My hat is off to Pamela, again, this time for tolerating the insufferable Ron Reagan, Jr. What a Solomon to Rehoboam transition for that family. Nancy, you love your son, I’m sure, but the same mouth that knows Governor Palin “hasn’t got a thought in her head” is entirely too quick to slice Pamela off at the ankles for “not having met my father.”
What a contemptible, cretinous performance by the son of a great American. Wikipedia says that he’s been lurking on MSNBC and Air America. The reasons are obvious. Sadly, I’d say his career has already peaked.
I’ll paraphrase an Onion horosocope I saw at some point in the past:
Junior, you’re your own man, and no one can tell you what to do, but you’ve really got to quit snorting all that Drano.
Update: Linked by Da Tech Guy, who still needs support to make CPAC.
Bernard-Henri Lévy had some data problems, reports the Telegraph, out flogging another tome, On War in Philosophy, which can’t be linked at Amazon, yet. His thought seems mildly interesting, as, according to Wikipedia, he has founded an Institute of Levinassian Studies. As with all philosophers, I’m tempted to put him in a room and force him to incorporate his ideas into something practical, to filter excessive navel-gazing.
The story is that a writer created a fake philosophical persona, “Jean-Baptiste Botul, whom [Lévy] describes as a post-War authority on Kant”. You would think that Lévy himself would have met a Kantian authority. But Botul, and the school of philosophical thought called ‘Botulism’, are as rare as sunspot activity of late.
Maybe the current blowback will be theraputic:
Mr Lévy took the humiliation on the chin last night in appearances in a series of evening TV shows. “I found the book astonishing,” he said, adding that Mr Pagès was a “very good philosopher”.
“Hats off to the this invented but truer than real life Kant whose portrait, whether signed by Botul or Pagès still seems in line with my idea of (the philosopher),” he told the Libération.
Al Gore, hunched over his snow-blower, refused to comment.
The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.
Rahm is a less than sympathetic character in the whole ordeal. To paraphrase Winston Churchill,
“You can always count on Americans to arrive at the correct analysis – after they’ve tried everything else.”
Note that by Americans, I mean the citizens at large. I explicitly hold forth 0 hope whatsoever for the goofballs in office or the pack of Fester Addams characters staffing all of those cushy, quasi-tenured civil service positions. Over decades they have created, and now enjoy, a jolly good crisis. None of their prescriptions start with the admission that the system, itself, is the problem.
So the people were asleep at the voting machine switch for a long time. And now the Information Age alarm clock has triggered another Great Awakening:
They were right. The Tea Party movement is bottom up, not top down. Lots of Tea Party people think well of Sarah Palin, but I doubt that many, even among the attendees at this weekend’s convention, would do much of anything just on her say-so. People I’ve talked to, both there and at other events, aren’t looking for a charismatic leader.
I submit that the requirement for the single name getting the blame/credit will diminish over time. Adults don’t require micro-management. They require transparency, simplicity, and reproducibility for policies. The Federal payroll, one would think at first blush, should taper off over time. The fact that it’s increasing is bizarre and counter-intuitive if you take ‘civil servant’ at face value.
Those who are stuck in a legacy mode of personality-driven leadership are going to continue to make big deals over Potty Mouth Rahm or Inky Palm Sarah.
A different, dare we say, unprecedented approach would be to exercise Article V of the Constitution. Let us disabuse ourselves of the notion of the Beltway reforming itself. Congress is a financial molester, and if you hope for anything save recidivism, you’ll become an expert hoper. They. Won’t. Fix. Jack. Willingly, at least. I say that to dampen in advance the expectation that an unprecedented November avalanche at the polls will deliver the necessary colonic irrigation to DC:
No, I think it’s worse than that, and that nothing less than a bottom-up tsunami of State legislatures sharpening Article V Amendment knives is going to halt the slide into Europification of this country. The passion of the people is great, but it needs to be transformed into cold analysis and structural rearrangement to amount to much. If we don’t mend our ways, merely changing out the names will leave all the blockage in place, awaiting the next blame game.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — I’m heading out this morning, back to snowbound Maryland, where the forecast is snow, snow, and more snow. My wife’s worried. I’ll be OK.
Thanks to all the tip-jar hitters who’ve made this trip possible. Some road reading:
Not like he’s threatening anyone: “The owner of the state’s largest and oldest electronic bingo casino said Monday that Alabama Attorney General Troy King should shut down Gov. Bob Riley’s task force on illegal gambling before ‘somebody gets hurt.'”
Clearly, when casino operators in Alabama start talking like that, it’s a hint for me to hit the road.
The prime congressional target for Alabama’s Republicans is Rep. Bobby Bright, whose 2nd District encompasses the Wiregrass region where Odom’s group has become a force to be reckoned with, as has the Wetumpka Tea Party, led by Eric and Becky Gerritson.
The anti-establishment mood represented by the Tea Party movement is a factor in the Republican crusade to unseat Bright, who won the 2nd District seat by a narrow margin in 2008 and whose re-election race is rated a “toss-up” by the Cook Political Report.
Montgomery City Council member Martha Roby, who announced as a GOP candidate last May, was cited by Roll Call as a recruiting success story for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Roby raised $125,000 in the six weeks after she announced her candidacy, but being the handpicked choice of the national GOP establishment may prove more curse than blessing in a year when Republicans are in the midst of a populist insurgency. Many grassroots conservatives are suspicious of the party insiders who disastrously backed Dede Scozzafava last year in the New York 23rd District special election, and whose support of Charlie Crist in this year’s Florida Senate primary sparked a sharp backlash.
Montgomery businessman Rick Barber announced last month that he would also seek the Republican nomination in the 2nd District, bringing his own Tea Party activism into the campaign. A 34-year-old former Marine sergeant and pool-hall owner, Barber was among those who challenged Bright to discuss President Obama’s proposed health-care legislation in a town-hall meeting during the congressional recess last August, an invitation that Bright repeatedly declined. . . .
The “Tea Party” movement, which held a convention last weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, is largely a media concoction, aimed at shifting official American political life even further to the right.
By the power of Keynes and the make-work fallacy, this cat, Sissypuss, is employed. New advances / relaxations in requirements for the geo-location (this job is in a non-existent district in the 54th state), and species (the cat’s staff swears she has the personality of Barbara Boxer combined with the intellect of Nancy Pelosi) have enabled yet another unprecedented economic success for the Obama administration.
This blog repeats its clarion call for the right-o-sphere to quit pickin’ on the poor POTUS and, instead, rejoice in the knowledge that, if we all just visualize improvement together, good things might come. Please?
Update: there has been a call in the comments for a little soundtrack action in support of this post. Ever the obliging blog, we proudly present American Alpha-male All-star Ted Nugent in his Cal Jam II reading of Cat Scratch Fever:
Amazing. Is that version really 32 years old? I recall seeing it, perhaps live, when I was just a little squid.
