out of being early bloggers … but that’s not my point, really. I’ve done well enough to suit myself, even if I could not figure out how to do certain book-advert things with the original blog layout, or to incorporate pictures into the current one. Just one of those things.

One of those things that happened in the decade since was to become a Tea Partier – a devotee of small government, strict application of the Constitution in matters governmental, and of classical free markets … no, not crony capitalism, which is the kind that only mimics free markets, in which the establishment political elite and the top-market-economic elite are one and the same. No, it is not the same thing at all … and being an independent writer really is underlining that point quite sufficiently. As if I had not already figured much of that out, through reading the book and author blogs …

Ugh – small interruption there, a grad-student with the thankless job of hawking books from door to door on a Sunday afternoon. Nice – work hours for the freelance are … non-standard. Whereas I couldn’t afford any of his books, even if I was interested in them, it seems that he is an exchange student from Brazil, come to improve his English and Spanish, and has written a text-book. And needs an editor. Of course I gave him my card – but how comic would that be, getting a paid editing job from doing door to door cold-calling? One of my on-line author friends, Janet Elaine Smith, apparently does this all the time: she pitches her books to sales-persons who call her or ring her doorbell, deftly turning around all of their lines. Nine out of ten, she sells more to them, than they do to her…

Anyway – back to life as it is being lived in this campaign summer. It looks like Mittens is the nominee, and it looks like it is actually not going too bad for him. He wasn’t really my first, or even my second choice, politically … although it might be that he can really electrify the campaign by picking a dazzling VP. I wouldn’t presume to say who … except that observe that a running mate of the dark-brown year-round-tan color would certainly defang some of the objections to a pure-white-cleaner-than-next-to-godliness-white candidate. Who has political and extensive managerial business experience far, far beyond the ken of the current incumbent … who seems to be pretty down with that Chicago-Machine-Political-Dirty-Dealing-Your-Opponent-Down –Before-He/She/They-Can-Do-It-To-You sort of thing. Your mileage may vary, though.

Really, I ought to go back and order the second season of Rome, soon. I’ll bet that will make a lot of stuff perfectly clear. Note – this week, we did have a precinct-walker doing my neighborhood for a Republican candidate. Or so he said- and I hope it’s true. He was also doing a quick Tea-Party-ish poll, and tallying up the answers on an I-pad. So all props to the organization which send him forth on this mission in being able to work with cutting-edge 21st century technology. I seriously hope that he was in earnest about who and what he said that he was – otherwise… It seriously wierds me out that I must reconsider this kind of honesty in answering his questions, in this year of 2012. Yeah, hope and change. We hope that we have some change left at the end of all this.

Monday Morning Miscellany

01. July 2012 · Comments Off on Monday Morning Miscellany · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Veteran's Affairs

OK, so it’s Sunday afternoon. I’m just planning ahead, ‘kay?
1. So the Supremes upheld Obamacare … well sort of. Is it a tax, or isn’t it? Dessert topping or floor-wax. All that I can tell from here is that the closer and closer it gets to being implemented, the more unpopular that the whole program seems to be becoming. Why, oh, why couldn’t the Obamster have just tweaked Medicare to cover those uninsured. What towering illusion of adequacy led him to devise what appears to be Britain’s National Health scheme writ large and applied willy-nilly to the US. Anyway, now he’s staked his political career – what’s left of it – on ramming it through, over objections.

2. Oh, and his reelection campaign is going big in Paris for the 4th ofJuly, which kicks off a campaign swing through Europe. Guess the Obama reelection campaign has squeezed enough out of Wall Street and Hollywood, so it’s on to greener pastures. Words fail, they really do. I’ll probably never watch George Clooney in anything, ever again. If Mittens has any sense at all, he’ll be at a traditional down-home American community 4th of July bash. I swear, the campaign ads practically write themselves.

3. Colorado burning … the pictures of the fires burning along the mountains, and the homes going up in flames give me the cold shivers, they really do. The Obamster did show up to console the good citizens of Colorado Springs though … Which is nice of him. Texas burned last year though, with nary a peep.

4. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes breaking up. I think there must be some order of contemplative religious in a monastery on an isolated mountaintop somewhere who did not see that coming.

5. I posted a sample chapter of the next book – The Quivera Trail, on my book blog, here. Check it out, if you’re interested.
And that’s my weekend. Yours?

Voltaire’s Prayer

26. June 2012 · Comments Off on Voltaire’s Prayer · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, Tea Time · Tags: , ,

“I have never made but one prayer to God; a very short one: ‘Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God answered it.”

I have a feeling that Mittens Romney, the heir-apparent to the Republican Party nomination in this year of our Lord 2012 also made that prayer in the last couple of weeks – and the deity came through like a brick. I speak of the jaw-droppingly tacky suggestion that the Obama campaign be added to bridal registries – that friends and loved ones give a donation to to his campaign rather than a gift to the happy couple. Mind you, it’s been my observation that couples marrying their fortunes (or lack of them) together in these modern times had usually been living out in the real world long enough to have acquired most of the necessary impedimenta and furniture – and that in marrying they needed to get rid of duplicates, once their separate households were merged, rather than acquire any more. But times have been tough enough lately – and many of these single-and-soon-to-be-merged households might have been living on a string and cheap Walmart/Target c**p anyway. I am a traditionalist – I believe in the gravy boat (yes, it is a gravy boat), the good china, and silverware, the crystal, a good toaster, and all of that. Getting married is when your kin and friends lovingly provide you with the items that you will use for special occasions and cherish for decades. That’s why – when I realized one day in 1984 that I probably would never marry and thereby score any of the really good stuff, I went and bought a set of good china for myself. (Bing & Grondahl Blue Traditional – no trim, and yes it was a good bit cheaper in the AAFES Catalog, back in the day)

So, this … method of presidentially Hoovering up additional campaign funds just seems to me as crass as it is unseemly. This is not anything like asking mourners at a funeral to skip the flowers – which the honored dead and their dearest kin are usually in no position to appreciate anyway – and just send a donation to a cause that the deceased favored or a medical research front against the ailment which carried off the dearly the departed. This fresh horror verges more into the political landscape North Korea or some other totalitarian state demanding that the Dear Leader get first dibs on the social and emotional lives of his/her subjects, and that the subjects must make a public demonstration of their devotion. What’s next – a picture of his Highness Barry displayed on the gift table with all the china, crystal and silver? Maybe all the attendees turning towards it and drinking a fulsome toast to him, before toasting the happy couple? I guess we only should be grateful that no one in his campaign thought to ask for a pledge on first night with the bride … or the groom. And I await the announcement of some scheme to dedicate birthday party money, and kid’s Tooth Fairy quarters to the Glorious Leader. Really, the jokes about this about write themselves. Like this particular visual.

Who, in what must be a terribly closeted and blinkered administration/campaign thought this was a good idea, the bee’s knees, a scathingly brilliant notion to milk a few more dimes and dollars from the faithful? Honestly, I might speculate on the existence of a mole within the Obama campaign – perhaps a Hillary fan with a grudge and a long (as these things go) memory, ensuring that every bold new step forward instead makes the Obama-naughts the laughingstock of the blogosphere. Which is a notion that I – in a cruel sort of way – would like to see take hold in the bowels of whatever gatherings, meetings and focus-groups that the Obama campaign holds over the next few weeks and months. I would like to see paranoia strike deep, into their minds it will creep … the notion that the guy, or gal over there is a Romney saboteur.

Yes, I am being cruel and devious, but I live to serve.

(Crossposted at Chicago Boyz)

Off the Island

22. June 2012 · Comments Off on Off the Island · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

The clouds of self-destructive stupidity gathering around the brows of those writers and entertainers who believe with the force of holy writ that they are not affected by the laws of action and consequence which govern the world and the rest of us, has now achieved an almost early 1960s Los Angeles smog-like density. And where I once was fairly indulgent towards those big names in the literary and entertainment industrial complex who entertained political opinions incongruent with mine and were mouthy about it, I am not inclined to be indulgent any longer. In fact, I’m downright annoyed … no, worse than annoyed; I’m fed to the back teeth with tolerating it all. Yes, this blog doesn’t have half the readership it did, back in the mists of time, and no, I do not delude myself that the world trembles at the frown of Sgt. Mom.

I am a writer, with a small and hopefully growing readership, and I do understand that kicking potential readers in the teeth by going full-bore on political matters is … well, it can be a self-limiting thing. I understand completely the tension between being dependent on the affection of a public, and the draw of publically attaching yourself to a cause or a political campaign which might prove to be controversial. I’m not such a big wheel in the grand literary scheme of things that I want or can afford to be perceived as kicking half my potential audience in the teeth … I’d rather convince readers subtly and through my books – not scream at them from a podium. I have friends, and even family who do not espouse the same Tea Party principles that I hold dear – and so I do not want to declare a sort of scorched-earth policy. I am fond of my friends, and my family. A mini-civil war is not something I want to have, especially around the table at a family Thanksgiving dinner.

I am OK with disagreeing on matters political, with someone merely registered to vote Dem, or anything else, like Green or Libertarian. Let it also be admitted that I disagreed vociferously with many of my Tea Party comrades on certain matters, matters which we all agreed should take second place to the Big Three of fiscal responsibility, strict constitutionality and free markets. What I will not tolerate any longer is being insulted, openly and repeatedly by various entertainers with delusions of political acuity. Garrison Keiller lost me as a listener three years ago – not so much for his slobbery worship of Obama, but for his disgusting slams against conservatives generally, Morgan Freeman is about to come under the same ban-hammer, and regretfully Tom Hanks is teetering on the verge. Janeanne Garafalo – banned. Rosanne Barr, Whoopie Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell – all banned and boycotted. There’s a growing list of other offenders; from what I have observed in various discussion threads over the last year or so, other bloggers and commenters are working up their own lists. From the whip-lash reaction by HBO to the ruckus over the severed head of GWB in an episode of Game of Thrones, I seriously am wondering now if the cleverer and more far-sighted denizens of the entertainment world are sensing the danger to their own careers in being overtly partisan in their political commentary and attitude. As the classic stand-up on-the-spot reporter closes the story while standing in front of a government building, ‘Only time will tell.’

Blogging, SWATing, and Brett Kimberlin

08. June 2012 · Comments Off on Blogging, SWATing, and Brett Kimberlin · Categories: Good God, Politics, Tea Time, Technology · Tags: , ,

This is the text of the email that I sent to the office of Lamar Smith, who is my congressman. Any reply will be posted here.

I am inquiring if you are aware of how conservative and libertarian bloggers have been maliciously pranked in the last few months by the practice of “SWATing”?

(A bogus 911 call is made claiming that there has been a shooting (or some other act of domestic violence) at the home of a conservative blogger. Usually these “SWAT-ing” calls are made in the middle of the night. Per emergency protocol, such a 911 call triggers a guns-drawn police action at the blogger’s home which puts the blogger and his or her family at immediate risk.)

This is not only a fraud and a waste of police time, but puts both the family of the blogger, any dogs they might have in the household, and the police officers themselves in danger of physical harm.

This a deliberate attempt to intimidate conservative and libertarian bloggers into forfeiting their right to exercise free speech and political commentary. I assume that you likewise would be concerned about this practice, and would like to know if you intend to take any action in this matter.

I am one of your constituents, a military veteran, Tea Party sympathizer – and a blogger. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Update: Monday morning – well, no answer other than the usual robo-email, but it is noted that Lamar Smith is a signatory to the letter from 85 members of Congress to AG Holder demanding that he address and investigate the issue. We’ll see what develops, then!

After Math in Madison

07. June 2012 · Comments Off on After Math in Madison · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time · Tags: , ,

Well, that certainly was interesting … in the sense of ‘slow down and gawk at the multi-car pile-up on the interstate’ kind of interesting. By this, I mean the spanking administered by pro-Walker voters in the much-ballyhooed recall effort. I guess it is a sign of the times that I was mildly surprised by how overwhelming the support for Scott Walker was. But then again, seeing how deranged so many of the recall adherents were in their behavior and in their statements to the press and on the kind of blogs which were covering the whole Madison circus … maybe I shouldn’t have been. Because that kind of over-the-top excess is really kind of of-putting, and Scott Walker really seems like a fairly sensible executive and manager, as well as being a rather likeable person. Painting him as Hitler and Genghis Khan all rolled into one … really, people. No better argument than that? Papering the capital building with signs and the internet with death-threat tweets, and insisting that the Koch brothers are the very devil incarnate … that kind of shrill, irrational fury is counter-productive, to put it mildly. No wonder the good, voting middle-of-the-road citizens of Wisconsin got fed up with it all and voted for an end to the open-air, public-space sixteen-month-long temper tantrum.

Interesting, though – the reactions of the lefty-lib side of the media and blogosphere; Open Salon seems to be stunned into silence by the very horror of it all, although I have found some commenters trying to blame it all on the machinations of the Koch brothers, or the bigotry and stupidity of the average Wisconsin voter. Music to my ears, the cries and lamentations, although I do wish that some of them would grasp the essential clue: that you cannot go on robbing tax-payer Peter to pay public-union employee Paul with a salary and benefits package several degrees more generous than Peter could ever hope for. You also cannot go on spending more than you earn, at least not for very long. It’s a fact of life for private citizens and business-owners. That it is considered by the great and the good among the establismen commentariat be a dangerously reactionary, racist, proto-fascist, fringe and radical notion when applied to a government, certainly comes as a surprise for earnest Tea Party-sympathetic persons like myself.

So – was this week a foretaste of things to come, on Election Day? My personal Magic-8 Ball viewer says yes, although many of those choosing to vote for Mittens Romney will be voting against the narcissistic, teleprompter-dependent miserable cluster of a failure known (this week) as Barack H. Obama. The wailing and lamentations will certainly be at an ear-splitting pitch, and certain inner-city rust-belt neighborhoods will probably erupt in riots. It might even get pretty ugly at CNN and MSNBC, even supposing those stations have any real viewers left.

The one big unknown in my mind, though – is if Obama looses the election in November … how graciously will he and his family depart the White House on Inauguration day? During the inauguration ceremony, the White House staff is supposed to totally move out the outgoing president’s personal possessions and household goods, and move in the new president’s stuff. How agreeable do you suppose the Obamas are going to be about all that … or will they trash the place like defaulters skipping out on a mortgage they can’t afford any more.

Learning Curve

25. May 2012 · Comments Off on Learning Curve · Categories: Ain't That America?, Good God, Politics, Veteran's Affairs · Tags: , ,

Like a number of other unpleasant experiences, a brush with a full-on, balls-to-the-wall sociopath can be a soul-scarring but life-educational experience. Generally, unless you are in a professional field such as the law, law enforcement or a working psychiatrist, you will – in the normal run of life, not run into them all that often. This is a good thing, generally – that they are rare. And a bad thing, because sheer disbelief freezes the normal, human reaction when they get heaved up to the top of one’s awareness. This is probably why they are able to do so much damage; they are as rare as man-eating sharks, and when they do pop up, the initial reaction is to think that … no, they couldn’t possibly have said/done/believed that. No normal, thinking, decent person could possibly … well, do what they do. It’s an experience so far outside ordinary experience that the first reaction is disbelief, and quite often the disbelief is prolonged because sociopaths often and at first glance (and even second) seem to be quite normal, reasonable and reality-based people.

The second quite human reaction when encountering one of these cold-blooded human sharks is fear, cold, stark fear, once you come to the realization that there are no limits to what the sociopath will say or do. Let me say that again: no limits. They will do or say anything, without remorse or second thoughts. They will tell any lie, use any person or tool they happen to have at hand, and then move on like a tornado, leaving the physical and emotional wreckage behind them. It’s frightening as hell – as I know from personal experience. It must be even more frightening for those bloggers who are now the target of a vengeful and malicious sociopath like Brett Kimberlin, one with an established track record of violence and sufficient friends in high places to enable harassment of blogger/reporters who have run afoul of him by spotlighting his criminal past.

I ran into a Kimberlinic personality once although at the time I didn’t know what she was. I described her as poisonous when I wrote about her years later. I still didn’t use her real name, although I have been retired from the Air Force since 1997, a matter of eight years after we were assigned together. I still would not want to have anything to do with her, especially after I looked up some of the identifying markers of a sociopath: Habitual liar? Check: she lied like she breathed, effortlessly. Egotistical to the point of narcissism? Check again – the whole world revolved around her. Scapegoating – whatever happens, it’s always somebody elses’ fault. Yep – check again. Remorselessly vindictive, when exposed or thwarted? OMG, check in spades. Everybody who ever had any kind of run-in with her, even administered the mildest reprimand – she would go nuclear in retaliation. I’m still a bit surprised though, that she didn’t ever think to accuse me of being a lesbian – in those days before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it would have been the ending of my military career for sure, even if I had been able to fight it. Manipulative, absolutely no empathy, and capable of violence? Well, definitely manipulative: that was one of her shticks; getting other people to do her dirty work. I’m still in two minds about the violence, although I wouldn’t have put it past her, if she were frustrated enough. I did have a point in writing about malignant, manipulative, cold-blooded sharks-in-human form today; the most obvious one was to participate in ‘Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day’ … which I did think long and hard about doing, just as I thought long and hard about doing a post about the Danish Motoons o’ Doom, a good few years ago. He is a vengeful, violent sociopath, and people are very right to fear such. But I do not believe it is wise or right to give in to fear.

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain!

(Later – here’s what you can do, should you feel moved – http://ace.mu.nu/archives/329575.php )

L-D-S

23. May 2012 · Comments Off on L-D-S · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, Home Front, Local, Pajama Game, Politics, Tea Time, World

It looks like Mittens is our man, as far as the GOP presy-nom goes in this year of Our Lord 2012. Not my personal first choice, as I retained a sneaking affection for Rick Perry as one of the very first among our dear establishment Repubs who glommed onto the Tea Party from the get go … but, eh … this is not a perfect world, probably will never be a perfect world. Speaking as an amateur historian, it’s more interesting as an imperfect world anyway. As far as I’m concerned in this current election season, Anybody But Obama will do for me. I don’t care wildly for establishment career Republicans, especially the ones embedded in the Washington D.C. establishment like an impacted wisdom tooth … but in a realistic world, we work with what we can get.

Of course, one of the sneaky push-backs generated as the campaign season wears on through summer and fall will be objections and veiled – or not so veiled – criticisms of Mitten’s Mormon faith. That is, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, LDS for short, the common reference within those communities particularly thick with them. (In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which saw the Enterprise crew voyage backwards in time to our tumultuous century, Captain Kirk attempted to cover for strangeness in Mr. Spock’s conduct by saying, “Oh, he did too much LDS in the Sixties. That line raised an enormous horse-laugh in the theater in Layton, Utah, where I saw that movie in first run: Probably not so much as a giggle, everywhere else.)
In the event of his nomination as GOP candidate, I remain confident that every scary trope about Mormons will be taken out and shaken vigorously, as representatives of the U.S. establishment press furrow their brows thoughtfully and mouth the successor-to-JournoList talking points, and members of the foreign press corps (such as the BBC) worry their pretty, empty heads about those crazy fundamentalist Americans going at it again. Christian fundamentalists on steroids, is what it will boil down to, I am sure. Polygamous marriage, every shopworn cliché about Religion American-style that you’ve ever seen in books, movies and television will be put out there. How our press nobility can accomplish this and still look away from the nuttier-‘n-squirrel-poop ravings of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Chicago without giving themselves existential whiplash, I can’t imagine. I am confident that a prospective Romney presidency will be painted as about one degree off from A Handmaid’s Tale, and there will be plenty of blue-state punters who will eat it up with a spoon. I would hope that the sensible ones would be able to stop hyperventilating long enough to listen to reason about all this.
More »

May Miscellany

04. May 2012 · Comments Off on May Miscellany · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm

Holy krep, is it May already? Guess it must be – time flies when you are having fun. My excuse is that I actually took a whole Sunday off; Blondie and I went up to the World Famous Buda Texas Wienerdog Races on Sunday, and I have been working alternately on two paid projects all this week to catch up. So – barely able to keep up with the news, such as it is, between all this and noodling around in the kitchen making another wheel of Leicester cheese and starting two crocks of home-made sauerkraut. All this German stuff is starting to catch up to me, I swear.

Sauerkraut, red potatoes and nice little sausages from the best meat market in New Braunfels, all cooked up in the same pan, make a darned tasty meal. (The recipe is on my book blog, under “The Splendid Table” page. No, seriously – good eats. I’ve begun to wonder, tasting the glories of home-made cheese, how good are the pickles that we have canned, and the sauerkraut which will eventually emerge from the canning kettle.)
Anyway – the news is it’s usual bounty of the richly comic:

Like Professor Elizabeth Warren, who looks like an older version of a Bund Deutcher Madel recruiting poster (League of German Maidens, the female version of the Hitler Youth) claiming to be 1/32 Cherokee Indian … ok, then. Now and again, I met people who told me they were part whatever American Indian. A fair number of them were blue-eyed blonds, which led me to assume that … certain physical traits must have been pretty darned recessive. Even if my friend Esther T. who was one-eighth Shoshone did look like Geronimo got up in drag as a Wagnerian soprano. So who’s really a minority, when you look at first glance like a member of the majority class? Oh, and I won’t even get into how the head of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous is almost a dead-spit look-alike to my brother J.P. – who in spite of having dark hair and brown eyes and used to tan very easily … is a person of unmixed pallor, Anglo-Saxon and protestant descent for as far back as family records go. Seriously. But honestly, how seriously can you take this s**t these days?

I see where some Occupy Whatever doofuses had a plot to blow up a bridge. But they didn’t have the wit to see that all their needs for explosives were being met by surprisingly helpful FBI informants. I am being reminded of those dear sweet days in the late 60s and early 70s, when law enforcement alphabet agencies made up a substantial portion of the membership of so many of these fringe little groups with violent inclinations. Apparently, they were the only ones willing to come to tedious meetings and reliably pay their dues. I kid, I kid.

And now that all the jollies have been wrung out of President Obama’s boyhood proclivities for chowing down on chow (and hound, and peke and collie), I guess now it’s time to make fun of his composite girlfriends. Seriously, he had girlfriends, composite or individual? My impression was that he was too much in love with himself to get involved with an outsider, but OK … You know, after a certain point, when enough stuff has been composited, created, massaged and shaped, you may as well call it fiction, not a memoir.
And that’s my week. Working up a piece to accompany the administrations latest bit of work “The Life of Julia” will call for a separate entry of it’s own.

(links below – somehow the posting of embedded links on this blog is frelled beyond redemption.)
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/edit/a.3037076371979.2121366.1415091659/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_German_Girls
http://celiahayes.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/one-pan-wurst-supper/

WTF?

27. April 2012 · Comments Off on WTF? · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General Nonsense, Good God, Health and Wellness, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm · Tags: , , , , , ,

That’s the feeling, really – as Blondie and I walk the dogs of a morning, and discuss such weighty matters as who remembered to bring sufficient poopy bags, if it is safe enough to let the Weevil off leash long enough to have a brisk run up and down the long fence behind which lives another Boxer mix who carries on a sort of fence to fence tag run, how many tomatoes we are likely to get from our current planting of garden bounty, if there will be enough cucumbers to make a decent batch of pickle spears soon, what to have for dinner that evening … and the morning gleanings of various internet news sites that we favor, upon rising from our slumbers first thing of a morning.

I favor Instapundit myself – out of long habit, even if he did drop this site from his blogroll a couple of years ago, but my daughter favors a combination of TMZ and the Daily Mail website, which (oddly enough) often puts up items of American news days before it appears in our own very dear mainstream media organs. Nope, tis true, tis true: sensationalist, twee, celebrity-addled, frequently misspelled/ungrammatical/confusing/sentimental-enough-to-trigger-a-diabetic-reaction, the DM still unashamedly and without much bias that I can detect covers the news. What a concept, hey? (Leaving aside the DM’s editorial bias, whatever it might be. When it comes to Brit newspapers, I used to favor the London Times and the Spectator myself, until they put everything interesting behind a paywall, then the Telegraph, and even the Guardian – until … well, that last just went beyond the pale for me. The lefty establishment bias just got to hard to take. God knows what the Grauniad thinks of the Tea Party; I don’t have a stomach strong enough to check.)

Anyway – to see ourselves as the DM sees us. My daughter notes the increasing numbers of American commenters, who ask why they hell do they have to go to a British newspaper site to see relatively unbiased American news. I’d guess it’s probably because the DM doesn’t seem to actually have a rep in among the White House Press Whores, or among the local establishment in whatever city the interesting story of the moment comes from. So, they can tell the story and access-to-the-elite-establishment be damned. Kind of refreshing, actually: what was the old press motto? To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable – damned if it doesn’t seem that principle has been reversed, in these degraded modern days.

Anyway – we were talking about a wide-ranging number of topics, but actually, they weren’t all that wide-ranging. Mostly it was the various aspects of the Federal Gummint’s heavy and strangling hand descending on a variety of concerns and businesses: the EPA going after coal-burning power plants (what – do they want rolling blackouts?), the Department of Labor going all ‘it’s for the chiiiiiiiildren!’ in forbidding children, tweens and teens from working certain essential jobs on family farms, hammering the Catholic church for not handing out free birth control like it was Skittles, the EPA going after rabbit breeders, the Justice Department casually allowing weapons to walk from border states into Mexico, prosecuting Gibson guitar manufacturing enterprise for using certain kinds of imported wood, the TSA (who easily could be the most despised organization in the US today but for all the competition from the EPA) feeling up four-year old girls and ripping off wheelchair bound veterans, the NOAA enthusiastically ruining the livelihoods of New England independent fishermen … and the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman imbroglio, with respect to flash-mob violence and the disinclination of our own very dear Department of Justice to become involved in prosecuting those who incite racial violence. Long list it was, too. So, I don’t think I want to get fitted for a tinfoil hat just yet … but WTF do these various numbskulls think they are doing? Exactly how far do they think people can be pushed before an individual or a community entirely looses patience? I mean – do they want large numbers of Americans to openly defy the Feds, nonviolently or otherwise? Is this deliberate incitement or just dumbassery on an epic scale?

I know, cheerful thinking for a morning walk. I think I’ll go fire up the canning kettle, and put aside another dozen jars of home made pickles, relishes and sauerkraut. To the best of my knowledge, the EPA or the DOJ hasn’t come out regulating against that … yet.
(Links here. Impossible to embed links any more…
https://truthfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/rabbit-raid-redux-six-bells-farm-update/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576542942027859286.html
http://pjmedia.com/blog/new-regulations-crush-new-england-fisheries/

Far Frozen Limit

15. March 2012 · Comments Off on Far Frozen Limit · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, Good God, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!, World · Tags: , , , , ,

That is what I have finally reached this week, in the wake of the Rush Limbaugh-Slutgate imbroglio: the far frozen limit. I’ve never been one to flounce off in a huff, having neither the figure for flounces or possession of a late model huff-mobile. That was my Granny Dodie’s style; she was the one who was prone to throwing hissy-fits in public places at being the recipient of bad customer service. I personally always rather preferred the model provided by my other grandmother, Granny Jessie, who would simmer quietly, depart silently … and then never darken the door of the offending establishment ever again. Which, as Granny Jessie lived to the age of 96, probably resulted in a lot of establishments being vaguely puzzled as to why the heck they didn’t ever see the tiny, grim-faced old lady in the print rayon dress ever again … or maybe not. Say what you will, at least Granny Dodie’s method left the offending establishments in no doubt that they had offended grievously, which from a customer-service point of view, at least clued them in to the fact that there was a problem. And that they just might have to take steps to fix it.
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Of Activists and Cabbages and Kings

04. March 2012 · Comments Off on Of Activists and Cabbages and Kings · Categories: Good God, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Working In A Salt Mine..., World · Tags: , , , , ,

I was so certain that the first postings about the sudden death of Andrew Breitbart on the ‘Bigs’ last week were some kind of prank – that someone had hacked his Twitter feed, or his email, or even the website itself. Unlike many other a blogger from the conservative-libertarian side of the blogosphere, I can’t even say that I knew him, personally or by email … but I have read the ‘Bigs’ every day for months, which in blog-time must equal to years – and always derived a lot of amusement from his various projects. He fought the good fight passionately, aiming true and never backing down. His style was piratical, swashbuckling and fearless. I am fairly certain that he had a brass pair so large they probably clanged like Big Ben when he walked down the street.

So many of us who blog about politics do operate these days in – if not fear, then at least some apprehension; bloggers who tackle controversial issues do tend to attract animus from commenters, at the very least. The tall dogs in this field do draw the fleas. It’s the price of having opinions, though – and one shouldn’t mind it, too much – but still… I remember being absolutely horrified at seeing some of the threats that someone like Michelle Malkin gets all the time, and even Ann Althouse got some very scary, and very specific threats at the height of the Madison ruckus this last year. It was heartening to watch someone who was not the least bit intimidated or discouraged by that kind of reaction to go on swinging. As I said – solid brass pair. He will be missed. Conservatives and Libertarians don’t have a particularly deep bench.

Conversely, Rush Limbaugh is the other big hitter on the Conservative-Libertarian bench – and he also had a bad week. I’ve never had much interest in following him – or Glenn Beck, either. Just not my cuppa; I managed to not know who Glenn Beck was, all the way up to the first big San Antonio Tea Party rally in 2009. And it looks like el Rushbo did manage to miss the whole point of the Sandra Fluke/Georgetown Law imbroglio. Can’t blame him, really – that a thoroughly modern co-ed at a very expensive uni has the need of $1,000 worth of birth control during a single year is pretty risible. (What? She can’t find the nearest CVS pharmacy or Planned Parenthood? I thought there was an app for that…and it doesn’t cost all that much.)The real point was that the innocent and dewy-eyed 20-something co-ed was actually a thirty-ish career activist whose mission was to force a Jesuit-sponsored institution to take a course of action counter to their firmly-held principles. That she was wheeled out there and touted as the innocent and dewy-eyed 20-something co-ed in spite of considerable evidence in the public domain to the contrary … that’s the part worthy of scorn, derision and contempt.
The administration is attempting to force Catholic institutions to provide a particular health service option which is antithetical to their principles. That’s the issue – and instead, we have another round of lefty squealing about civility. Which, considering some of the things that those very same lefties said about Breitbart … is most ironical.

Weekly Miscellany

29. January 2012 · Comments Off on Weekly Miscellany · Categories: General, Home Front, Media Matters Not, Politics, sarcasm, Veteran's Affairs

It’s been another one of those weeks, sportsfans; all kinds of odd things going on, some of them personal and some of them in the larger world. Kind of hard to see which of them are more important in the big scheme o’ things, and not many of them worth a full blog-post.

1. So King Barry I did his state of the union address this week. Meh … I didn’t watch, although we did catch a few seconds of it while channel-surfing. Just enough time to wonder why on earth he appeared to be such a garish orange color … seriously, he looked like a giant Cheeto with ears. I gather the speech was the same paint by the numbers blah-blah-blah. It must not have gone over all that well with the partisans, because I distinctly heard an announcer or a guest on a certain classical music program make a crack about it; something about a certain classical music performer getting more applause than the state of the union address.

2. Gingrich or Romney, Romney or Gingrich. I am underwhelmed. The sniping between the partisans is unseemly. My one wistful desire is that it were possible to take elements of all the candidates and mold them into one single candidate: Gingrich’s fire and take-no-prisoners attitude, Romney’s skill at organization, Santorum’s constancy to principle, Perry’s experience as a governor … but it isn’t, so I’ll just have to deal with the easy decision of who to vote for in November. Anybody but King Barry, of course, but I might give the Dread Cthulhu a look-in.

3. Working all week on an editing job; a novelette supposed to be a horror story, but in actuality it was what I call secondary guy-porn. Primary guy porn is what you think it is, secondary guy porn has lots of loving detail about weapons and vehicles in it. Secondary fem-porn has lots of loving detail about clothes and accessories. Hey, it’s a living. And it’s not the worst project I’ve ever edited.

4. The second edition of the separate books of the Adelsverein Trilogy has been uploaded to Lightning Source, the proofs are approved, and it should be listed on Amazon and the usual suspects by the end of the week – and at a price of a couple of bucks cheaper than the first edition. I’d always winced, looking at the retail price, and winced again, whenever I had to purchase a bulk quantity at my author discount from Booklocker. Here’s hoping that the Trilogy chugs along just as steadily as Truckee does – both e-book and print versions … and the German translation sells like hot-cakes.

5. Sigh. We found another lost dog. And no, we’re not keeping this one, as we did with Connor. German shepherdish, youngish, fairly clean and well-mannered, unneutered male, bouncing around in the empty field back of St. Helena’s. He followed along with us, all the way home; did not take well to having a leash put on him, so we deduce that he was never taken for walkies. Of course no tags. He’s already listed on fido-finder, and tomorrow we’ll go through the usual rounds. The other two dogs are freaked out by this. The Weevil has taken over Connor’s bed, wedged underneath my desk, and Conner has had to take the Weevil’s bed, which I moved over next to my chair.

And that’s been my week – yours?

Tea Party/Occupy

10. October 2011 · Comments Off on Tea Party/Occupy · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time

It has been terribly amusing for me to observe the genesis and development of the Occupy-Insert-Location-Here movement over the last couple of weeks, especially as it has been trumpeted as the liberal answer to the Tea Party. First on Open Salon a good few of the resident bloggers were sniffling over how this Terribly Important Movement was being callously ignored by the main-stream establishment media. As of last week, thought, conventional media can’t seem to keep their eyeballs or their cameras off them – especially the Occupy Wall Street faction. Cynicism leads me to suspect that this is because it is convenient to establishment organs such as the New York Times, who all but gave faux-movements like the Coffee Party essential life-support, but that’s just me.

So, is this the Tea Party of the left? Based on my experiences during the early weeks and months of the San Antonio Tea Party throughout 2009, I would say not – but with some caveats. There are a few similar aspects, notably detestation of business crony capitalism as it is currently practiced, suspicion of the works and ways of the Federal Reserve, and a similar deep distrust of establishment politicians. There was and is also a strongly libertarian streak, to judge by the presence of Ron Paul fans, or Ronulans, as we used to call them during the 2008 election season, when they were as noisy and ubiquitous as a sort of internet grackle.

The most notable likeness is the protesting thing: the earliest organizers organized via Facebook and held at least one protest on Alamo Plaza – the main motivation being the Obama-generated fiscal deficit, and the then-proposed economic stimulus. Interest snowballed at a local and grassroots level all during March, 2009, following upon Rick Santelli’s Tea Party rant. What with one thing and another, we held very public large public protest rally on April 15th in Alamo Plaza. There were some after-event quibbles about whether there had been 15,000 people or over 20,000 – but it was a lot, and all but a handful had never, ever been to a protest before. And – it was fun! Really, it was like the world’s largest block party, which may be the elemental reason to hold a protest in the first place. They’re fun. They grab eyeballs, especially if there is a huge turn-out.

I suspect that’s what motivates a lot of volunteer participation in the Occupy Whatever protests; newbies discovering this for the first time, old protest hands relieving their glory days . . . or spoiled young trustifarians making a grab at relevance. Ours was also a lot of work to organize beforehand, down to getting permits from the City, arranging for porta-potties and security, working out the program of speakers, holding a press conference – all that stuff. We’d made a splash, media-wise, and gotten a heck of a lot of people together in the service of a common interest . . . But it was just a single day. The government machinery doesn’t stop on a dime and turn around, just because of a protest, no matter how large or well-publicized. The SA Tea Party, and others that I knew about continued on – not so much with protests, but a sustained effort to recruit voters, to become involved politically at the local level and to support candidates running for office who espoused the principles of fiscal responsibility, Constitutionality and free (really free, not the crony-capitalist kind which only pretends) markets. It took months of effort, and I believe will take months and years more, past the election season of 2012.

As far as I can see and to date, in observing the Occupy Whatever from a careful distance, it appears that the rally/gathering/extended squalid camp-out has become an end in itself. Sure, there appears to be some kind of organizing principle, even if it is merely the finest all-plastic and a yard wide Astroturf. Some of the participants seem to be working up a list of demands after the fact, but I can’t see any evidence of follow-through to the protests. Not much organizational outreach, no continuing education, no outreach to those who might be sympathetic; I suspect that many of the protest participants are old career protest hands, ready to turn out at any time to protest whatever the cause du jour might be. Occupy Whatever is successful in getting media coverage, but I’m not really seeing that as a long-term public relations advantage. The images which have been revealed to us over the last week: a protester defecating on a police car, a truly squalid, garbage-strewn campsite in a neighborhood park, a lot of creepy/incoherent/clueless protesters, mobbing the National Air and Space Museum . . . these are not images calculated to draw political adherents and effective sympathy from the larger community of Americans who might otherwise been inclined to involve themselves politically.

(Cross posted at Chicago Boyz)

Tuesday Miscellany

04. October 2011 · Comments Off on Tuesday Miscellany · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Home Front, Media Matters Not, On The Border, Politics, Rant, Stupidity, Tea Time

In no particular order of importance, I contemplate the following:

1. Regretfully, Morgan Freeman has now joined my personal celebrity s**t list, for pronouncing the Tea Party to be racist. Usually those who fall into my list have a long track record of offences; he has done it in one fell swoop of a lengthy TV interview. Yes, I know that most actors and entertainers are political morons – especially those who feel obliged to piss off a major portion of their fan-base.

2. So . . . thirty years ago, there was a rock on a hunting lease in West Texas with a racial epithet painted on it . . . which was painted over by the lease-holder, at the urging of his son, who is now presently the Governor of Texas. And this is all that the WaPo can find by way of criticism of the man. Hoooo-kayyy. From those wonderful people who brought us Watergate, this is a sad come-down.

3. And speaking of Watergate – it didn’t actually kill anyone, which is more than you can say for Operation Fast and Furious, or ‘hey boys’n’girls, lets have the ATF take the lead in supplying serious weaponry to the Mexican drug cartels!’ Seriously, if the Mexican government was to demand extradition of Attorney General Eric Holder, the head of the ATF, and every other numbskull who expedited the various gun-running operations on charges of criminal misconduct and accessory to murder, I’d say – have at it. Deliver them all to the border in handcuffs, with a big pink bow around their necks. Impeach now.

4. Michelle Antoinette’s little excursion to Target? Oh, please, woman – if you had any nerve at all, you’d have gone to Walmart.

5. Will Amanda Knox dethrone Casey Anthony when it comes to criminal justice tabloid fodder? Should I or anyone else not in the immediate family or social circle of either one really care one way or the other?

6. And why is it now October and we are still having to run the air conditioning?

PS – and one more thing: every time I hear something being flogged as ‘green’ and ‘environmentally sound’ or ‘renewable’ … I am fairly sure the object in question is a rip-off, and/or completely unsatisfactory compared to the non-green, environmentally unsound, and non-renewable version.

Squealing from the Same Sheet of Music

03. September 2011 · Comments Off on Squealing from the Same Sheet of Music · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, World

What a fascinating coincidence it is, last week it was Maxine Walters telling the Tea Party to go to hell, this week it’s another member of the Congressional Black Caucus insisting that unspecified Tea Party members of Congress and/or the House are all ready to get out the white KKK robes and start hanging Negroes from trees. To the very best of my recollection, it was a Dem – the late Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia – who started his political career as a member of the KKK . . . but in the current political climate, this is about as well-considered as throwing gasoline on a bonfire. It is also as insulting as hell to fiscally responsible, constitutionally strict fans of the free market, such as what Tea Party activists and sympathizers happen to be . . . and let it be noted that yes, indeedy, there are quite a few of such who are not, by any stretch of the imagination, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

It just looks like it is just about the only weapon left to hand, for a certain cadre of established politicians . . . and not just the CBC. They’re being only the screamingly loudest with it, of late. Just as an aside, are there any prominent long-time members of the CBC who are not bigoted, incompetent, mad as a hatter, badly-educated, infamously corrupt, repeatedly re-elected from gerrymandered slum districts, and with reputations as being absolute hell to work for? No, seriously, I am wondering. I know Col. Allen West is not any of the above, although I’ll bet that he would be seriously exacting to work for as a staff member . . . but then, he may not be a member of the CBC for much longer, so . . . is this just a case of 98% giving the rest of them a bad name?

Anyway, what it may all indicate – why the Tea Party has attracted such animus from this particular direction, and I’ll bet just about anything you like that this is a PR offensive ordered from the top down – is that Andre, and Maxine, Chollie and Sheila and the rest of them can see the writing on the wall. In this case, the indications that the money spigot will be turned off. No more easy goodies for their districts, no more chances for personal swag and graft. Hard times are landing on all of us . . . and historically awful and damaging practices in managing a district, a community, a city, a state . . . are getting to be pretty obvious. And it’s also getting pretty obvious that many historically black districts have been appallingly served by those who have always painted themselves as the stalwart champions of same – although some have escaped investigation and prosecution by the skin of their teeth – and one suspects judicious application of the race card. Indeed, it could be argued that most attempts to remedy the ills of the inner-city minority populations have made matters much, much worse. Hence the ear-piercingly loud squeals who suddenly visualize themselves being abruptly cut off from guzzling at the government trough; just as much as the Tea Party activists and sympathizers are pissed as hell at government waste and mismanagement, it’s a pretty certain bet they’ll have no patience at all in tolerating political corruption and incompetence.

And aside to Allen West? Quit the CBC now. Really, you’ll look like the stand-up guy that your district elected you to be – a real mensch. A real American and not a race-hustling corruptocrat and poverty pimp, looking for the nearest handy spigot of money and influence. My advice – take it for what it’s worth.

Memo: You First, Maxine

22. August 2011 · Comments Off on Memo: You First, Maxine · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, Tea Time

From: Sgt. Mom
To: The Hon. Maxine Waters,
Re: Telling the Tea Party to Go to Hell
1.Dear Maxine, when I call into memory the particulars regarding your district, I can only assume that you are already well acquainted with Hell, and the audience you were addressing with your recent inflammatory and insulting diatribe are a pretty fair assembly of your constituents. So nice to see that you are upholding the new civility in our political discourse.

2. Allow me to enlighten you – or bring it to your own awareness – that the so-called Tea Party are a leaderless and distributed insurgency of involved and patriotic citizens united by three basic concerns: fiscal responsibility, strict dedication to the precepts for self-government outlined in the Constitution, and an affection for free markets – which is not anything like crony capitalism, as is currently practiced among the current corruptocracy. A limited federal establishment, state and local control, a high degree of personal responsibility also come into it.

3. I can also see why this Tea Party political tendency would greatly concern a certain kind of long-established political parasite; that kind of machine-based, racial-grievance charlatan who battens onto the American body politic like a tick, exploiting the life-blood of the Republic no less than the woes and miseries of their constituencies for decades. A new political class imbued with devotion to Tea Party principles is very likely viewed by such a politician as akin to the approach of someone with a pair of tweezers and a hot match . . . I only draw the parallel. You may take that simile as far as you like.

4. Finally, I expect that within my lifetime, there will be another person of color – man or woman elected to the Presidency of this country. He – or she – will definitely not be a product of the corrupt special interest, racial-grievance chasing, big-city machine-oligarchy. They will most likely come out of the larger business world or the military . . . and very likely will be Tea Partiers. This will probably not please you, but life is just full of these little tragedies.

5. Bless your heart, Maxine – you have a nice day, you hear?

I remain, most sincerely,
Sgt Mom

(cross-posted at Chicago Boyz)

So…Didja Watch the Debate Last Night?

12. August 2011 · Comments Off on So…Didja Watch the Debate Last Night? · Categories: Media Matters Not, My Head Hurts, Politics, Rant, That's Entertainment!

Me:  Looking at calendar.  “Why?”

Them:  “You watched the finale of “So You Think You Can Dance?” instead didn’t you?”

Me:  Holding up my fist.  “Melanie RULES!  Michele Bachmann’s got nothing on her.”

Cage-match!

21. July 2011 · Comments Off on Cage-match! · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Politics

So, here we have what is shaping up to be a cage-match between Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Allen West . . . well, it’s bound to be an improvement on the 19th-century encounter between Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner and South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks. In that instance Brooks caned Sumner unmercifully on the Senate floor, on the grounds that Sumner had bitterly and personally calumniated Brooks’ cousin, Senator Andrew Brooks in a speech in the Senate when Senator Brooks was not present to defend himself . . . say, doesn’t that sound familiar? One thing to grandstand, another to do so when the person you are addressing is actually present. On the whole, the chipmunk-cheeked Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is perhaps lucky that dueling is illegal and out of style. Just as an aside, she reminds me of one of those nasty little middle-school bullies who provokes and provokes and when someone finally snaps and takes a swing at her, starts sniveling, “you can’t hit me – that’s not fair!”

And it also sounds – from the various news reports that she and Allen West do have a bit of a history going there, and not in a nice way. So – as someone remarked on another blog, perhaps it might have been better if he saved the email in the draft folder and slept on it . . . but then again, maybe not. I pretty much believe that as a career Army officer in the rank of colonel that got there by become pretty adept at managing the battlespace, either on the field or in the administrative bowels of an institution like the military – and his own temper. It doesn’t look like he is backing down, either; it looks like it’s a line in the sand, drawn by the new conservatives (as opposed to the limp, squishy go-along-to-get-along career RINO establishment.) And that line implicitly says – do not insult us and depend upon our innate good manners and willingness to suck up the abuse to escape consequences.

So – interesting times. And if either of them comes onto the House floor carrying a cane and heading for the other’s desk . . . I hope to heck the Sergeant of Arms takes it away, quick.

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