Well, a kitten got us this weekend; her name is Alice, and she had a policy of "when in doubt, purr." Expect more soon on Foggy Foot Annex.
And, I seem to have a Tom Lehrer song stuck in my head....
Monday, January 19, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Obama's First Triumphs
Today I had the sorrowprivilege of listening to the beginning of Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearings in the senate while commuting to work. The introductory fellatio was off the Richter scale even for those occasions when the partisanship of the house and legislature match, and the bipartisan olive-branches that really mean "we expect the other guys to lay aside their concerns and priorities so they can advance our agenda instead" were strewn about in that simulation of camaraderie so well known in Minnesota and the deep South.
What I wasn't expecting was in Clinton’s prepared remarks. Sure, she has a tin ear and she delivers speeches exactly the way her husband doesn’t, emphasizing the parts of the sentence that are intended as lubricant while gliding along the portions that should be emphasized, but, while her public speaking continues to startle and surprise the unwary ear, after suffering through her primary campaign’s stump speeches this is hardly astonishing. What was astonishing was the immense amount of slight-of-mind in the speech – she alluded to nearly known opportunity and vexation that the world faces today, but every time she veered dangerously close to making a prescription she slipped sideways into the sort of generalities and pabulum that any fourteen-year-old girl in front of her civics class might have advocated when required to give a political speech. And it really was an assigned but otherwise meaningless speech, as CSPAN long ago converted public hearings into the toilet politicians use to communicate with their masses. The masses this time around are from the Left, who have a “don’t bother me with the details – I trust your good intentions” mind-set, so this was all spot on for the audience at hand. Meanwhile I’m was trying not to run off the road because of how violently my gorge kept rising….
But then it hit me: what a stroke of genius on Obama’s part. After the Clinton machine insisted on torturing all thinking listeners for over a year, Obama has managed to give us at least four years peace, in which Clinton can take her crash-course in rhetoric overseas. To paraphrase General Patton, “our job is not to have Clinton melt our minds melted like cheap Velveeta, our job is to let Clinton melt the other poor dumb bastards minds like cheap Velveeta!”. For four years at least, the only speeches we’ll hear from Clinton will be in quick sound-bytes on CNN. If nothing else, this is truly a triumph of the Obama regime.
But then I thought: “Wait a minute! To confidently speak at length in tones of grand significance while actually saying nothing – isn’t this truly the heart and soul of diplomacy?” In addition to saving our poor scalded minds from her speeches, Obama may have achieved an even grander triumph even before being sworn into office: he may have figured out something Hillary Clinton’s good for!
What I wasn't expecting was in Clinton’s prepared remarks. Sure, she has a tin ear and she delivers speeches exactly the way her husband doesn’t, emphasizing the parts of the sentence that are intended as lubricant while gliding along the portions that should be emphasized, but, while her public speaking continues to startle and surprise the unwary ear, after suffering through her primary campaign’s stump speeches this is hardly astonishing. What was astonishing was the immense amount of slight-of-mind in the speech – she alluded to nearly known opportunity and vexation that the world faces today, but every time she veered dangerously close to making a prescription she slipped sideways into the sort of generalities and pabulum that any fourteen-year-old girl in front of her civics class might have advocated when required to give a political speech. And it really was an assigned but otherwise meaningless speech, as CSPAN long ago converted public hearings into the toilet politicians use to communicate with their masses. The masses this time around are from the Left, who have a “don’t bother me with the details – I trust your good intentions” mind-set, so this was all spot on for the audience at hand. Meanwhile I’m was trying not to run off the road because of how violently my gorge kept rising….
But then it hit me: what a stroke of genius on Obama’s part. After the Clinton machine insisted on torturing all thinking listeners for over a year, Obama has managed to give us at least four years peace, in which Clinton can take her crash-course in rhetoric overseas. To paraphrase General Patton, “our job is not to have Clinton melt our minds melted like cheap Velveeta, our job is to let Clinton melt the other poor dumb bastards minds like cheap Velveeta!”. For four years at least, the only speeches we’ll hear from Clinton will be in quick sound-bytes on CNN. If nothing else, this is truly a triumph of the Obama regime.
But then I thought: “Wait a minute! To confidently speak at length in tones of grand significance while actually saying nothing – isn’t this truly the heart and soul of diplomacy?” In addition to saving our poor scalded minds from her speeches, Obama may have achieved an even grander triumph even before being sworn into office: he may have figured out something Hillary Clinton’s good for!
Friday, January 09, 2009
Un-Cute Un-Relief
Just in case anyone's feeling cheerful, here's an interview with one of the guys that predicted all this financial mess YEARS ago. I don't think it's necessarily as bad as he makes it out to be, but can't disagree any more strongly than that.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Cute Relief
Just in case you're bummed out by any number of the things going on right now, here's some mindless cute-relief:
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Palestine: Game (long) Over
WARNING: unedited rambling rant-ish post ahead....
There was a very sad afternoon for my twin and I when we were kids when we spent a while at one of the more significant crossroads of the Trail of Tears thinking about what our forbears had done to the Native American population. Gaza brings up similar feelings for me -- there're just as many Arabs selling out other Arabs as there were Native Americans doing the same back then, and, just like then, the only rational conclusion for the native population involved is "game over, dude".
Peace talks so far speak of a "two state solution" and not only do not countenance any return of palestinian properties taken (these seizures are mostly known, right down to the street addresses), but also of no right to participate in any meaningful way in the Israeli population -- as the local Jews say "or else we'd be a minority in our own country". This's slightly different than our history here, when, even though our idea of America was a country of, by and for white people, there was plenty of land for everyone. Like the situation with Israel, though, the native population had already occupied the best land, so clearly that had to change. Palestinian Arabs are now squished into cantons, ghettos or reservations (depending on whose rhetoric you favor) that make the idea of a single continuous, autonomous and sovereign state as laughable as the pretext of Native American reservations' sovereignty that the government maintains today (Native Americans on "their" land can barely spit without BIA's approval).
The Native Palestinians are a conquered and defeated people existing solely where the Israelis chose to crowd them, with water rights solely when they don't contravene the interests of the steadily increasing numbers of incoming Zionists. The Fatah and Hamas organizations are flag-wavers on a sinking ship and the other regional Arab states who continue to throw the Palestinians under the proverbial bus so as to distract their own populations from their local tyrannies are well aware of this fact and are perfectly happy to see Palestinians slaughtered 10-to-1 (8.5 years of rocket attacks have killed 28 Jewish Israelis (the Israelis that Israelis care about), making the death toll from the current operation about 10-1 -- thus easily satisfying Blair's Law of Insurrection). Thus there's no hope of other Arab states coming to the Philistines' rescue to overthrow Israel (nor would Western "consciences" countenance an undoing of their solution to Hitler's "solution").
Israelis will never allow the Palestinians to co-habitate with them for fear of losing racial hegemony (the clear game-plan to satisfy "Never Again" being to maintain a country just for them plus just enough defanged second-class Arabs as are needed to clean their commodes), nor can any viable nation be pieced together from disconnected regions whose occupants enjoy no right of travel between them. The big question is: when are the Palestinians going to realize that the game is up, that resistance at this point is utterly futile, and that their only hope is to seek extradition to other countries where they can be taken advantage of in a new Arab version of the Grapes of Wrath?
There was a very sad afternoon for my twin and I when we were kids when we spent a while at one of the more significant crossroads of the Trail of Tears thinking about what our forbears had done to the Native American population. Gaza brings up similar feelings for me -- there're just as many Arabs selling out other Arabs as there were Native Americans doing the same back then, and, just like then, the only rational conclusion for the native population involved is "game over, dude".
Peace talks so far speak of a "two state solution" and not only do not countenance any return of palestinian properties taken (these seizures are mostly known, right down to the street addresses), but also of no right to participate in any meaningful way in the Israeli population -- as the local Jews say "or else we'd be a minority in our own country". This's slightly different than our history here, when, even though our idea of America was a country of, by and for white people, there was plenty of land for everyone. Like the situation with Israel, though, the native population had already occupied the best land, so clearly that had to change. Palestinian Arabs are now squished into cantons, ghettos or reservations (depending on whose rhetoric you favor) that make the idea of a single continuous, autonomous and sovereign state as laughable as the pretext of Native American reservations' sovereignty that the government maintains today (Native Americans on "their" land can barely spit without BIA's approval).
The Native Palestinians are a conquered and defeated people existing solely where the Israelis chose to crowd them, with water rights solely when they don't contravene the interests of the steadily increasing numbers of incoming Zionists. The Fatah and Hamas organizations are flag-wavers on a sinking ship and the other regional Arab states who continue to throw the Palestinians under the proverbial bus so as to distract their own populations from their local tyrannies are well aware of this fact and are perfectly happy to see Palestinians slaughtered 10-to-1 (8.5 years of rocket attacks have killed 28 Jewish Israelis (the Israelis that Israelis care about), making the death toll from the current operation about 10-1 -- thus easily satisfying Blair's Law of Insurrection). Thus there's no hope of other Arab states coming to the Philistines' rescue to overthrow Israel (nor would Western "consciences" countenance an undoing of their solution to Hitler's "solution").
Israelis will never allow the Palestinians to co-habitate with them for fear of losing racial hegemony (the clear game-plan to satisfy "Never Again" being to maintain a country just for them plus just enough defanged second-class Arabs as are needed to clean their commodes), nor can any viable nation be pieced together from disconnected regions whose occupants enjoy no right of travel between them. The big question is: when are the Palestinians going to realize that the game is up, that resistance at this point is utterly futile, and that their only hope is to seek extradition to other countries where they can be taken advantage of in a new Arab version of the Grapes of Wrath?
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