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January 18, 2012 - January 11, 2012

Friday, April 08, 2011

FAINT HEARTS. There's only ever been one spectacular tomb find in Egypt, King Tut's. Wrong. In 1940, as Europe was dissolving under the assaults of Hitler, a French archaeologist made the greatest find since Howard Carter, an intact pharaonic tomb.


But the spectacular discovery got shelved, literally, because the French archaeologist had to go back to France to look after his family during the German invasion. The tomb was summarily emptied of its contents and put in storage in Cairo. End of story.

The point? There's such a thing as a bad time for a major discovery. I think we're there again. Once again the world is dissolving, this time under the hand of Obama, which means, probably, that no one is prepared for the email I got from my friend Lloyd Pye (1, 2) last week. Not even me.


I congratulated him and commended his bravery and monastic dedication, but I didn't post, did I?

I still don't know if he's right or wrong, but that shouldn't matter. He's invested an adult liftetime of penury in pursuit of an outcome that just might be world-changing. At the very least, he's been absolutely confirmed in his conviction that this is a mystery which the scientific establishment has done everything possible to ignore and which might be legitimate and earthshaking.

Mea culpa.

P.S. Typically, Lloyd has responded promptly and graciously. He says:


Ah. But he's reminding us that we ARE the Internet. PLUNK. PLUNK. The rocks are now in the pond.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

WHO CAN BE AS AWESOME AS OBAMA? I thought it was too early for this, but Pete leaped in (in the Comments section) with his candidate by candidate analysis of the last presidential post, and I thought maybe it is time to rate the field. There's no secret about where I disagree with Pete; he's an isolationist, a rabid libertarian, and a hot-button disqualifier. Republicans = reflexive cop lovers, tools of the U.S. military, and Christian maniacs. Fine. Like all of us, he's entitled to his own perspective, but mine is different.

I'm being more pragmatic than ideological. To me the most important thing is defeating Obama. Any Republican would be better. We simply can't afford four more years of a president who doesn't love his country more than his adopted race. That's what's driving this assessment. Thankfully, John McCain is not running this time; his tortured ego got its moment in the sun and is appeased. He can now go gently into that good night. Halleluiah.. Everyone else is a better candidate.

The bad news? The field is not exactly fertile. I have my own criteria, some of which may seem odd and some of which is strictly common sense. You'll learn about these as I examine them one by one.

Mitt Romney. He's the heir apparent to the Republican nomination, which habitually goes to the man who finished second in the previous cycle. Think McCain and Dole. No one can doubt that Romney's smart. He was in the joint program at Harvard that results in a combined JD/MBA degree from the law school and the business school. But he took his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young, which signifies the first of his two potentially crippling problems. He's a Mormon, which a lot of people on both sides of the aisle regard as icky. The second problem is that he was governor of Massachusetts when the state passed, under his leadership, a universal health care bill that became, according to some, a template for ObamaCare. The Massachusetts plan is in the process of bankrupting the state. He has therefore struggled to overcome his Massachusetts politics and positions to convince voters he really is a conservative. Maybe he is, but the suspicion lingers that he's more politician than man of principle. He's had many business and management successes, and yet he's an indifferent if handsome speaker, and it's hard to overcome the sense that he's lacking in spine. He has a bunch of sons who have never served in the military. Intangibles. He comes across as too smooth, maybe too nice, lacking the stomach for a real fight. He looks good at a podium but appears to have none of the killer instinct a successful national politician must have. C-minus.

Mike Huckabee. He did unexpectedly well in the 2008 primaries before McCain took the nomination via a war of attrition. He's personally likeable, articulate, and populist in his appeal. People like him, even some Democrats. But he has a list of electoral negatives a mile long. He's from Arkansas, Clinton's state, and while voters seem perpetually inclined to forgive sleazy Bill, Huckabee has some corruption charges of his own that will dog him in a national election. He's also an evangelistic born-again Christian (a preacher to boot), which manifests itself most alarmingly in his weekly Fox News show. Not because it's controversial. But because it's boring. Everything about his guest list suggests that he's the Lawrence Welk of politics, a hokey naif whose idea of American culture has more in common with "I Love Lucy" reruns than anything that's going on in contemporary America. Do not forget that Americans' greatest concern about aggressive Christians is that they will remove sex from music and tits from movies. We just don't want to be forced to conform to someone else's morality. This is a huge, huge unacknowledged issue facing every well-meaning fundamentalist in politics. Most people don't share their giddy smiles about the Lord. Especially not Roman Catholics and mainstream Protestants.The majority of Christians have complex views about the Bible that don''t involve trading in sex for covered dish suppers.  Meanwhile, there are repeated rumors, backed by disturbing evidence, that Huckabee's not nearly as nice as he seems. He's perfectly capable of lashing out at his critics, but always in the back-door, underhanded way of an Arkansas politician. Intangibles. Smarmy, almost treacly, with way too many false-humble anecdotes. "I thought the only soap that got you clean was Lava." C-Minus.

Sarah Palin. The fantasy girl. All conservatives outside the beltway want to love her, maybe do love her. I've been there myself. It would be so great if she really were the new Reagan, and many of us try hard to squint and see her in just that way. But she just isn't. Things she won't overcome in any national election. Indifferent education. Yeah, Reagan went to Eureka College and got dissed for it, but by the time he won the Republican nomination, he'd been president of the Screen Actors' Guild and a two term governor of the biggest state in the union. The MSM still trashed him as a lightweight. Palin bailed on her governorship after two years. There's no coming back from that, regardless of the solid reasons for her decision. The worst thing that could happen to our nation would be the election of Sarah Palin as president. The MSM bile would make George Bush Derangement Syndrome look like a case of the common cold. Believe me. I admire Sarah Palin. She's brave and beautiful and refreshing, but even I don't think I could endure hearing that voice for four or eight years. Women politicians really do need to take voice lessons. That keening sound they hit when they're exercised is something men can't stand for more than a few minutes. And men are Palin's natural constituency. It's a no go. D-minus.

Donald Trump. Actually, I can't believe that anyone is taking this seriously. He's Perot II. Barons of industry have an insurmountable problem when they choose to enter politics, which is why so few of them attempt it. They're not used to being criticized or even confronted. CEOs are all closet MacArthurs. They're used to hearing that their every utterance is genius. Ross Perot was a brilliant man. But when he ran for president he descended into a state of near-psychotic paranoia. It will be the same with Trump. Nothing in his life has prepared him for the attack machine that will be launched at him if he starts to gain voter traction againt Obama. The one thing he could do in advance he hasn't even considered: dye that comb-over gray. It would look more natural, maybe even presidential. But when you've spent your entire adult life surrounded by expensive, well educated, and superbly dressed yes-men, there's nothing about the inevitable gang rape of the MSM you're prepared for. F.

Tim Pawlenty. Don't make me laugh. A man without balls from a state where every statement ends with a question mark, yah? He wants to show how tough he is by suggesting Obama gets his intelligence briefings wearing Depends? Really. What the hell was he doing when Al Franken stole a Senate seat under his nose? Pissing helplessly on the floor of the governor's mansion? And he has a weak chin. Besides which, nobody wants to hear his bland, flat, upper midwestern voice. F.

Michelle Bachmann. In many ways my preferred candidate. She's tough, combative, willing to go toe-to-toe with Chris Matthews and company in a way Palin has never dared to. She's also beautiful, accomplished, well educated, clearly fine in her personal life, and articulate and committed about the issues that really matter. She'd be my candidate choice but for one thing. Did you know she has a masters law degree from William and Mary, the second oldest university in the country? Yeah. The MSM can snipe all they want. She's no dummy, even if she is from Minnesota, home of the biggest dummy I know, Garrison Keillor. Problem? Her law degree is from Oral Roberts University. End of candidacy. Period. Forever. Liberals tolerate everything that hates America and life in general. What they cannot tolerate is Oral Roberts University. Before I found this out, what I most wanted from Michelle Bachmann was a voice coach. How you sound on the stump is incredibly important. Obama sounds manly and reassuring. Plausible. Actually, it's his whole shtick. Sounding like a president. Bachmann sounds like a slightly irritated housewife. That could have been fixed by a voice coach. Oral Roberts? No way. F.

Newt Gingrich. The man who probably should be president. As I've said in the past, he would utterly demolish Obama in any debate. He's the smartest politician we've had on the national scene since Richard Nixon (whether your knowledge of history drains the irony from this or not), and his checkered personal life means he's not trying to be a god but a public servant. At this point in his life he doesn't really need to have his private indiscretions splashed across the front page of the New York Times. But he's willing. If it matters to anyone, Newt's the one candidate on either side I wouldn't feel confident about owning in a debate. But his reputation has been so tarred and tattered already, and he's so seemingly a thing of the past, that his chances in a general election seem nil. The president of the United States doesn't have to be a nice guy. He has to be smarter, shrewder, and more determined than all the people who mean us harm, foreign and domestic. Reagan was old. But he was handsome in old age and his voice didn't sound like chalk on a blackboard. C-minus.

Ron Paul. I'm only including him because of Pete. Who is so rational and well researched and plausible until this particular name comes up. Which is when he goes completely nuts. But there's a larger point. The sharper among you will have noted that I've stressed the "voice factor." It's every bit as important as policy. Sometimes voice is a presentation issue. Sometimes it's an indicator of character. The American people always regard it as an indicator of character. Obama got himself elected with that confident baritone and his willingness to change modes -- Harvard to Georgia preacher -- to suck in the audience. I had my suspicions about Ron Paul long before his son, Rand Paul, came on the scene. Now I know. They're both fucking nuts. Their voices have the same high, hysterical note that makes men pull away. This guy isn't quite all there. It's not wholly conscious. It's just a feeling, but one that may have some merit. I can hear Pete now. "Well, Obama has a pleasing baritone, and he's no good." Does it matter that Ron Paul sounds like a whining grandmother, cross, didactic, and closed to other opinions? Uh, yes. It does. F-minus.

Chris Christie. He just can't run. Period. If he does, New Jersey will speedily go into the toilet and the MSM will take him apart for what's going on in New Jersey, which isn't Alaska.. You can bail out of Alaska but you can''t bail out of New Jersey. He's also fat, more liberal than we want, and really really really fat. D-Plus.

Paul Ryan. He's a specialist, not a presidential candidate. He's sort of a politician, but not really. He tries to craft legislative solutions people might actually understand, based in sound logic and far-seeing fiscal concepts, but on the other hand he's allowed the MSM to photograph the nerdiest hairdo any politician ever had. And I'm unaware that he has any foreign policy ideas whatever. Also, he sounds like a high school social studies teacher. F.

Sorry. The news and prospects aren't good. The good news for Republicans is that Obama is such an unbelievably awful, terrible, sickeningly incompetent president. The bad news is that I haven't seen anybody I do want to be my president.

Which I guess was Pete's point all along. We're in a hurt locker here. Time to get creative...

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

PROJECTS. IP's prodigal son Brizoni has somehow found time to distill from the massive InstaPunk corpus of posts (2 million words plus) a BOOK that features writing more than graphics, YouTube, and bile. He thinks it's 80,000 words of good stuff, not necessarily "The Best," not necessarily representative of the whole range of the site, and definitely not preclusive of subsequent manuscripts. It's simply the first and therefore spans the entire eight years InstaPunk has been a thorn in the side of the left, the right, and everyone in between. His editorial approach was to make a kind of written mixtape, looking for the right combinations of songs by band, genre, mood, and time. I've got to say, he nailed it. His manuscript is not "everything important about InstaPunk." It's more an InstaPunk trip, a flow that makes its own kind of sense to those who might read it. It will be published at Amazon.com sometime in April or May. It will cost actual money (about time).

The last remaining step before publication is the collation of a foreword. One of the conditions set by the InstaPunk writer(s) was that there would be a role for you, the commenters who are so necessary and esteemed at this site. Some of us have already volunteered to contribute to the Foreword by identifying specific quotes which moved or provoked us and explaining how they relate to our appreciation of the site. That's InstaPunk all over. If there's going to be a book, he wants us to be heard from -- the audience and interlocutors -- because we're the reason the site exists at all.

So this is the clarion call. Participate in the Foreword. Select one or two (or even three) quotes from the years of IP posts that meant the most to you. Explain why and how they mattered to you. Describe why you keep coming back to a site where the mere act of commenting can get you assaulted by the author(s), even when you intended no insult.

This is not a setup. We're all here. We've all been cuffed at one time or another, not always fairly (as even IP might admit). Nobody's taken more of a beating -- tongue in cheek or not -- than Brizoni. Remember the Ayn Rand posts? Yet he's put together this extraordinary manuscript. I've had a bad moment or ten myself but it didn't stop me from obsessively compiling theboomerbible.com, along with Apotheosis and Guy T. Why are we here after all these years? I know why.

I think you do too. I have an email address for all of you who'd like to be in the Foreword: instapunk@theboomerbible.com. I'm asking you to help explain to the world why we're all here and keep coming back. All of you. Any of you. But especially Peregrine John, Beckoning Chasm, Pete, Eduardo, Helk, Null, Urthshu, Apotheosis, Dirty Rotten Varmint, Billy Oblivion, Guy, JS, Jaytee, I Used to Love Penny, Barbara, Harley, MaryMcl, Ralph, BalowStar, GW, Alfa, Winston... and anyone else who has dared to stand on South Street and face the sometimes arbitrary wrath of InstaPunk.

Please do NOT make your submissions in the Comments section. If you do, the entire Comments section in which you submit will be deleted. Yet another arbitrary diktat of InstaPunk. Sorry, you know how he gets.

You can have a few days to put your ideas together, but try not to take much more than a week to submit.

I will undertake, in concert with Brizoni, to include your contributions in the Foreword to the manuscript. IP wants you all to have your say, to be part of anything he publishes. I'm dying to read it, too. Thanks in advance, and thanks IP for letting me post this.

OLD VICES. I wouldn't ordinarily waste space on this. We're a serious, world-saving type blog and DWTS is complete fluff, not to mention that all the judges are Democrats, socialists, or worse. But this year, they're approaching a  level of corruption that rivals that of the Quiz Show scandals of the 1950s. It's no secret that the show in years past has shamelessly promoted, in the name of ratings, NFL contestants who couldn't dance a lick but somehow made it all the way to the finals -- Jerry Rice, Emmett Smith, Warren Sapp (Gawd.) I can sort of understand the Asian nymphomaniac who has a trilling orgasm when Emmett Smith completes a waltz without crushing the sternum of his lightly clad opponentpartner. But the flaming Italian who leaps erect from his seat in ecstasy after a performance that would go unnoticed at a senior ballroom dance competition in North Wildwood is beyond me. As is the imitation Noel Coward fella who pretends he cares about "posture" while he subtracts points for the existence of contestant breasts and somehow sees grace in the leaden feet of fat old ex-jocks with permanently broken knees.

Be that as it may. This year the shark has definitely been jumped. Not only is there the inevitable NFL entrant in the competition, but he's being allowed to compete twice each show. Hines Ward and Wendy Williams are the same person. One bald and thick and big. The other wigged and painted and boobed to the max -- and thick and big. Same damn guy. Check it out for yourself in the results show tonight.  It's not right. I'm just saying. Is this erotic wish fulfillment for the maniacal Italian guy and the weird Noel Coward clone, or is it game-fixing 1950s style? You be the judge.

P.S. There are two interesting subplots in the show. Kirstie Alley moves really good for a sweathog, or did until she broke her partner in half in last night's competition. She's the pity candidate. And Ralph Macchio has somehow emerged out of celebrity limbo in his quest to regain notoriety. Which plan was publicized on the Internet some time ago.

Good luck with that, whitebread. (Second pity candidate: White male..) Still. We remember him for something other than the Karate Kid. Anybody else recall a movie called Crossroads that featured Macchio air-guitaring the riffs of the great Ry Cooder?


We do. God bless Ry Cooder. If only he could be there while Ralph tries to dance. Not that it would help him against the massive double-dip threat of Hines (Wendy) Ward (Williams)....

Monday, April 04, 2011

CALLING ALL AUTOMATONS.... Can you believe he would launch his reelection campaign NOW?

Pardon me while I free-associate a bit.


Which must, of course, be the exact right time to launch a reelection campaign. With this particular ad. Which cites no accomplishments whatever and speaks only of trust in the One. Meaning there's no point in addressing any specific criticism, because the Obama presidency is purely a matter of faith. It's a religion of sorts. The faithful are not waiting for Obama to grow up and become president in the way even his liberal political cheerleaders are. He's still the One. And given what the faithful really want from him, that's true.

All the calls for leadership from both sides of the aisle are feckless and disingenuous. Obama is exercising leadership as he understands it. We decided to elect as president a community organizer. That's what we got. To a community organizer, leadership is simply a matter of firing up the masses, declaiming incendiary talking points, fanning the flames, and then sitting back to watch the ensuing conflagration with speechwriters on hand to craft oratorical platforms that present the organizer as superior to the feeble actions of those whom he compels to respond to his provocations. He's never accountable for results, only for judgments on the failures of those whom he chooses to hold responsible.

Into this fetid mix I'll toss only one idea.

It's not that Obama has been slow to clarify and focus his leadership. It's that we have failed to understand that his notions of leadership are exactly what we have been experiencing. He's a slicker version of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, content to be superior to -- and ultimately blameless for -- the firestorms he deliberately incites.

A great way to melt down the world. He apologizes to Arab muslims, tells them he understands their hatred of America, and declares his reluctance to impede their cultural traditions and impulses. Result? They go nuts. Jimmy Carter had one mideast catastrophe -- Iran -- but Obama is working toward a dozen.

Obama systematically demonizes every variety of private provider in the American healthcare system -- hospitals, insurance companies, doctors, corporate health plans, and pharmaceutical companies -- then stands back and lets his Democrat congress run roughshod over everyone without even glimpsing his own presidential responsibility to craft a cost-effective and fair solution. Let it happen. He can be "shocked, shocked" later on and get credit for granting waivers and bribes to injured constituencies he still wants as allies for his next round of provocations.

He spends us into utter bankruptcy by turning Congress loose to lard up a "stimulus" bill with every spending program the Democrats have ever wanted. He proceeds to take personal credit for made-up benefits (e.g., jobs saved) while retaining the right to sacrifice those of his pawns whose more venal political motives got them defeated in the last election. It was never his fault what particular cuts of pork they packed into a bill he never looked at. His intentions were always pure, and he was never there that day anyway, because he was so busy carrying the "Yes we can" message to the media and the good folks who love you if you drop your "g"s in benighted Middle America.

Don't be waiting around for Obama to learn the trick of presidential leadership. We've already seen his conjuring in this regard and are dying of it.

Let me put it more directly. The community organizer is the affirmative action version of political leadership. It's always about what's owed to me and mine, just because, not about taking any responsibility for the consequences of rhetoric, action, inaction, or just going to dinner with the powerful after the powerless dopes have been stirred into a frenzy.

Or even more directly. We have an affirmative action president. He's absolutely not responsible for what happens to us. Nothing will or can ever make him see it that way. All he knows is that he's owed this office, any mistakes or misjudgments are not his fault, and we should all just trust him because... well, we owe him that for all our sins of the past.

If you agree with his bizarre notions of social justice, you have to support him whatever he does. The message is simple: "Nothing I do has to make any damn sense or even make your lives any better; it just has to reassure you that your own irrational prejudices are beyond reproach."

I propose that it's time to admit we made a catastrophic mistake. We didn't elect a healing post-racial president. We elected Nemesis. Wise up or be accountable for the mounting cataclysmic consequences.

Yeah, I'd even vote for Romney if it came to that. Obama must go.

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