Sydney Brillo Duodenum pays close attention to his neighborhood e-mail list serve. As SBD resides in an enclave of liberal fantasists, there's constant news of Earth's peril. Today, we have this:
Now this week, in no particular order . . .I'm starting to get nervous. Last year by this time we saw many Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies flitting around our backyard, along with other butterflies that were less numerous.
This year, nothing.
Not one butterfly, even though we probably have more birds, many of which are raising young. Those are cardinal, robin, catbird, house wren, carolina wren, house finch.
Has anyone seen the swallowtail in their yards?
The president's handpicked commander for the defining American conflict overseas and his elite handpicked staff are caught with their ACUs about their ankles as they are felated by a reporter from a music review magazine and speak unkind thoughts of the putative leader of the free world and his chosen emissaries, leading to the commander's resignation, the elevation of another tactician once accused of betraying his country, our national humiliation, but a firm declaration from the goat skinned Fourth Estate that the CinC's handling of the entire affair was "brilliant."
Sixty years since the commence of hostilities, North Korea threatens war daily upon their civilized brothers to the south while the United States figures out how much food and fuel they'll need to hand over to buy some more time and global humiliation.
The American president wantonly sits on the assets, might and reach of the deepest bureaucratic construct in human history, preventing a competent and focused response to the largest man-made environmental disaster in the country's history because allowing a bigger mess to destroy a wider swath of the country's southern water barrier might make it easier for him to pass a 2,000 page bill that will make it illegal to use a wood burning stove in Vermont.
An American president eats designer hamburgers with the puppet-jowled Russian president, declaring a successful "reset" of relations with the nation that during almost the entire 20th Century was focused entirely upon diminishing and pushing back American military, political, economic, cultural and social influence - in effect the standard of liberty and freedom - across the globe.
America's unceasing enemy of 31 years, Iran, proceeds merrily along on the production of nuclear material for use in regional ballistic missiles and as tools of the terror trade while the United States grandly announces a new set of sanctions that close huge holes in the last set of sanctions that Iran was able to slip through.
The United States Congress has passed another 2,000 page legislative monstrosity to address alleged financial structure weaknesses threatening to stop the unstarted economic recovery after the largest government intervention into the messy affairs of men ever, and the immediate result is that bank stocks soar, indicating quite clearly that another major sector of the economy has fully accepted its corporatist role vis a vis its government masters.
The child playing dress up as the United States Treasury Secretary casually admits to a UK audience that the world "cannot depend as much on the US as it did in the past."
Whereas in the past a pothead might shoot or knife a drug dealer in a back alley and steal his stash and cash, today they are walking into "marijauna dispensaries," gunning down the paid employees, and stealing the stash and cash.
Pressed to the wall, the Governor of the Bankrupt State of California, declaring that he will "use every available power . . . to protect taxpayers from waste, fraud and abuse in government,'' is forced to ban the use of welfare debit cards to withdraw cash at ATMs located at tribal casinos and state-licensed poker rooms.
The United States edges ever closer to Europussification with every advance it makes in the World Cup.
The Democrat-controlled United States Congress, fearful of losing that control in November, while happy that the Supreme Court found that unions have a right to free speech in their participation in our electoral processes but chagrined that the Supreme Court found that corporations as well have a right to free speech in their participation in our electoral processes, passed legislation that would make it harder for one set of Americans - in the form of corporations - to exercise their right of free speech and would make it easier for another set of Americans - in the form of unions - to exercise their right of free speech.
A group of concerned assholes in New York is set to sue McDonald's because they claim McDonald's "creepy and predatory" Happy Meal is violating numerous consumer protection laws by entising children into its restaurants where they are forced to buy and consume fat ladden fast food unbeknownst to their parents. McDonald's announced that the claims are ludicrous and at the same time announced they are changing their name to Pied Piper's Burgerland.
The American president's choice for the Supreme Court Elena Kagan . . .
Oh, yes, yes, yes . . .
. . . but what news of the swallowtail?
