First Taste - the Hop-Ocalypse

Living as we all do now in the New Magic Kingdom, there is the distinct possibility that you will find yourself in the Fast Pass lane teetering at the edge of the Chasm of Hope and Fantasy, a deeply shadowed canyon of financial imagineering conjured by craftsmen exponentially more talented, yet no less criminal, than the talented Mr. Madoff. A key feature of this attraction is that, as you constantly step back from the brink, you immediately find yourself stepping up to the brink again, such that eventually you enter a catatonic state. You may stand gob smacked for hours on end, mouth agape, a pasty film turning your tongue white, dry and malodorous. A lucky few with have the necessary medicine at hand: the Hop-Ocalypse.

The Hop-Ocalypse India Pale Ale

Brewer: Clay Pipe Brewing Company, Westminster, MD

Marketing BS: "Hop-Ocalypse IPA . . . Change your world!"

Marketing Translation: We've oversold the hoppiness of our brew, but it's too late because you already bought the six pack and now you're drunk but for a few hours you'll feel like you could change the world. What do you want for $10? Now get the hell out of here!

Bottle/Label: A soft hued image of the end of the world.

The Pull: As quiet as the turning of two keys deep in a bunker.

Alcohol Content: 6%

Method of Imbibation: Mouth riding the bottle like Major Kong

First Swig: Not so much Little Man as Fat Boy. A definite radiation like scrubbing of the palate from the hops, but the carbonation provides for a controlled detonation across the tongue.

Competition: None. An exhaustive query to Wolfram/Alpha, specifically, "How many beers feature a picture of the Apocalypse on their label?" resulted in no results.

Recommendation: When standing gob smacked on the edge of financial and societal collapse, this little bottle of doom will ease your pain. Definitely keep a stockpile in your bunker.

Appliance Analogy

The Federal Budget

Today's Gratuitous Attack on Progress

We should all take a step back from the doorway onto the express jet of substantive gratuitous attacks against the first racist radical Hispanic womyn to be nominated for the Supreme Court.

We simply do not yet know whether she has paid her taxes. The odds are that she hasn't.

So everyone just calm the fuck down.

Also, you white people - not so much you white women, really just you white men - no one cares what you think about this because you simply don't have the life experience to make a reasonable judgement about it.

Imagine

Yes, those tardy kindergartners from Virginia were turned away from the White House gates - the gates to the People's House, the Locus (locust?) of all Hope in the Universe, the Seat of The New Democracy - in order to acommodate Mr. Obama's lunch with the Pittsburgh Steelers, in Washington for some reason no one recalls. They are of course just a bunch of cry babies; just a large group of impressionable little Obamots, FruitLooped up on the national hysteria that is the Obama administration. Thought they would come to Washington and just barge into the Presidential Palace like Kelly's Heroes and steal the Gold. A glorious day of touching every possible antique surface and bulletproof window in that house that looks sort of like Graceland where Mom and that guy "Dad" keep talking about you like they took you home from there somehow after they snuck into a bathroom with gold toilet fixtures. They have been taught a valuable lesson in not wasting the Great One's precious time working on behalf of the people in the country who do manage to show up on time to the welfare offices, methodone clinics, and tasting bins at Whole Foods at lunch time. Their self-esteem paved over by some 23 year old White House scheduler, they will return home to their cabins in the woods where they live with their Mom who is also their cousin and they will sit under the chicken coop or on the stoop of their double wide cleaning their Airsoft semi-automatics and reciting phrases from the Book of Job while picking dog excrement from their Payless Sketcher knockoffs and naming the bits after the foreigners who clogged the Beltway and made them late for their minute under the bio-luminescence that is The One. What rubes. What little tiny rubettes and rubins. Shame is their middle name. Shane and Wayne, too, probably.

They and their "parents" will spend the better part of Memorial Day Weekend imagining how Mr. Magnifico could have bent the rules for them, particularly since they had traveled what in their tiny little provincial minds was at least as far as Uncle Cletus walked with his shine after his old Ford 150 cracked an axle up on Hollow Rd. near the old lynching tree. Imagine, they'll slur under the hot Virginia sun, if Mr. Presidente's people had said to the group, you know what, you might be late because you're slow, but since you traveled as far outside your town as you ever will, we have a big surprise for you, the future, - you're going to have hot dogs and macaroni and cheese not only with the man who has single handedly saved our Great Ongoing Experiment, but also with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Imagine if the President had put those two groups together. Imagine the fawning press coverage and the most bestest feelingest story ever, created by the only man capable of salvaging our hope for mankind and daily personal justice. Imagine The Magic Man forcing 6 foot 7 football hero millionaires onto his personal basketball court outside the Oval Office to shoot hoops against tiny little kids. National security debate with Darth Cheney? Puhleese. Cheney can't dunk.

Oh, well, maybe next year.

Rigid Ideobamology

With the news that four men, who attempted to procure high explosives in order to destroy two temples in New York City, were fairly recent converts to radical Islam through their brief exposure to radical Islamist prisoners in US jails, The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto poses a simple test of the Obama administration:

In his speech yesterday, Obama declared that "the American people are not absolutist, and they don't elect us to impose a rigid ideology." Importing hard-core Islamic supremacists [Guantanamo prisoners] into U.S. prisons is an insane policy. If Obama's proposing it is not an example of an official being driven by rigid ideology, then the phrase has no meaning.

Minitrue

It is time to rant and rave and stream some consciousness about the building progressive assault on the distribution of information and opinion. Be warned, this one is incoherent.

The Communications Daily [subscription only, so no link], a telecommunications a media industry daily, reports the following taking place at a conference in Washington:

[Interim FCC Chairman Michael] Copps criticized broadcasters and papers over news coverage and other issues. He said there’s too much “infotainment” and not enough investigative journalism. “We are skating perilously close of depriving our fellow citizens” of information they need “to make intelligent decisions about the future of their country,” Copps told the conference audience.

[…]

The U.S. ought to consider PBSS -- “a public broadcasting system on steroids,” acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps said at the conference, alluding to the Public Broadcasting Service. “Other nations find ways to support such things” and it can’t “be done on the cheap,” he said. There should be a “permanent trust fund” for public broadcasting, instead of annual appropriations, Free Press Communications Director Craig Aaron said. “We need new policies to support media and I hate to break it to some of you, but the government is going to have to be involved.”

Well there you have it. The cozy, nonchalant, matter of fact belief among the Beltway nomenclatura that “the government” is the answer to the nation’s “media” problem. And once again the soft fascism of the American left is revealed.

In the first instance, we observe Interim FCC Chairman Copps, more recently known as Commissioner Eeyore, always warning that our democracy (never our Constitutional Republic) was but one banana peel of criminal policy from the precipice of corporate fascism and dictatorship of the airwaves and the Intertubes, calling for the injection of massive quantities of anabolic tax dollars directly into that bleeding heart of the liberal corpus – public television. He believes this will save public television, which by his definition is journalism. In other words, government will save journalism by funding the one entity guaranteed to serve the purpose of always making government’s case for more government action. Almost all PBS programming is one constant call for government action.

This is part and parcel of Copps’ other hobbyhorse - “localism.” In short, broadcasters are licensed by the FCC on a local basis and, due to scarcity of spectrum, they have certain public interest responsibilities to the community in which they are licensed. Thus, most local broadcast and radio stations do not continuously broadcast Gilligan’s Island or Stairway to Heaven, but also offer a medley of local news, talk, sports and such. They do this for the very simple reason that you can make money on distributing other people’s creative juices, which is as it should be. They spend unconscionable sums of money researching what people want to see and hear. Critics, scolds, and intellectuals who want to control what people hear and see more often than not call it dreck and pine for content that no research has ever proven to be a long term viable business case. More fantastical is that businesses spend huge sums of money (albeit less so and in more discriminating fashion these days) to position their products and services alongside that crap. Now, broadcasters have some very real public responsibilities, such as conveying emergency alerts and ensuring the uninterrupted presentation of SBD’s sacred primetime network programming. Under the “localism” rubric, broadcasters’ continuing license to operate will be judged against the extent to which they serve the interests of their local markets. This almost always translates into serving a phalanx of special interests, community activists, and minority shake down venture capitalists that claim they are not being heard by the community, are being ignored by broadcasters and in compensation need free government mandated access to the airwaves. There’s always the accusation of institutional racism of broadcasters as they supposedly ignore a diversity of voices by blocking it with crap that people actually want to see and hear. Or broadcasters are not recognizing America’s diversity by segregating the airwaves. Around election time, it means liberal and progressive candidates aren’t monopolizing local news coverage. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but what are blogs for. In any event, localism in application is a taking, plain and simple. The Tea Party people could make a compelling argument that they are local and every time they show up at some park in the thousands with their terrible hand lettered bad punning signs they are summarily dismissed by local broadcasters, who already peddle a constant stream of concerned progressivism, as anyone who suffers through local evening news knows all too well. But the Tea Partiers aren’t a bunch of whiny pussies for the most part and will find other means of getting their message across, which is the way it should be.

Now that the left/liberal elite are running the studio as it were, they have a whole new slate of programming they intend to cram into viewers and listeners brains. Now that they own the big advertisers – Banks and Car Manufacturers – they can position their crappy content and have those failing industries buy ad time on it. Perfect statism all around. Copps will get them there as quickly as he can with localism. In order to softly compel broadcasters to beef up their local, i.e., progressive content, he is pushing for stations to undergo license review every three years now, as opposed to eight. The effect of this is that every leftcrank organization n the country will file thousands of “showings” against stations “proving” they do not meet their localism mandate and thus the station will have to promise al sorts of freebies to oppressed. Al Sharpton, call your office.

Copps also said:

If old media is going to be with us a while still, what implications does this have for us? It means we still need to get serious about defining broadcasters' public interest obligations and reinvigorating our license renewal process. Since we still need broadcasters to contribute to the democratic dialogue, we need clear standards that can be fairly but vigorously enforced. It is time to say good-bye to postcard renewal every eight years and hello to license renewals every three years with some public interest teeth.

And when he says “democratic dialogue” he really means Democrat Talking Points.

I understand that many thoughtful people are ready to give up on the public interest. They would rather just impose a spectrum fee on broadcasters and be done with it. I'm not ready to throw in the towel. The public interest standard is like a grand old theater that has been badly neglected over the years. The structure is sound, and with a little imagination and a lot of hard work we can make it a showplace once again.

Right. In other words, now that we are control of the studio, it’s time to bring back the Petey Green Show (which SBD would not mind as Petey Green was a great entertainer). Copps is such a grandpa – “Let’s fix up the old crack den theater and turn it into show place for retread silent movies, because that’s clearly what The People are demanding. Of course, we’ll need a massive tax break and subsidized building funds and special favors with respect to the zoning and we’ll have to condemn the cleaners and Laundromat and the car parts supply business on the block because movie goers are going to need to eat before and after the shows at restaurants and bistros offering locally grown foods, but the community of retired hippies is certainly behind it and, dammit, it’s for the children!

As of this writing, the purpose of the FCC’s “Localism Proceedings is to gather information from consumers, industry, civic organizations, and others on broadcasters’ service to their local communities. Along with competition and diversity, promoting localism is a key goal of the Commission’s media ownership rules.”

Copps talks about “clear standards” for promoting that “democratic dialogue” and what he’s talking about is the present state of mainstream journalism: reporting that government is doing X when it should (of course) be doing Y. We know that it never reports that it probably shouldn't be doing either. It always amazes how people like Copps make these broad claims that journalism is on the rocks because there actually people out there promoting ideas and policy diametrically opposed to the progressive agenda. It’s shocking to them that it’s can be allowed and was allowed under the Bush Junta. They hope to change that.

Copps’ other fatal flaw is to always project his opinion of what’s newsworthy or the source of what’s newsworthy, thus Fox News, the libtard bogeyman of the 21st Century, but which sages like Copps never openly name, is never a legitimate voice or source of information, despite its gargantuan ratings year in and year out. Copps should have nothing to say about what is newsworthy or what advances the "democratic dialogue" other than that he understands his job is to ensure that a multiplicty of avenues free of government inspection, toll, and gating are there to allow it. It vexes liberals like Copps that “consumers” consume Fox. If they had but more access to the highfalutin offerings of the publicly funded media, it would be so much easier to have the government get things done in their name. Two ways to do this is to ensure constant and huge funding for public television and, two, use the bullying power of government regulation and sanction to threaten local broadcasters into feeding your agenda to control media by imposing opinion on it.

Working hand in hand with Copps are people like Mr. Craig Aaron, as quoted above. This man is the “Communications Director” for a group called “Free Press,” a Washington “public interest” lobbying power house. Mr. Aaron suggests that only government intervention can save media, which in Free Press' mind is always journalism, because all media (must) have a journalistic (e.g., teaching and indoctrinating) angle. This “Free Press” employee, without reservation, hesitation, caution, or a sense of irony, declaims that “media” needs new policies and they can only come from and be supported by government.

At the height of their power, liberals/progressives are mewling about the sorry state of journalism, as evidenced in their minds by the failing newspaper industry. We know that two things are screwing the newspaper industry. Journalists and the economy.

With respect to journalists, when newspapermen, who really were business men, relinquished their business to the journalists and allowed editors to inject their progressive socialist beliefs in to the gathering and presentation of hard news – the who, what, where, when, and how – but moved the why from the OpEd page to the news page, they made a fatal mistake. Editors by nature think their readership are idiots and have to have to have everything explained to them; have to interpret what happened for them; have to bend it some preconceived meme or paradigm or some other geek word. People aren’t stupid and they can figure things out for themselves. They allowed opinion and manipulation to take over the newsroom floor. It was not until the full scale availability of the blessed World Wide Web that their unhindered bias was fully exposed. In other words, regular people started to fact check their asses. The LA Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and a dozen other self-declared benchmarkers of what constitutes news have been exposed as charlatans and their shameless malpractice and agenda driven journalism, all conducted on the pretense of non-biased reporting, has brought them low.

The major urban dailies are cesspools of liberal twaddle and everyone knows it, which is why subscribership is cratering. And the fact remains that people want news and they will form their own damn opinions about it. Unfortunately, they now have to spend half the time they read the news to work through reporters’ bias, judging the use of words and syntax and wondering if the facts have been massaged or some mitigating bit left out. It’s too much work, frankly, and exhausting to read a paper like the Washington Post or the New York Times. The manipulation is constant and unbearable.

And now that the economy is in the crapper, already weakened papers are more susceptible to debacle. With Obama Motors Conglomerate shutting down wide swathes of dealerships, imagine the deep divot to be gouged out of the newspapers’ advertising revenues. There’s more suffering to be had. More papers to be closed. More business plans for the archives. Some of these papers will dump the presses and live only online but if they do not change the manner in which they gather and present the news, they will still fail. Who will pay for bull shit? Ask the New York Times how that worked out for them. And this scares the crap out of liberal/progressives because they rely on that bias to keep them 5 or 10 points ahead. That’s why intellectual cretins like SBD’s Senator Ben Cardin feel no shame in cobbling together legislation designed to make newspapers a slave of government by giving them tax exempt status on their advertising and subscription revenue, and allowing other non-profits to invest in them (like Acorn, the giant government funded community organizer!), and, although still allowing them to report on political issues, in exchange for the tax exemption, they could not make political endorsements. Is Sydney Brillo Duodenum to believe that in its regular news reporting the Washington Post or the New York Times or any dozen second tier rags do not make political endorsements in their decisions on what to cover in its reporting? They do and that is part of why they fail. And now Cardin and others want to subsidize that bias with tax dollars.

The point is that all of this is messy and there’s obvious bias across the journalistic landscape and we must be grown-ups and parse and read between the lines and draw educated opinions and not be lazy citizens and seek out multiple sources of news and opinion, or we don’t have to do any of that because we have a right to be busy people going about our lives and not giving a goddamned fig about what’s going on in the world or down the street. And you can hold the latter view as long as you accept that while you are doing so, people like Copps and Aaron are working to diminish and manipulate what you will read and hear – what you will know - if and when you take your head out of your ass and pick up a paper or turn on the local news.

UPDATE 05-20-09:

Matt Welch at the brotherhood of Reason provides crystal clear evidence of the disconnect between journalists/media and the electorate. In the wake of California voters rejecting a number of ballot initiatives that would have raised taxes, extended others and increased state borrowing power, California's major newspapers up and down the state, most of which endorsed most of the initiatives intheir editorials and in their news reporting of the effect of those initiatives, heap mounds of scorn and derision on upon the silly, ignorant, shortsighted, selfish, myopic voters, who are also presumably their readers. Those editors must be ashamed that they failed to teach the voters why all of it was good for them. It seems most voters did the hard work of parsing the articles and isolating the facts from their massaging adjectives. Others will analyse the minds of Californians hoping to devine some kind of rejection of big government, big spending, big taxes, in other words Big Obama, but in the end, Obama will probably bail out the state and none of the problems afflicting California will be addressed, as it will be another wing of the Federal Morass and its citizens welfare recipients, paid for by the rest of the country.

Corruption

George Will:

Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil -- the rule of law. The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.

[...]

The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Scott Ott: The Funniest Man in the Blogosphere!

Scrappleface:

CIA Offers to Determine When Pelosi Knew

(2009-05-12) — In an effort to clarify exactly when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew that the U.S. employed enhanced interrogation techniques, like waterboarding, on terrorists, the CIA today offered to question the California Democrat.

“With the passage of time, memory gets clouded,” said a CIA source who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But we have learned how to clear away the clouds, and bring into sharp focus the relevant details.”

Snark on the Plane

New York Post:

A top White House aide resigned today for his role in Air Force One's $328,835 photo-op flyover above New York City that sparked panic and flashbacks to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. His resignation was made public at the same time the photo of the flyover was released by the White House.

Excuse, SBD?

The photo? The photo?

For $328, 835, one would expect an album of photos, a montage of photos, at the very least a triptych of photos.

Not the photo. We're to believe all that business was over a photo. The little button wasn't pushed until just the right moment of glorious airship righteousness was caught on the SD card?

Which means that the true story behind the photo op remains undeveloped. Where are the photos taken as the plane cruised over lower Manhattan, with little tiny ants below running and screaming and pointing in terror?

Where is the video taken of the plane on its Big Apple tour? There must be video. Perhaps the video remains with George Lucas' Tuskeegee Airmen film production team.

Implausable Deniability

Washington Post:

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Now, Sydney Brillo Duodenum wishes his shaddenfraude could be saved for this loathsome bitch on some other national scandal. He doesn't enjoy seeing the politicization and hobbilation of our intelligence gathering, but to the extent that one side seeks to politicize matters directly tied to the enhanced interrogation techniques necessary to save American lives, then it's a necessary evil to lay everything and everyone out on the table. You want a conversation? OK, let's have it. Pelosi is one of the self-righteous, emo-teenagers presently running the country. She, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, the senile Patrick Leahy, President Poseur, and a bovine herd of other idiots and morons have inflicted serious damage on this country in a very short time.

Say what you will, but this country was strong for eight years - it defended itself, tracked down its enemies, cowed some here, and destroyed some there - but in three short months Democrats have conducted a shameful witch hunt, have diminished and attempted to criminalize the serious and legal efforts of patriots who exposed plots that would have murdered children very similar to the two that now reside peacefully in their beds chez SBD, and have simply lied to the American people about their own duplicitous participation. They are disgusting yellow cowards and need to be hounded from office.

We are to believe that we - America - are more of a threat to liberty and freedom than the maniacs gathering on the other side of a mountain range 60 miles from Islamabad. Those bastards are no different than the bastards that took over Iran in 1979 and bombed the barracks in Beirut and murdered Americans in foreign capitals and blew up the USS Cole and bombed airliners in flight at Christmastime and bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and destroyed it in 2001 and slaughtered thousands of Iraqis and talk of annihilating the Jews and scores and scores of other atrocities, stabbings, prickings and affronts to our western way. We are to stand down now. We are to have a national conversation of our so-called crimes in defense of ourselves because that will somehow make us stronger and make our enemies love us and talk to us.

They hate us still and laugh at us. They see a Nancy Pelosi lying to the American people, denying that she bought into the defense of the country - and they just laugh at us. Three months into the Obama administration and our enemies are now laughing at us. Beheaders sixty miles from Islamabad and our enemies are now laughing at us. Refusing to use the phrase Islamic terrorist and our enemies are now laughing at us. Promising to leave Iraq, come hell or highwater, on a specific date and our enemies are now laughing at us. Sending happy greeting videos to the Iranians and our enemies are now laughing at us. Bowing before a Saudi Muslim king and our enemies are now laughing at us. Releasing barely literate domestic terrorist analysis identifying regular Americans as rightwing, America hating extremists and our enemies are now laughing at us. Depositing hundreds of millions of dollars into Gaza (and then Swiss) bank accounts and our enemies are now laughing at us.

It's not funny.

Barone's Nutshell

Michael Barone on the Theft of Chrysler:

Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party. The only possible limit on the White House’s power is the bankruptcy judge, who might not go along.

[..]

Obama’s attitude toward the rule of law is apparent in the words he used to describe what he is looking for in a nominee to replace Justice David Souter. He wants “someone who understands justice is not just about some abstract legal theory,” he said, but someone who has “empathy.” In other words, judges should decide cases so that the right people win, not according to the rule of law.

Don't forget . . .

A government big enough

to give you everything you want

is a government big enough

to take from you everything you have.

President Gerald R. Ford

Industrial Policy

It appears that the Obama administration has failed to "save" Chrysler and it will today enter into bankruptcy.

It will emerge under new government and union management with an Italian manufacturer capital infusion.

The government already took over General Motors (GM) and it will be renamed Government Motors.

Chrysler will be renamed Government Fiat.

Diversity Lane

Diversity Lane by Zack Rawsthorne

100 Days of Mendacious Audacity

20-Jan-09
Barack Obama sworn in as President

21-Jan-09
Barack Obama sworn in again as President

22-Jan-09
- Obama announces his intention to close Guantanamo Bay prison camp
- Obama announces the US will not use torture, which is pretty easy to promise since the US has not used torture"

23-Jan-09
Obama yesterday lifts a ban on U.S. funding for international health groups that perform abortions, promote legalizing the procedure or provide counseling about terminating pregnancies

24-Jan-09
Obama runs his first radio and YouTube video address to the nation; nation yawns

25-Jan-09
Obama arranges his suits, shirts, ties and shoes in the Executive Closet

26-Jan-09
And on the seventh day, He rested.

27-Jan-09
- Obama gives first interview as president to Al Arabyia, saying that "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy;" that "all too often the United States starts by dictating -- in the past on some of these issues;" and that Islam has nothing to do with the extremist killing in its name.
- Nation heaves a huge sigh of relief as Dr. Jill Biden, wife of VP Biden, announces that she will continue to teach as adjunct professor at Northern Virginia Community College this semester, teaching two English courses"

28-Jan-09
After ignoring winter storm devastation in Kentucky and Arkansas for a week, Obama declares emergency in those states

29-Jan-09
- Obama signs his first bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which makes it easier for workers to sue over pay discrimination by removing a statute of limitations on claims and makes "discrimination" and difference sin experience the assumed problem in pay disputes.
- Obama calls payout of Wall Street bonuses "shameful."

30-Jan-09
- Obama announces formation of a White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, which will focus on ways to make the middle class more dependent on government largesse and keep them from moving up the socio-economic ladder in order to create a permanent democrat constituency of dependents

31-Jan-09
- Obama attends annual Alfalfa Club dinner and is shown to be a humorless punk next to the knock down funny John McCain

1-Feb-09
- Obama watches video of his performance at the Alfalfa Club while smoking half a pack of Benson and Hedges and laughs himself silly

2-Feb-09
- Obama and Matt Lauer have huge make out session on national morning television

3-Feb-09
- Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., withdraws as Obama's nominee for secretary of health and human services because he's "disappointed" that he failed to remember to pay his taxes

4-Feb-09
- Obama signs SCHIP Authorization adding 4 million middle-class children to the rolls of government wards and dependents and adding $23 billion a year to the federal and state budgets
- Obama institutes executive pay cap of $500,000 on firms receiving federal support"

5-Feb-09
- At National Prayer Breakfast, The One opines that "There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know," thus seemingly contradicting his previous statements regarding similar issues that were above his pay grade
- At the House Democratic Issues Caucus in Williamsburg, VA, Obama states that Republicans are "for the false theories of the past," "phony arguments and petty politics," and he can't understand why they won't go along with his plans"

6-Feb-09
VP Joe Biden thinks "if we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, we stand up there and we make really tough decisions, there's still a 30-percent chance we're going to get it wrong."

7-Feb-09
Obama and family retire to Catoctin Mountains and Camp David

8-Feb-09
Obama spends better part of day working out the logistics of teleprompter use for press conference

9-Feb-09
Obama conducts first prime time press conference to promise the stars and the moon once again to Americans, as well as declaring that there is no pork in the stimulus bill

10-Feb-09
CATO Economist Arnold Kling states that “I think about the stimulus as an economist but I feel it as a father. Barack Obama is destroying my daughter's future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs. That’s how I feel, now back to how I think.”

Correction: Mr. Kling actually said this: "I think about what's going on, what's happening today, as an economist, but I feel it as a father. My wife and I have three daughters, aged between 19 and 25, and when I see what's being done to their future, I am really angry. Back in September, when they were talking about taking $700 billion to "unclog the financial system," I wanted to take Henry Paulson and *yank* him out of the TV screen and say, "You keep your hands off my daughters' future!" But he got away with it. And I had to -- for me it was like sitting there watching my house being ransacked by a gang of thugs. And now we've got a new gang of thugs, and they're going to do the same thing. So, anyway, that's how I feel, we'll go back to how I think." SBD apologizes to Mr. Kling for perpetuating a falsehood.

11-Feb-09
Obama signs DTV Act delaying digital television transition for six months because a small percentage of US population refuses to subscribe to cable or satellite service and have ignored years of advance notice that analog broadcasts were to end

12-Feb-09
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., withdraws as Obama's nominee for secretary of commerce because he realizes he will be administration tool and won't have any control over the running of the national census

13-Feb-09
House Conference passes $787 billion stimulus package, the contents of which they did not read nor fully address the long term impact on the country

14-Feb-09
Millions of women send "Be My Valentine" love notes to White House; Michelle not amused

15-Feb-09
Obama plays basketball with old friends and gets haircut at barber Zariff's. (h/t Telegraph)

16-Feb-09
Presidents Day – some Americans reminded what great leaders we once had

17-Feb-09
Obama signs $787 billion porkulus bill into law, designed to save 3.5 million jobs at a cost of $225,000 per job

18-Feb-09
- After electing the first black president, Attorney General Eric Holder insists that the United States was ""a nation of cowards"" on matters of race, with most Americans avoiding candid discussions of racial issues
- Obama announces $75 billion mortgage relief plan to reward fraudsters and defaulters"

19-Feb-09
Obama takes first foreign trip to Canada, one of the 57 states, to thank Canadian volunteers who crossed the border to help his campaign

20-Feb-09
Obama's auto task force get together to figure out how to insulate the US auto industry and Big Unions from market forces

21-Feb-09
Four days after signing pork bill, Obama states "I will convene a fiscal summit of independent experts and unions, advocacy groups and members of Congress to discuss how we can cut the trillion-dollar deficit that we’ve inherited. On Tuesday, I will speak to the nation about our urgent national priorities, and on Thursday, I’ll release a budget that’s sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and that lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don’t, and restoring fiscal discipline."

22-Feb-09
Obama smokes a pack of American Spirit cigarettes

23-Feb-09
- Announced Vice President Joe Biden will oversee the Administration’s implementation of the Recovery Act’s provisions
- Obama appoints Steve Rattner of Quadrangle Group, a firm that invests in media and communications companies, to be lead advisor to Treasury Dept on government takeover of the US auto industry. Rattner is best friends with NYT owners Pimp Sulzberger and his wife is former National Finance Committee chair of the Democrat Party. So, other than probably driving nice cars, he doesn't know dick about cars

24-Feb-09
Addresses joint session of Congress and in a brazen fear mongering, finger wagging, brow furrowing speech, promises to bankrupt America before the end of his first term in office; he also declares that "nobody messes with Joe," thus inviting everyone and his Mom to go to town on VP

25-Feb-09
After Bill Richardson removes himself from consideration because he may face indictment back in New Mexico for graft, Obama nominates former WA governor, Chinagate figure, and hide-the-marble campaign fund raiser Gary Locke for Secretary of Commerce

26-Feb-09
Obama announces that, because of the huge Bush budget deficit, he is forced to put forward "a budget sober in its assessments," "honest in its accounting," and "restoring fiscal discipline," that proposes the largest federal budget ever proposed at $3.6 trillion for 2010, but it's Bush's fault that the deficit is so big.

27-Feb-09
- The White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, led by Vice President Joe Biden, holds its inaugural meeting in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania; topic of the day - what impact will green jobs have on middle class families. Answer: it will drive up all of their energy costs and keep them from affording to send their kids to place like UPenn
- Obama announces all US troops will be out of Iraq by 2:16 pm August 26, 2010, with the exception of all the US troops needed to ensure a modicum of peace such that Obama is not accused of losing Iraq because he wanted to make a point about timetables"

28-Feb-09
Obama causes national narcoleptic episode with weekly radio/Youtube address

1-Mar-09
Secretary of State Clinton announces that the US is giving $300 million to the Hamas terrorist hunta in Gaza, as penance for Israel once again defending its citizens from unceasing rocket attacks

2-Mar-09
- USTR nominee Ron Kirk reveals he's a tax scofflaw
- Nominates Kansas Governor and extreme abortionist Katherine Sebelius to HHS
- Releases $155 million to create health care centers ""across the US"" that are expected to create 5,500 jobs"

3-Mar-09
- Sends letter to Russia looking to trade missle defence for some help with Iran
- Obama snubs UK PM Gordon Brown, denying him public press palm pressing and then sends him home with DVD collection of top 25 films, in a format that will nto play on European DVD players
- Released $28 billion of ARRA funds to create OR save 150,000 jobs by the end of 2010"

4-Mar-09
Obama nominates Craig Fulgate, a non-hack heading Florida's Dept. of Emergency Management, to head FEMA. Fugate was appointed to his Florida post by Gov. Jeb Bush.

5-Mar-09
Obama hosts daylong White House summit on health care; MSM fails to report "Let's Play Doctor" session in the Blue Room

6-Mar-09
The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 20 percent since Inauguration Day, the fastest drop under a newly elected president in at least 90 years; Obama owns the bear market

7-Mar-09
The nation is roused from its sleep by another radio/Youtube address chastising them for not taking Obama's economic program seriously

8-Mar-09
Obama salutes Senator Ted Kennedy at Kennedy Center

9-Mar-09
- Signs Executive Order completely lifting Bush's Executive Order that defined the parameters for federal funding of embryonic stem research on existing stem cell lines; establishes budget category for creating more lines for research, but sets no limits to the type of research that can be conducted
-Obama states that "I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system."

10-Mar-09
Obama commits to spending a $3.46 gazillion on education because "it's for the children"

11-Mar-09
- Obama signs $410 billion spending bill to keep the guvmint running. He complains that the bill is "imperfect" because it includes pork money for special projects set aside by members of Congress, including earmarks set by Senator Barack Obama, a practice Candidate Obama pledged to end during the 2008 campaign
- Obama signs Executive Order creating White House Counsel on Women and Girls "to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families." Translation: men and boys go fuck yourselves"

12-Mar-09
- Obama warns states and localities that he'll be watching where every penny of the porkulus is spent. "Seriously, guys. No, really, I'm serious about this."
- Obama administration announces that it will direct $8 billion to states to help citizens weatherize their windows

13-Mar-09
Obama announces that the terrorist scum residing at Gitmo will no longer be classified as "enemy combatants." They will now be known "Democrat voters."

14-Mar-09
Obama holds head of state meeting with Brazil's president

15-Mar-09
No clue

16-Mar-09
Obama expresses his deep disgust and contempt for all that is human upon hearing that AIG executives are to receive retention bonuses that his Treasury Secretary asked Congress to keep in the stimulus bill that Obama signed

17-Mar-09
Obama wears a green tie for St Patrick's Day as he receives Irish PM at White House. Michelle turned White House fountains green (with her envy); Obama misreads his teleprompter and thanks himself for inviting PM to White House

18-Mar-09
Obama stands in Oval Office and resolutely declares his picks for NCAA March Madness

19-Mar-09
In his historic first presidential visit to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Obama tells Leno that his bowling is on par with those retarded kids in the Special Olympics

20-Mar-09
- Obama sends a love YouTube video to Iranians in celebration of the Persian New Year
- Michelle Obama breaks ground on Victory Garden

21-Mar-09
In celebration of the Persian New Year, Iran's Supreme Leader tells Obama to go fuck himself

22-Mar-09
Obama appears on 60 Minutes, which refuses to pull in tightly on his face as he gamely supports his hack choice of Secretary Treasurer

23-Mar-09
Obama meets with clean energy entrepreneurs and leaders of the research community to discuss building a clean energy economy and bankrupting Americans in the process by playing favorites with industries and ideas that can't prove themselves in the marketplace without huge government subsidies and regulation of existing industries

24-Mar-09
Obama chastises Americans for causing Mexico narco-terrorist war and commits $700 million to beefing up the border

25-Mar-09
The president of the European Union on Wednesday ripped the Obama administration's economic policies, calling its deficit spending and bank bailouts "a road to hell."

26-Mar-09
Obama holds first "Open for Questions" virtual town meeting at the White House, answering questions from Democrat activists and groupies from across the Intertubes, mostly about legalizing pot

27-Mar-09
Obama orders 4,000 more military troops into Afghanistan, vowing to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” the terrorist al-Qaida network in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

28-Mar-09
The Nation sleeps through Obama's weekly radio/YouTube address

29-Mar-09
Obama appears on Face the Nation and spews lots of bullshit

30-Mar-09
- Il Duce fires GM chief Rick Wagoner and takes over control of GM and Chrysler, because he's scared shitless that both companies might enter into rule of law based bankruptcy which would hose his big union supporters
- Signs bill closing off vast tracks of public land to exploration and exploitation by energy firms

31-Mar-09
Obama heads to Europe to apologize for American exceptionalism

1-Apr-09
- Some Americans realize the jokes on them
- Michelle Obama touches the Queen of England; Obama gives the Queen an iPod loaded with his speeches and pictures of him walking on water during the campaign

2-Apr-09
Obama bows to Saudi King Abdullah and then denies it, suggesting that he was practicing his new low five technique

3-Apr-09
Obama tops himself off in Strasburg: "I think that it is important for Europe to understand that even though I’m now president and George Bush is no longer president, al-Qaeda is still a threat. We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be okay.”

4-Apr-09
Russian President Dorkof Medvedev states the Obama is his "new friend and comrade" and bestest buddy; they plan to meet in Moscow in July

5-Apr-09
North Korea launches "peaceful satellite" into the Pacific Ocean

6-Apr-09
Defense Secretary Gates announces drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs

7-Apr-09
Obama pays a surprise four hour trip to Iraq in order to get a photo with a bunch of soldiers hand picked to greet him because they voted for him and to tell Iraqis to get their shit together because he ain't gonna let them make him look bad

8-Apr-09
Obama lays low in White House playing Killzone on his PlayStation 3 and going through the Brooks Brothers Spring Collection catalog; he smokes half a pack of Marlboro Lights

9-Apr-09
Obama announces that he is directing the GSA to buy up to 20,000 new cars for the government fleet using porkulus money

10-Apr-09
Obama evidences taking acid when he opines the economy is showing "glimmers of hope"

11-Apr-09
Obama uses his weekly radio/YouTube address to make a play at being global president by calling for the globe to act globally during the global adversity; globe yawns

12-Apr-09
White House takes credit for the precision sniping of three Somali pirates, even though the rules of engagement set by the White House were to end the situation peacefully at all costs.

13-Apr-09
Obama removes some restrictions on US commerce with Cuba, after Cuba continues ignores standing US policy to ease up on its dissidents and political prisoners and talks to Russia about basing bombers on Cuba

14-Apr-09
Obama crushes the hope of rescue shelter manager across the country by bringing home a pure bred Portuguese water dog for his daughters

15-Apr-09
Obama pays $855,232 in taxes, mostly stemming from windfall profits associated with his two autobiographies

16-Apr-09
- DOJ releases Bush era OLC memos regarding interrogation techniques
- NSI Dennis Blair states that “High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the Al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."
- Obama visits Mexico and takes blame for Mexican narco-terrorist war, funded and armed by gun-loving and drug -taking Americans"

17-Apr-09
At Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez presents Obama with a book that savages America's role in Central and South America; Obama says thanks and apologizes for not having any signed copies of his two autobiographies to give to Chavez

18-Apr-09
Obama later soul shakes Chavez’ hand and gives him a big "amigo" smile for special photo op that both can use to buttress support with their most rabid socialist supporters.

19-Apr-09
COS Rahm Emmanuel states that Obama is not interested in prosecuting those who devised interrogation policy

20-Apr-09
Obama holds his first (!) Cabinet meeting, during he pulls off a Dr. Evil routine, demanding the cabinet find $100 million in department cuts.

21-Apr-09
- Obama, deciding that the criminalization of policy differences is good for the country, states that he wouldn't mind investigating Bush administration officials on interrogation
- Obama signs the Edward M Kennedy Service America Act, which spends gobs of taxpayer money on training otherwise unemployable people on how to be community activists; 5% of the funds are to be devoted to training on extraction of young drunk women from submerged cars.
- Continuing his laser focus on high priority presidential appointments, Obama nominates What'shername to be Director for the Presidential Commission on White House Fellows"

22-Apr-09
Obama, showing his mastery of the hard issues, backtracks yet again, telling Pelosi and Reid he would not support an independent commission investigation of harsh interrogation techniques

23-Apr-09
Obama announced plan to get tough with credit card companies, because spendthrift American's should not just be bailed out of their giant mortgage liabilities.

24-Apr-09
President Barack Obama meets with a family struggling to afford the cost of college and underscored his commitment to cutting wasteful spending on federal student loans by ending taxpayer subsidies to banks. He announces the brave and difficult task of spending $200 billion of taxpayer money to send other people's kids to college.

25-Apr-09
Obama causes national outbreak of hysterical laughter when he states in his Weekly Address that "we must restore that sense of fiscal discipline. That’s why I’m calling on Congress to pass PAYGO legislation like a bill that will be introduced by Congressman Baron Hill, so that government acts the same way any responsible family does in setting its budget." Some Americans laugh at this.

26-Apr-09
Obama plays golf for five hours at Andrews Air Force Base Golf Course

27-Apr-09
- Obama pledges 3% of GDP to be spent on R&D in basic science without specifying where that huge amount of money is coming from
- VP Biden returns to Serious Materials Chicago window factory (Republic Windows and Doors) to beat that dead horse into dog patties
- GM announces that its doing away with the Pontiac brand
- White House orchestrates multiple low flyovers of NYC by one of the Air Force One jets for photo/video updates; shrugs at national outrage over obtuseness of the move and looks for someone named Bush to blame

28-Apr-09
- Obama, recently praised by conservative squish David Brooks as a "competent manager" who has "run a tremendously effective, efficient managerial administration," orders an internal review to determine how the decision was made to send of one of 747s on a low-flying photo op past the New York City skyline
- Obama praises turn-coat Arlen Specter for topping off his embarrassing turn as a Republican Senator by becoming a soon to be embarrassing Democrat Senator.
- Harry Reid writes in his book that after praising then Senator Obama for one of his speeches, Obama replied with “deep humility:" "I have a gift, Harry."

29-Apr-09
Obama gains absolute control over the executive and legislative arms of the government; conservatives change their underwear, again

A Most Successful Flyover

Sydney Brillo Duodenum is a fan and generator of conspiracy theories. He has a theory about the errant “Air Force One” flight over New York City. It is Sydney Brillo Duodenum’s rabidly held belief that this flight is solely the work of a frustrated element of the American military. Of course, one could argue that "the frustrated element" of the American military is the entire American military, so this particular conspiracy comes courtesy of the 89th Airlift Wing.

For the past month, we have witnessed a President abroad apologizing for America’s 8 year resolve to defend itself. We have seen a US President bow before a Saudi king. We have seen him exchange a soul-brother grasp with a prominent South American fascist dictator. We have seen him sit silently for 45 minutes while another two-bit commie thug excoriates America and we have seen the President respond that he was only three years old when it committed the crimes lectured upon. We have seen a Pentagon announce ill-considered, politicized cuts in aspects of our military profile, such as missile defense. At home, we have heard the President suggest that former Bush administration personnel should be considered for prosecution for their legal analysis of harsh interrogation of terrorists directly responsible for the September 11 murders. Several days after that, the administration agreed to release photos of said so-called interrogations.

We are to believe the context for all of this is that, for eight years, these United States have acted without reason, have reacted irresponsibly to murder of its civilians, have unleashed professional soldiers on misunderstood brown peoples, have serially and unreasonably tortured innocent teenagers, and have abridged the world’s US Constitutional rights. Nothing that happened on that bright sunny September day warranted the past 8 years. Or so we are told.

After a month of Obama misdirection, sickening apologies, and messiah mirroring, a good many Americans have been infused with shameful doubt about their country and themselves.

Which brings us back to our allegedly scheduled PR flight of one of the 747s used for the Air Force One fleet. Certainly, a modicum of warning was delivered by the White House to the appropriate bureaucratic moles in New York City, indicating a million mile removal from reality such that it did not see the effect such a flight would have on New Yorkers and the nation. Why? Because that hole in the ground is just a PR opportunity for them. It has no meaning beyond its political usefulness, either as a tool to chastise Americans for their overreactions or as a tool to remind Americans who’s in the Executive seat. There is no amount of "heads up" that could be given to prepare the city for the flyover that took place. It's an affront at all altitudes.

But certainly those responsible for actually managing the use of the aircraft, the 89th Airlift Wing, knew this flight would be sensitive and provocative. “Oh, you want to buzz New York City for some photos. Um, certainly, sir. And you want F-16s trailing it as well, while photos are being taken? No sir, not a problem at all, sir. The Air Force always likes to be in the air, even for public relations photo ops designed to create an image of President Obama as the Great Protector. Yes, sir, sorry, sir. No, sir we will not make a big deal out of it, sir. Yes, sir, we will keep it quiet, sir. Last minute notice? Oh, certainly, sir. Yes, sir, makes perfect sense. How about a Monday morning, sir, just after everyone gets to work in the city? Agreed sir, not before lunch. And you want that 5,000 off the ground? May I recommend a 1000, sir? That will make for some very nice photos, sir.” Later, to men and women of the 89th: “Ladies and Gentlemen – the White House wants to buzz New York City next week to get some promotional photos and videos that the White House can use to hand out to big time contributors and use for campaign spots for the coming 2012 election. Let’s help them be very successful at this flyover and get a really accurate picture of the Obama administration, er rather, for the Obama administration (snicker, snicker).”

And it was indeed a very successful flyover. As some say, Mission Accomplished!

Scene 5 - Witch Hunt Week

Scene 5:

The Witch: I'm not a witch I'm not a witch!

Sir Bedevere: But you are dressed as one

The Witch: *They* dressed me up like this!

Crowd: We didn't! We didn't...

The Witch: And this isn't my nose. It's a false one.

Sir Bedevere: [lifts up her false nose] Well?

Peasant 1: Well, we did do the nose.

Sir Bedevere: The nose?

Peasant 1: And the hat, but she is a witch!

Crowd: Yeah! Burn her! Burn her!

Sir Bedevere: Did you dress her up like this?

Peasant 1: No!

Peasant 3, Peasant 2: No!

Peasant 3: No!

Peasant 1: No!

Peasant 3,Peasant 2: No!

Peasant 1: Yes!

Peasant 2: Yes!

Peasant 1: Yeah a bit.

Peasant 3: A bit!

Peasant 1,Peasant 2: A bit!

Peasant 2: a bit

Peasant 1: But she has got a wart!

First, it was the outing of Miss California as a “typical American,” as most polls see it, because she shockingly believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. The media can’t have fantastically beautiful people spouting non-sanctioned hate speech (otherwise known as conventional wisdom), so they must be ambushed during the most kitschy, stale anti-Feminist televised dog and pony show by a young crass fat gay gossip whore, whose entire corpus of work is the epitome of cultural and moral decrepitude. We're to believe that Miss California is a hideous foul witch worthy of the stake.

Second, it was the release of interrogation authorization memos by the Obama administration in order reveal the most heinous government sanctioned crime since Herod slew the Innocents one night a couple thousand years ago. The purpose was simple: to suss out, pillory and lock in a holding pattern former Bush administration officials so as to give the press a reason to forever and always ignore the incompetence, mismanagement and hackery of The Man Child’s administration on the economy, foreign relations, national security, and the choice of accessory dogs.

Third, it was Earth Day, “celebrated” across the apparently raped and bleeding landscape by multitudes of elementary school kids. If your kid didn’t show the proper prostration before Fury Gaia; if they did not pack a “trash free” lunch; if they did not walk to school; if they did not submit “Cool the Earth” coupons promising to limit their tiny little Croc-clad carbon footprints on the scorched globe; if they did not spend five minutes lecturing their parents on the merits of recycling plastic tampon applicators; if they did not attach an aluminum water bottle to their environmentally sustainable backpacks; if they did not wear green clothes to show their solidarity with the enviro-fascists – then their names went on a list being maintained by Al Gore’s Climate Project.

Fourth, again orchestrated by the Obama administration, where Obama called his cabinet to order and demanded they seek out and destroy $100 million in unnecessary spending. Burn it! No stack of surplus copy paper is safe anywhere in Federal DC.

Fifth, last week’s outing of average, pissed off Americans as right wing extremist crazy people who surfaced in a surprise assault on the Constitution on that most revered of national community days otherwise known as Tax Day continued in the MSM. Only the devil could inspire those people.

Sixth, apparently because the government does not pull all the strings on the Bank of America puppet, early this week rumors were lofted that BofA CEO Ken Lewis had to go, but Mr. Lewis, being a witch (really a Warlock) and using his dark arts, was able to put into the hands of the WSJ his testimony in February before the Grand Inquisitor and Master Witch Hunter, New York’s attorney general, that he was pressured by the Fed not to reveal what a massive black hole of losses Merrill Lynch represented to shareholders and to go ahead anyway with the government sanctioned bailout of ML. So now, because Ken Lewis did not stand up for shareholders because he was strongly advised by the government to do something against their interests, he should get the hell out of the way, with the likely result that the government will name who replaces him.

Seventh, President Obama, the Mexican government, and America's major media outlets and pussies, did all they could to pin a great deal of Mexico’s problems on America’s drug and gun habit, in the latter case by rolling out all types of weaponry, allegedly seized from narco-badasses and traced back to a sporting goods store in Ottumwa, Idaho (Iowa?). The message: America’s law abiding gun worshipers are an evil minority cult responsible for Mexico’s narco-terrorism and chaos, not the mainstream secular culture that bathes daily in fountain of gangsterism, drug use, libertine-ism, feelings, and Jeff “Dude, whatever!” Spicoli worship.

Celebrating Earth Day

So far today, Sydney Brillo Duodenum has celebrated the Earth's riches by:

- enjoying an extra three minutes in a near scalding hot shower

- washing a single towel (befouled by Sydney Brillo Dog) in the washing machine set to full load and hot water - twice

- replacing his childrens' "trash free lunches" with two Oscar Meyer/Kraft Lunchables boxes

- driving his children the one-quarter mile between his home and their school

- picking up Sydney Brillo Dog's morning elimination with a thick, 1,000 year life span plastic newspaper bag.

- drinking premium non-Fair Trade coffee for breakfast

- running in idle for ten minutes his second car - a Jeep! - to circulate the vehicles vital juices

- farting outside

- increasing rate of respirations to enjoy more bounteous, free air

- congratulating neighbor on her decision to buy her high school aged daughter a new Jeep instead of a Honda Civic

- eating two chocolate chip cookies that will keep him in the near obese category

- shopping online for a 46 inch LCD television

And it's not even lunch time yet!

Who's Torturing Who?

SBD was out of sorts when he discovered that the Obama administration had released DOJ memorandums detailing the efforts of our intelligence agencies to prevent another Al Qaeda attack on the United States and the murder of American men, women, and children. He was even more disgusted to find that one of the memos entailed a detailed discussion of the use of insects – yes insects - against a particularly tough nut named Abu Zubaydah, who has a fear of insects. Now, SBD thought at first that CIA interrogators wanted to tie Mr. Zubaydah down to stakes in the desert near a fire ant colony. No such luck. Instead, the debate centered on the introduction of a single insect into a small holding cell, with the CIA interrogators telling Mr. Zubaydah that it was a stinging insect. The DOJ made it clear to the CIA that it could not use an actual stinging insect and they intimated they may have had trouble with the idea of lying to Mr. Zubaydah to make him believe that the insect was of a stinging type. The insect torture was never employed.

We now learn that we waterboarded Mr. Zubaydah 83 times in one month, although it’s not clear if that was before or after the failed insect consideration. The media has us believing that people “break” after one round of the bucket because several intrepid asshats, er reporters, have volunteered during sweeps week to be waterboarded and after doing so have declared that, if they were terrorist masterminds, they would fold like a Connecticut hedge fund in 2008. Perhaps.

We also learn that Khalid Sheik Mohammad, aka Fat Fuck, the confessed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 crime against humanity, was waterboarded 183 times during March 2003. Fat Fuck was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, so apparently we wasted no time. 183 is a big number, and of course our innumerate society has difficulty with big numbers, as they shock and titillate. We are supposed to believe that “the law” was broken 182 times or even half that many times. But the lawyers had carefully prescribed the use of waterboarding to a certain number of minutes in a 24 hour period. Even Fat Fuck has stated that he was waterboarded five times. Whatever, SBD is not going to do the math himself to figure out how the interrogators used their allotted waterboarding time and how 183 “times” makes sense. He doesn’t fucking care. The point is the Fat Fuck broke and revealed a great deal of information that confirmed known knowns, revealed known unknowns and helped frame some unknown unknowns, as one crank once put it. Mission accomplished. But ongoing.

SBD does care that our enemies now know what our limits are. It’s no longer a scary rumor about those blood-crazed, revenge-driven crusader Americans with secret prisons, but about those legalistic, lily-livered, flop sweating mother-may-I pansy Americans discussing whether or not the use of a non-poisonous bug against an entomophobic islamo-fascist terrorist makes us all Nazi storm troopers.

SBD also cares that Americans are not getting the complete picture of how the Bush administration may have saved some of their butts with the information obtained from Fat Fuck. Even former Vice President Dick Cheney is asking for declassification of some memos that provide that type of information. It’s called context. If Mr. Obama is such a believer in full disclosure, than let’s have full disclosure. Let’s hear about what was at stake. But it’s all a sideshow and distraction, as if we are still not hunted day and night by the worst sorts of America haters. We are still at war.

SBD would prefer if no damn memos saw the light of day. Intelligence is a dark art that should stay dark. SBD would prefer that the information be revealed in a some summertime beach reading when he is well into retirement 30 years hence. Releasing this information makes it easier for some dickwad to ruin SBD’s retirement.

One of the adults who used to be in a position of responsibility, former CIA director Michael Hayden, stated it plainly and without profanity on Fox News with Chris Wallace:

I think that teaching our enemies our outer limits, by taking techniques off the table, we have made it more difficult in a whole host of circumstances I can imagine, more difficult for CIA officers to defend the nation.

There's another point, too, that I have to make. And it's just not the tactical effect of this technique or that. It's the broader effect on CIA officers.

I mean, if you're a current CIA officer today — in fact, I know this has happened at the agency after the release of these documents. Officers are saying, "The things I'm doing now — will this happen to me in five year because of the things I am doing now?"

And the answer they've been given by senior leadership is the only answer possible, which is, "I can't guarantee you that won't happen, but I do know it won't happen under this president." Now, think what that means.

The basic foundation of the legitimacy of the agency's action has shifted from some durability of law to a product of the American political process. That puts agency officers in a horrible position.

So I think the really dangerous effect of this, Chris, is that you will have agency officers stepping back from the kinds of things that the nation expects them to do. I mean, if you were to go to an agency officer today and say, "Go do this," and, "Why am I authorized to do this?"

And I say, "Well, it's authorized by the president. The attorney general says it's lawful. And it's been briefed to Congress." That agency officer's going to say, "Yeah, I know, but I see what's going on here now. Have you run it by the ACLU? What's the New York Times editorial board think? Have you discussed this with any potential presidential candidates?"

You're going to have this agency on the front line of defending you in this current war playing back from the line.

In addition to making an ass of himself and the United States during his little jaunt to the Southern hemisphere this past week, which is so beautifully treated here by Heritage's Ray Walser, Mr. Obama has damaged this country’s intelligence gathering capabilities by allowing the release of this information. It’s all part of the grand plan, though. It’s part of Mr. Obama’s Great Moral Washing of the corrupted American soul; Act I in Mr. Obama’s Making Amends Musical Tour of the world. This performance will be a protracted affair with no intermission and no water breaks. Absolute torture.

Fresh from that trip, and after throwing the Agency under the bus, the Man Child running the country had the gall to visit the CIA today and stand before the Wall of Stars and tell the assembled CIA employees to not let his predations on their work distract them. "I know the last few days have been difficult," he said. "You need to know you've got my full support."

Uh, huh.

This man receives a daily briefing of the terrors arrayed against this country. He does not do what he does and does not say what he says in ignorance. It's all in foolishness and arrogance. As with every other action of his, he seeks to damage this country, to declare it's sins (they're not his!), to bring it low, and when he is ready and it is deserving, he will raise it up and save it.

The kid's a punk. A dangerous punk.

Goldberg Variations

National Review's Jonah Goldberg on the scandalous DHS report on an alleged resurgence of right wing extremism in this country; a report conveniently released just days before a wildly successful string of Tea Party protests were held across the country:

I wrote a book on fascism which tried to show that what everybody knows isn’t necessarily true. The idea that soldiers will return from war and become right-wing militants? Well, that has its roots in Fascist Italy, where veterans returned as black-shirted shock troops of “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini. The only problem with this theory is that what they clamored for was socialism — the socialism of the trenches! — and their leader had earned the title “Il Duce” as the leader of the Socialist Party.

The idea that American “hate groups” are right-wing and bristling with vets got new life with JFK’s assassination at the hands of a disgruntled vet named Lee Harvey Oswald. Everybody knew right away that Oswald was an agent of “hate” — and hate was code for right-wing and racist. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren summed up the instantaneous conventional wisdom when he blamed the “climate of hatred” for Kennedy’s death. Everybody knew that the Right was involved.

There was just one inconvenient truth: Oswald was a Communist who, according to the Warren report, had “an extreme dislike of the rightwing” and had actually tried to murder a right-wing former Army general.

When Hollywood filmed the Tom Clancy novel The Sum of All Fears, it changed the real villains from jihadi terrorists to a bunch of European CEOs who were secret Nazis. Because “everybody knows” that’s where the real threat lies.

Sen. John Kerry belonged to an organization of vets that considered assassinating American politicians. (Kerry denied participating in those meetings.) Barack Obama was friends with, and a colleague of, a terrorist whose organization plotted to murder soldiers and their wives at a social at Fort Dix. A young Hillary Clinton sympathized with the Black Panthers, a paramilitary gang of racist murderers and cop killers.

Bring that up and you’re a paranoid nutcase out of Dr. Strangelove.