So in case anybody is wondering, I have nothing to add to the most recent controversy involving _____ _____.

And to hell with the singing of the National Anthem, all that complicated rockets’ red glare stuff.  Fans can be given cards with a new loyalty oath which they will be required to recite or face expulsion from the stadium.  The oath will include a pledge to provide one’s first born for the next war wherever that might be and whenever the White House considers it appropriate.  Government in action might be highlighted by a Transportation Security Agency live simulation up on the food tier in which fans can vote on what kind of security screening they would prefer.  After the game is over, everyone present will be either groped or irradiated, depending on which option comes out on top.  It would be like reality TV and sports combined.

And then the piece de resistance.  At the end of a game a line of Taliban prisoners can be paraded along the top wall of the stadium.  A prisoner will be tossed into the parking lot for each touchdown that was scored in the game while the crowd chants “We have always been at war with Eurasia!” If no touchdowns are scored, one prisoner will be tossed anyway to show the Afghans that we mean business.  America has never lost a war.

From time to time, I too must cross Harvard Yard, where last night a fleeting figure too bright to be his lady thrust into my hands this odious marvel:

Has Rupert world enough, and time,
To suffer young Bill’s latest rhyme?
Though he has authored, reprobate,
Conservatism’s parlous state.
While some teahouses on The Hill
Still deign to serve The Standard’s swill.
Others down by Watergate
Await Murdoch’s dictated slate.
Any other they’ll refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.

But at his back, inspiring fear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurries near
As Newsweek in the dust doth lie
We hear The Weekly Standard cry
Subscribers no more can be found,
The economy’s run hard aground,
The markets plunge, jobs disappear,
As Kristol leads us from the rear.
Iran lacks nukes, yet still his Standard scores
Our nation’s policy by its count of wars.
Fought in middle eastern dust,
While Yankee credit turns to rust.
The Fed’s a fine and private place,
But none I think our bonds embrace.

So quick, before the curtain falls,
Upon his weekly’s hollow halls
Good neos rally, Happy band!
Lend your muse a helping hand,
Hasten him forward while you may
And bonds still rate a single A,

Manfully to embrace his fate,
And reverting to the just estate.
Of talking head with broken pate
Become a True Whig candidate.
Here ends the Marvellous allegory
Never was Kristol really a Tory.

Won’t it be a wonderful victory for civil liberties when the problem of intimate searches is solved and we can all go back to being X-rayed whenever we fly?

Alas, long before we manage to un-encumber ourselves of such as the TSA, x-ray technology will have become our grand-children’s steampunk. From Danger Room, a developing nanotechnology combines bee venom with nano-fiber to sniff bombs at the molecular level. Nanotechnology has inspired its own “runaway replicator” theory and is carbon-based, like us. But then some worried the first atomic explosion, if hot enough, would ignite the atmosphere and flambe Earth (now we know it isn’t possible); fortunately sterner souls prevailed and we now have nuclear weaponry.

The technology could do away with invasive searches (“beats having your junk touched” says Danger Room; “not necessarily”, says my creepy Uncle Del). I don’t know; all I see is Quantum Realm (where nanotech operates) + Bees (the Wermacht of the insect world) + State Surveillance. This is how it ends. Someday we’ll smile, if we’re still capable in our new status, recalling our childhood fears of mechanical robots gaining autonomy and making us their slaves…

Some press handler should advise Bernanke to use the singular pronoun more often. The Fed chairman awkwardly refers to the Fed making policy in the plural  “we,” even though to the public, he is seen as a single figure — making him sound as if he’s using the royal “we.”

Anarchism is peace. The state is war. Anarchism is an opposition to oppressive/coercive hierarchies. If you consider yourself an anarchist, you are welcome here. Please don’t post a bunch of irrelevant or internecine crap, though.

This would seem to prohibit banning any kind of self-identified anarchist or even raising the issue, as it probably constitutes “internecine crap.” However, the note explaining the ban adopts a radically different tone:

We are going to stand by our choice to ban anarcho-capitalists, and despite some disagreements, we are allowing anarcho-primitivists for now…

From now on, there will be no moderate take on freedom. We are in the middle of wage slavery and a culture war, and there is no moderate approach to war, only fight and surrender.

As anarchists, we must stand by our history, our culture, and our values. There are three things oppressing the proletariat:

• The State
• Religion
• Private Property

All of these things must be done away with, by any means necessary. When someone punches you, you have the right, as well as the moral obligation to strike back. Remember that pride is a weapon. Do not let go of your weapon in the name of open disscussion. Instead, that your weapon, and strike your enemy down in the heart. When we triumph, and we will triumph, the cultural conservative, the capitalist, the religious, in their vermin will beg for mercy.

We will show them no mercy. We will fight, and we will win. Together, we shall previal [sic]!

So much for peace. The author advocates the elimination of the vast majority of American society, which is like making a desert and calling it peace. Many of the anarcho-capitalists have pointed out the absurdity of denouncing private property while excluding people from it for their political beliefs, but I think they’re missing the most ridiculous contradiction here. The anarcho-primitivists are allowed to stay, which is fine, but why are anarcho-primitivists on Facebook!? I guess for many of these anarchists, the law of non-contradiction is the greatest oppressor of all.

kinesis, n a movement that is a response to a stimulus but is not oriented with respect to the source of stimulation
[1913 Webster]
Ten days ago a madman, having legally acquired a handgun, killed six unsuspecting innocents. The Democratic Party, assisted by the braver elements of the national media, sprung into action, quickly wrestling the First Amendment to the ground and disarming it before it could do more damage. Alas, the culprit has escaped, spirited away by his longtime associates Hate and Intolerance, no doubt. Fear not; speech posses are combing the hinterlands even now in search of malicious metaphors and savage similes. Needless to say, these suspects should be considered armed and dangerous. In the event that you come into contact with one, make no attempt to engage it, avoid ear contact and back away slowly before fleeing to your nearest progressive cable news outlet or blog, where you can report the encounter. Don’t be a hero. That’s what we put Keith Olbermann in pancake make-up for.
But above all, just as Fox News and the DHS dutifully advise regarding the terrorist threat of such criminal masterminds as the Liberty Seven and donkey-borne Taliban in the Pashtun hinterlands: be afraid, be very afraid. Always. And trust in the government. Always. Just as in those heady days following 9-11, we are advised to “watch what we say”. The parallels between this and that panic make a handy and instructive analog for the confused citizen. Meanwhile, working with heroic speed, experts have already fashioned a new standard for acceptable public rhetoric–if it’s capable of provoking a raving lunatic it is illicit. Make a note of it.
This has been necessarily expanded from the original focus on white male Republicans, who nonetheless retain their place atop the hierarchy of hysteria. This all will take some getting used to, I know, but one can always observe Mom’s advice–if you don’t have anything nice to say, drown your hatemongering words and yourself in your acidic spittle, you fascist bigot. And if you’re incapable of recognizing what might set off a lunatic, you are the lunatic.

Above all remain calm; our enlightened betters are valiantly fighting to will into being this “new reality” that will have “changed everything”. They know what they’re talking about. Recall the media’s uncanny prophesy that AIDS “changed everything”, delivering us from our libertine sexual ways; that 9/11 “changed everything”, bringing the nation together finally; and of course the post-partisan transformation of Barack Obama’s presidency ushering in a new era of domestic tranquility and world peace. These are the people who saved you from Saddam Hussein’s killer drones and WMD labs, remember. Despar not of their wisdom and sobriety.

NEW YORK—According to media analysts, the nation’s TV commentators and political pundits have proved uncannily accurate when describing the deeply disturbed inner thoughts of accused Arizona gunman Jared Loughner. “It’s strange, but when it comes to getting inside the mind of this human being who seems to possess no empathy, sense of morality, or hold on reality, and who is motivated only by personal animus and self-glorification, the nation’s major political pundits have been amazingly adept,” said Horizon Media analyst Bob Cullen, who has studied extensive tape of commentators on all major TV news programs and found their remarks on “what the killer is thinking” to be consistently thorough and detailed across the board. “It’s almost as though they have some way of knowing, firsthand, exactly what this demented and highly dangerous individual with the eyes of millions upon him is going through.” Researchers at Horizon Media also reported that a number of prominent TV pundits appeared to be mimicking the exact same chilling gleam in Loughner’s eye for what they could only speculate was “dramatic effect.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) invited Colbert to take part in the hearing on account of the comedian’s participation in the Take Our Jobs campaign sponsored by the United Farm Workers. The Comedy Central host attracted a flock of media and young people unlikely to attend a hearing sans Colbert, requiring an overflow room to house all attendees. (Which is where I watched the event, missing the committee room cutoff by two people.) I imagine reactions in the committee room are much more subdued than in overflow rooms. Laughter followed many of the more inane comments offered up by both witnesses and congressmen.

Rep. Lofgren expected decorum to deteriorate during Colbert’s speech, as evidenced by the warning she gave to the audience. But in the wilderness of the overflow room, free from gavel bangs and looks of disapproval, unfettered reactions became the norm early on. Iowa representative Steve King questioned the national-security impact of food production by comparing U.S. food production to food production by Eskimos. (Cue Studio Laughter.)

But the Helpmann winner for best committee performance goes to Judiciary Committe chairman John Conyers Jr. The congressman from Michigan opened his remarks by asking Colbert to leave, a perplexing display that was met with equally perplexed laughter. Conyers’s mumbling questioning of Dr. Carol Swain seemed equally odd. While I’m not too sure if many in the room were sympathetic to Dr. Swain’s proposal, almost all sympathized with her as she endured a barrage of incoherent babble from Conyers, who resembled a parody of a congressman as much as Colbert resembles an authentic pundit.

Colbert’s speech seemed plucked from the script of a segment of his television program. It delivered in the way a Colbert fan would expect, funny, but oddly poignant. Hidden under the rhetoric of Colbert’s speech was probably, and sadly, the most lucid observation by any person in attendance. Colbert noted that helping to raise conditions of working illegals might attract more Americans to farm work, which would effectively achieve the ends of both “sides” of the debate.

It is a sad mark on Congress that the most lucid comment comes from the entertainer who makes a living mocking congress and political types. Lost in the entire discussion of agriculture jobs is a discussion of comparative advantage. As UFW head Rodriguez noted, many of these immigrants have been working in fields since the age of fourteen. Hiring unemployed urban American workers for higher wages seems silly when cheaper and better skilled workers exist on the labor market. Not only do immigrant workers hold a pay-scale advantage, but because they have been working in fields for longer periods of time, they more than likely hold a comparative advantage in farming over urban or suburban Americans — a difference that may be important given the seasonal nature of agriculture, but a fact none of the people in attendance seemed to grasp.

Branded!
Marked with a traitor’s shame,
But how else to play such a bad hand,
When the think-tanks await?

Career prospects dying all about,
He sang a coward’s tune,
It’s a suicide mission and a rout,
that’s making him blue,

He arrived so innocent,
But that was long ago,
His disillusion is illuminant,
But no one wants to know,

Branded!
Scorned as the one who blabbed,
What do you do when you’re branded,
But still a yes-man?

Wherever you go,
to preserve your career,
The line you must toe,
To allay all their fears!

Branded!

Thoughtful, a.
Milquetoast; mealy-mouthed; compliant; harmless; irrelevant; boring; lemming-like; etc.

see also Seriousness/Serious

It reminded me of a samizdat manuscript that circulated some years ago, pre-9/11, a humorous version of what pretended to be a  joint employment application for the FBI and CIA.  A multiple choice on the FBI side of the form identified the greatest security threat in America as effete east coast snobs, ranked higher than folk singers and Beelzebub.  In word association CIA was linked to alcoholic and turncoat and a fill in the blank asked the applicant to “Name the last successful CIA project (if any).”  Another fill in the blank read “Any FBI agent who drives a foreign import should be _________.”   Another multiple choice concluded that the wisest use of FBI resources would be to “bug the community of Langley, Va.”

The CIA side of the form asked the applicant to define “boola boola” and a hypothetical scenario for the handling of a terrorist plot in the Hindu Kush involving the help of an FBI agent recommends that either his shoelaces be tied together or he be given some comic books to read.  The first fill in the blank asks the candidate “What FBI project was the biggest flop?”  The word association section links Clodhopper to FBI to cheeseburgers.  The correct answer on the multiple choice asking what to do when paired with an FBI agent on a top priority assignment is to lock the car’s passenger door so he or she cannot get in.  Finally, the CIA applicant had to confirm that he was either Skull and Bones or Hasty Pudding or possibly a security risk.  If all three, welcome to the Agency.

The next time I’m in the Mail Plus store I will try to snap a photo to share.

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans
and reduce the growth in health care spending, and
for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that the American people shall henceforth be:

Watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. … [A]t every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. … [U]nder pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, … place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

All in favor say aye. The rest of you can go to hell.