Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: Raise energy taxes? Sue Opec Surely you jest. Lower speed limits to 55MPR? Why not 35MPH? No? 55MPH is not only not a sane energy plan, but is rather, Chinese Water Torture!

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: What in the world makes Senators Obama, Reid, Durbin, Schumer, and Speaker Pelosie and company think we want petroleum less productive let alone more expensive by way of raised taxes. I don’t recall saying that we wanted to lose jobs. The petroleum you know will simply flow where it‘s most productive.

But enough of Barack Obama. Let’s talk about Michelle Obama. So as we all know Michelle Obama is all-in for the “struggle”.

Oh yes, I heard Senator Obama’s edict. Senator Obama says blah blah blah. Well in response I say blah, or in other words if you don’t want Michelle’s political formulations critiqued then tell her not to make political speeches, otherwise clam up, quit whining, have some gripe-water. It’s unbecoming in a presidential candidate, bans on this bans on that why not just ban free speech, your list is too large and ungainly, I can’t keep up. Besides, Michelle doesn’t strike me as a shrinking violet.

Sure upon many circumstances, I think, family members are not fair game without qualification, but the boundary is limited by the family member. So by dint of her own political elocutions she has entered the public square, and therefore, it would be disrespectful to not treat her as a participant. Senator Obama’s command then is an unwarranted transcursion of the public square’s limits. To the measure of Mrs. Obama’s public speech is to the measure we are right to respond.

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: No we’re not clamoring for socialism (that would be Progressives). Actually we’re telling the government to get the heck out of the way so that private industry can provide the goods and services that fuels our dynamic economy.

But on such account as dullness her speech wasn’t unique. Too many political speeches fall victim to that malaise to raise so much as an eyebrow. Also, though it ought not need be said, to criticize a speech is not synonymous with taking a position one way or the other as concerns her person. I have more than a couple friends and family members whom though I’m fond of, like and love even, I would never ever vote for them to any political office.

Anyway, I read through her speech a couple of times and I noted the familiar political touch stones, objects, symbols as it were common to many political speeches. However, hers was not a political speech as much as a literary event.

Sure, it should have been readily apparent as after the preliminary stuff she starts her speech proper:

“And when you look over the year and what has happened, you realize just how amazing this journey is, so come with me for the last fifteen or so months when it started in Sprinfield, Illinois at Barack’s announcement in February, a year or so ago.”

And quickly and soon enough we are retailed with the Obama Odyssey, “an amazing journey” of sorts that actually begins in the middle and rings out epic over the course of many words and symbolic rhetoric. So yes former President Clinton was not altogether wrong when he described the Obama campaign as a “fairy tale,” he simply guessed wrong on the genre. An easiest enough mistake I think to make.

“And talent in the highest and broadest sense means a talent for life.” That sounds familiar doesn’t it? so familiar I can’t say if Boris Pasternak was the first to pen it (in the character of Yuri). Not a terribly bad saying in itself, but it does sound like one of those artsy clichés you would find on a coffee mug, or poster, or if willing to pay extra price, engraved on some stained glass artifact. It sounds like a cliché because it’s a mantra of the left, modern, post-modern or otherwise. It is at the core of the left’s world-view. Is it the sole symbol of that view? No, I wouldn’t be so bold to make that assertion.

But nonetheless as we’re talking not about a quality, but rather a reductionist caricature of life, claiming that life can be reduced to a “talent,” quickly enough life is understood as a craft. A craft that can be developed and mastered into a narrative. The Romantic hero struggling against circumstances, or perhaps the Epic hero struggling against circumstances.

So it is that Barack and Michelle have mastered the post-modern craft. So yes, I like more than one reader was taken with the political statement themed by “struggle,” “fear,” “challenge,” “hope,” etc. Yes, her dystopian landscape peopled by the trembling masses made its impression. It was inescapable I’m afraid.

“And see what happens when you live in a nation where the vast majority of Americans are struggling every day to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, then what happens in that nation is that people do become isolated.”

“And the problem with fear is that it cuts us off. Fear is the worst enemy. It cuts us off from one another and our own families, and our communities, and it has certainly cut us off from the rest of the world.”

Isolated, alienated, cut and divided. So in our singular, excuse me, “isolated,” existence Mrs. Obama goes on to say:

“They do live in a level of division [division, as in not unity, or is that labor?], because see, when you’re that busy struggling all the time, which most people that you know and I know are, that you don’t have time to get to know your neighbor. You don’t have time to reach out and have conversations, to share stories. In fact, you feel very alone in your struggle, because you feel that somehow, it must be your fault that you’re struggling so.”

I was flinching soon enough by her repeated use of “struggle.” Soon enough I knew she was all-in for the “struggle.” And Marx’s “class struggle” felt like a bat hitting me over the head--thus the flinching. As in yes I get it, Barack and Michelle claim proletariat bona fides. It is the ground of “unity” from which they stand, which idea is more Hegleian than Marx, but they go together well, or so says Georg Lukacs, a dull and dreary Marxist critic, I know, but never mind that for now.

Are we really to believe living in Kansas qualifies as an unthinkable hardship? And though we commend Michelle’s father for providing for his family, does that not put him squarely in the American tradition? Have we come so far that we now equate paying back student loans as the thing of greatest hardship? Attending Ivy League schools qualifies as drudgery? Well…Since when is taking a job as a community organizer and living a middle class life the thing equated with great sacrifice. Making a choice and doing what you want to do is now the definition of sacrifice? Only in America.

Yes it is absurd, Mrs. Obama’s epic narrative indicts, refutes and is contradicted by the reality of her and Barack’s real life narrative, but fortunately Lukacs (to pick but one of many possible modern/post-modern thinkers) in an essay titled The Ideal of the Harmonious Man in Bourgeois Aesthetics comes to our aide a bit, albeit unwillingly (yea, I don‘t know whether I was feeling penitential myself, or just a little empathetic with Mr. Patterson, but reading Marx‘s tomb, er tome, was out of the question, not feeling that penitential today or yesterday): So Lukacs says,

“Gorky [no idea who he is, but he’s a writer] achieves a coincidence of the artistic and the political unity [unity?] that is neither automatic or mechanical [artful then?]….Thus a principle of artistic representation turns into a political and social principal.”

Art like everything then is derived from politics, everything is politics, either a unified singularity, or an illegitimate and wanting dichotomy. Such is the vision of the left where “think globally act locally” is the sole vision. Or to put it another way, the revolutionary makes art of his own life, and conversely every artist is a revolutionary, which is to say singular clap trap or worse.

Which may explain why the “they,” principal villain, of her epic morphs from the Clintons to this:

“And this is where Barack gets it. He understands that our challenge is us, that we have lost a sense of empathy.”

In a singular, political, artistic existence the villain must be us, society. What other villain could there be if (raise consciousness anyone?) our lives are wholly defined as a singular event rather than a dynamic dichotomy, let alone a manifold of expressions.

And so the Clintons lost because they were ran a political campaign that had some mythical (event staging) overtones against what Yuri (Dr. Zhivago) describes as:

“It seems to me that socialism is the sea, and all these separate, these private, individual revolutionaries, are flowing into it--the sea of life, the sea of spontaneity. I said life, but I mean life as you see it in a great picture, transformed by genius, creatively enriched. Only now people have decided to experience it not in books and pictures but in themselves, not as an abstraction but in practice.”

The Clintons lost to a literary event, an artful fiction, which helps explain why our MSM, self defined intelligencia, and others are all agog. They hunger to make of themselves papyrus, canvas, marble, and things. Dr. Zhivago I think begins to see the folly in what he says above, as the passage in the previous post suggests, but we’ll have to see. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

But to answer the question of the Obama genre that eluded former President Clinton; theirs is not an epic at all, but rather a parody of an epic, a genre made famous by Alexander Pope and his mock epics.

So it is meet that we give Mr. Pope the last words from the Dunciad:

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often! No, no, no we didn’t ask you Obama, Reid, Pelosie, to tell us to go pound sand, thank you, and I’ve had quite enough cake lately. No we’re telling you to drill in our oil fields, get it, or you can go pound the pavement, thank you.

What’s that you say? Obama wasn’t calling his supporters bigots and racists, but McCain’s; that the only reason someone wouldn’t vote Obama is because he has an “uppity” wife and so forth…hmm, well never mi…, wait! never mind never mind, that’s still, at best, stridently bigoted, which is, shockingly, consistent with Obama’s at best bigoted remarks about voters “clinging to God and guns” and so forth Why it would seem there is a consistency of malicious intent. Well that’s racial healing for you.

Which reminds me, lest I should forget, here’s a PSA for our liberal friends, acquaintances and others: if for some reason you find yourself in a church preaching Revolutionary Theology, grounded in Marxism, and anchored in racism, Trinity Church (I don’t have to link that do I?) for example, may I suggest that you don’t walk out, but run, as walking may take you 20 years or so and by then the damage may well be done.

Well yes now that you mention it that structure does seem eerily familiar, appearances not withstanding.

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: Supply and demand is a law of nature that not even King Obama and all his Minstrel Acolytes can ever hope to suspend.

Well of course Obama is a socialist, it would be fraudulent to say he wasn’t.

“What’s that?

“I said you’re interrupting the coronation of the ‘one we’ve been waiting for.’ The promised one!”

“Right. Sure, but can you do me a favor and turn your head when you gush. The splatter is making me nervous.”

“All America is all aswoon with the rising pandemonium.”

“Do tell.”

“You need to get on board”

“But I don’t like life boats.”

“You’d better, because the world is sinking.”

“Really? to where, pray tell, is it sinking?”

“You know where!”

“I didn’t say gesture wildly when gushing, I said please gush the other way, but anyway, I thought the waters were receding.”

“That’s right because the waters obey Obama.”

“Does Gore know about this?”

“Of course he’s on board; just like us bestowing dutiful hosannas, oblations…”

“I’m sure he is, but I was wondering is this a weekly, monthly or annual event?

“He’s the brightest star; he’s a happening.”

“Yes yes I know all the world is all a pandemonium and a pabulum and the glamourati and true believes are chanting he’s the one we’ve been waiting for, our enchanting Obama.”

“That’s right and you better too.”

“But is the chanting both a taxing and a tithing, or rather, should I say a waxing annuity?”

“What?”

“Or do we need a Clinton in time and a VP in place to bag it.”

“Clinton, I hate Clinton.”

“Exactly.”

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: No dummies, not where the oil isn’t. 68-million acres of unknown or worse, no oil, is not the place to drill today. Are you Democrats sure you use 10 percent of your brains. I have my doubts, either you’re 5%’s or you’re duplicitous. Either way, if it’s all the same to you, we want the oil that we know we can get.

“ ‘That’s naïve,’ said Pogorevshikh [he’s a radical]. ‘What you call disorder is just as normal a state of things as the order you’ve been so keen about [he‘s speaking to Yuri Andreievich; the hero of the novel]. All this destruction--it’s a natural and preliminary stage of a broad creative plan. Society has not yet disintegrated sufficiently. If must fall to pieces completely, then a genuinely revolutionary government will put the pieces together and build on completely new foundations [Yuri, to his credit, wasn’t pleased with Pogo’s sanguine destruction].’ ”

Or to put it another way, after government has cleared away social, cultural, and economic norms and self regulating institutions then society, including those who “cling to guns and God” will clamor for relief and then we will be able, “yes we can,” to manipulate and stamp them into whatever we want.

“We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

With symbolic thinkers and their symbols (which pretty well accounts for the whole of progressives) it’s usually helpful to have a Rosetta Stone handy, sort of like having a GPS on board in a foreign country, otherwise, too easily, we may sway in sophistry and an inscrutable maze of cleverness.

What we should call the Obama economic vision is the rationing society. In fairness we will all be miserable, except for apparatchiks of course. Well people in a life boat generally are collectively miserable and you know, have to ration. Of course when you’re not really in a life boat, and there’s no cause for the discomfort of one, you have to force people into one. They won’t go willingly. Hmm, I wonder why. Anyway, the only way to get there is? Quite right, socialism, of one sort or another. You can’t make people ration without cause, that is, without a great big beast of a centralized state. Thus socialism.

And you know the thing about lifeboats, well at some point, sooner or later, you have to throw the infirm, the weak, the elderly, infants and so forth overboard.

But the real utility of the above Rosetta Stone is its clarity, transparent properties, which I put to use transcribing an Obama speech given in North Carolina:

"I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on her victory in the state of Indiana. And I want to thank the people of North Carolina for giving us a victory in a big state, a swing state, and a state where we will compete to win if I am the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

“More importantly, because of you, we have seen that it's possible to overcome the politics of division and distraction; that it's possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems. We've seen that the American people aren't looking for more spin or more gimmicks, but honest answers about the challenges we face. That's what you've accomplished in this campaign, and that's how we'll revolutionize this country together.

"This has been one of the longest, most closely fought contests in history. And that's partly because we have such a formidable opponent in Senator Hillary Clinton. Tonight, many of the pundits have suggested that this party is inalterably divided - that Senator Clinton's supporters will not support me, and that my supporters will not support her.

“Well I'm here tonight to tell you that I don't believe it. Yes, there have been bruised feelings on both sides. Yes, each side desperately wants their candidate to win. But ultimately, this race is not about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain. This election is about you - the American people - and whether we will have a president and a party that can lead us toward a brighter future.

"The woman I met in Indiana who just lost her job, and her pension, and her insurance when the plant where she worked at her entire life closed down - she can't afford four more years of tax breaks for corporations like the one that shipped her job overseas. She needs us to give tax breaks to companies that create good jobs here in America. She can't afford four more years of tax breaks for CEOs like the one who walked away from her company with a multi-million dollar bonus. She needs middle-class tax relief that will help her pay the skyrocketing price of groceries, and gas, and college tuition. That's why I'm running for President.

“The college student I met in Iowa who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill - she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and the wealthy; that allows insurance companies to discriminate and deny coverage to those Americans who need it most. She needs us to stand up to those insurance companies and pass a plan that lowers every family's premiums and gives every uninsured American the same kind of coverage that Members of Congress give themselves. That's why I'm running for President.

"The mother in Wisconsin who gave me a bracelet inscribed with the name of the son she lost in Iraq; the families who pray for their loved ones to come home; the heroes on their third and fourth and fifth tour of duty - they can't afford four more years of a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. They can't afford four more years of our veterans returning to broken-down barracks and substandard care. They need us to end a war that isn't making us safer. They need us to treat them with the care and respect they deserve. That's why I'm running for President.

“The people I've met in small towns and big cities across this country understand that government can't solve all our problems - and we don't expect it to. We believe in hard work. We believe in personal responsibility and self-reliance.

“But we also believe that we have a larger responsibility to one another as Americans - that America is a place - that America is the place - where you can make it if you try. That no matter how much money you start with or where you come from or who your parents are, opportunity is yours if you're willing to reach for it and work for it. It's the idea that while there are few guarantees in life, you should be able to count on a job that pays the bills; health care for when you need it; a pension for when you retire; an education for your children that will allow them to fulfill their God-given potential. That's the America we believe in.

“That's the America I know.

“This is the country that gave my grandfather a chance to go to college on the GI Bill when he came home from World War II; a country that gave him and my grandmother the chance to buy their first home with a loan from the government.

“This is the country that made it possible for my mother - a single parent who had to go on food stamps at one point - to send my sister and me to the best schools in the country on scholarships.

"This is the country that allowed my father-in-law - a city worker at a South Side water filtration plant - to provide for his wife and two children on a single salary. This is a man who was diagnosed at age thirty with multiple sclerosis - who relied on a walker to get himself to work. And yet, every day he went, and he labored, and he sent my wife and her brother to one of the best colleges in the nation. It was a job that didn't just give him a paycheck, but a sense of dignity and self-worth. It was an America that didn't just reward wealth, but the work and the workers who created it.

“Somewhere along the way, between all the bickering and the influence-peddling and the game-playing of the last few decades, Washington and Wall Street have lost touch with these values. And while I honor John McCain's service to his country, his ideas for America are out of touch with these values. His plans for the future are nothing more than the failed policies of the past. And his plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election.

“Yes, we know what's coming. We've seen it already. The same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas. The same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy in the hope that the media will play along. The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain - to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white and black, and brown.

“This is what they will do - no matter which one of us is the nominee. The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run, it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. I didn't get into race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it.

“We will end it this time not because I'm perfect - I think by now this campaign has reminded all of us of that. We will end it not by duplicating the same tactics and the same strategies as the other side, because that will just lead us down the same path of polarization and gridlock.

"The other side can label and name-call all they want, but I trust the American people to recognize that it's not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after al Qaeda's leaders. I trust the American people to understand that it's not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but our enemies - like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.

“I trust the American people to realize that while we don't need big government, we do need a government that stands up for families who are being tricked out of their homes by Wall Street predators; a government that stands up for the middle-class by giving them a tax break; a government that ensures that no American will ever lose their life savings just because their child gets sick. Security and opportunity; compassion and prosperity aren't liberal values or conservative values - they're American values.

“Most of all, I trust the American people's desire to no longer be defined by our differences. Because no matter where I've been in this country - whether it was the corn fields of Iowa or the textile mills of the Carolinas; the streets of San Antonio or the foothills of Georgia - I've found that while we may have different stories, we hold common hopes. We may not look the same or come from the same place, but we want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

“That's why I'm in this race. I love this country too much to see it divided and distracted at this moment in history. I believe in our ability to perfect this union because it's the only reason I'm standing here today. And I know the promise of America because I have lived it.

“It is the light of opportunity that led my father across an ocean.

“It is the founding ideals that the flag draped over my grandfather's coffin stands for - it is life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“So don't ever forget that this election is not about me, or any candidate. Don't ever forget that this campaign is about you - about your hopes, about your dreams, about your struggles, about securing your portion of the American Dream.

“Don't ever forget that we have a choice in this country - that we can choose not to be divided; that we can choose not to be afraid; that we can still choose this moment to finally come together and solve the problems we've talked about all those other years in all those other elections.

And as noble as all that may be, it put me in mind of biology. Yes I know it is a bit off the associative grid, what can I say? Now I don’t know about you, but as for me my most enduring memory is dissecting earth worms and frogs. Somehow or other we were supposed to identify this or that tripartite or other heart or some such organ. Wasn’t my best subject in high school, but it was easy to be the hero for a girl or two because of the ick factor.

Anyway, we’re talking about energy conversion for useful purposes. Yes, it’s at the cellular level, but then if the cells don’t get enough of what they need they get sick, with Scurvy or some such. Well actually if any cell doesn’t receive enough energy it gets sick, has malnutrition so to speak, and ultimately dies. And what’s good for the cell is good for you and me, not to mention the economy.

Energy we might justifiably say, and I see no reason not to, sustains life, ergo, Kyoto is immoral. Or as Groovy Al Gore would say, “let them eat ethanol.” Well, what would you say about a pie-in-the-sky fantasy which has zero practical benefit, but does manage to contract useful, gainful, food providing enterprise?

Non sequitur or not:

Well, it seems that Capitalism is not only the most efficient economy, but also the most moral as well!

Surprise, highway men and pirates, they’re always on the look out for leveraging, greasing an oily deal.

“It would be but a simple matter in arithmetic and government, however, to limit private fortune by law and take back the surplus of excess for the nation…

The Standard Oil Company would not go out of business if the government became the principal stockholder through a transfer of securities from Rockefeller to the government.”

Well yea, the idea is ancient (whether of the Sun King variety, Babylonian, etc., pick your poison, or any conflated state/society structure, though confessedly, this veneer was new and diversifying through various forms of socialism--Fabian, Marxist, etc. for a start, but not a finish, with people and resources belonging to the state) even at the time Henry H. Klien was writing, 1918, whose worldview, hauntingly enough, echoes fascism. He says, “they [the people] must be made to realize that socialism is a vision, Bolshevism means anarchy [excuse me?], and that a single tax is impracticable as an economic engine” (in his essay Why Private Fortunes Should Be Limited--Book Title and brief bio in post below).

Who pays? Don’t be silly. You and me, naturally: Um, can you say massive, unprecedented, redistribution of property--that is Ponzi scheme. But you will plant Eucalyptus trees in Brazil, and on farm land and old growth forests in Africa--so forth and so forth. Well done.

But as it is I’m out of energy--so…

As you well know the Dims are utterly aghast that the modern world uses economy driving fuels, energy, and are quite certain the sky is falling. Hence they have drafted without aide of much, meaning common sense, an energy plan that will benefit no one.

Revolutionizing, evolving certainly (using Marxist nomenclature that I’m sure our progressive friends applaud) into this:

Sustained Mobility, Or Going Do Doo

And there you have it our slide slow--if I had more energy I would supply more, but I’m restricted by green stricture, that and the scope of the Dim Energy Plan.

Barrack Hussein Obama. Goodness me, such a hush, such a gasp. How such trepidation? Am I to infer that his name may not be mentioned in polite company, except in the most reverenced and whispered tones? Pisshaw! Give me a break! What clap trap! He’s a man right? Like any other? Or as our old friend Michel De Montaigne says, “Both kings and philosophers defecate, and so do the ladies.” [That’s from his essay On Experience.]

So then if not a sanctified thing, well then are you saying that his name is a dirty word--why wasn’t I informed of this? Where’s the memo stating Barrack Hussein Obama is such a dirty word as not be typed in print, or given voice on radio, or must be stricken from television?

Well of course I can certainly imagine the embarrassment, the humiliation, the unmitigated shame. What were his parents thinking? Wait a second his parents named him, yes? With love I presume. And now I’m given to believe that they gave their son a humiliating, embarrassing, shameful name on purpose? What ingrates say this? What fops promulgate such a dishonorable view? Oh, of course, twittering sycophantic popinjays like Keith Olbermann. Well that‘s to be expected.

What’s that you say? “That’s not what you meant and I know it.”

Well of course I agree the whole thing is silly. Schoolyard silly. Does it really have to be said, he gives meaning to his name and not the other way around. Yes, it would have been nice had Senator Obama said something that amounts to the same rather than piously accepting gratuitous apologies. And so a silly thing that could have been put down with a word or three has festered into a most unseemly thing.

I suppose temptation is always an insidious thing, always difficult to ward off, how else to explain the conduct of his own supporters using his own name as a weapon--using it to bludgeon and silence. But are they so daft as to not know that in doing so they accentuate rather than eviscerate, confirm rather, that there is something there that is embarrassing, humiliating, shameful in the mere mention of his name. Are they so half-witted that they’re unaware that their sanctimonious indignation reflects not only back on Barrack Hussein Obama, but his parents too. So then I must, being charitable, reject the premise. It is the only charitable thing to do.

But to tarry a moment longer, who wouldn’t agree that if a man asks you to refer to him by this or that appellation, being respectful, we should simply comply. Many of us have a preference, all? Some of us don’t really care for our middle name. Some of us don’t like our first name--so it goes. And unless Billy Bob Blutarsky is having a Billy Bob Blutarsky “you stop that right now because I’m not telling you twice moment”--well then…The point is that it is up to Barrack Hussein Obama to tell us how he would prefer this or that usage, not some screeching peevish supporter.

Still, how much better it would have been for Barrack to simply say, “my name is Barrack Hussein Obama, and simply enough I love my parents and I’m honored by the name they gave me, and if it is true that some see my name besmirched by the actions of others similarly named, well all the good my opportunity to give not merely honor to my parents, but by my actions redeem mine own name, and if as you say it is true that it has been so dishonored that it ought not to be mentioned in polite company, than all the more righteous and sublime my achievement, my victory, where none anywhere willingly refrain from shouting my own true name from every rooftop, prairie, dale, and mountain.” Or some like soliloquy or other. That he didn’t do so, that was unexpected.

****

So Eliot Spitzer, former Governor of New York, David A. Paterson, current Governor of New York, and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick have all been exposed as men who have seen fit to consummate their inappropriate dalliances, though in Mr. Spitzer’s case we can, as he did, dispense with the dalliance because he went straight to go, and I don‘t mean Park Place.

Now it is true that dalliance and its near relation, concupiscence, recognize no creed, religion, or political party, and further what is good in one case may be bad in others, sort of like those neutral terms that have zero moral value whatsoever, tolerance and diversity, or any value, come to think of it, without some informing qualification. For example, I’m intolerant of Jihadi Nazis, and frankly that’s a diversity I can do without.

But to return to our subject, misguided dalliance and such, so who was that dolt who said “religion is the opiate of the people”? Freud was much closer to the truth; sex is the opiate of the people. Not just in our own day, though we may have refined it to a finer substance, but take infidelity, which has a long and storied pedigree: Some say that the curse on the house of Tantalus was at fault; if not for the curse King Agamemnon would have lived to a nice ripe old age. Well maybe, and then again maybe not, but I’ll tell you what bringing home his paramour Cassandra to a meet-and-greet with Clytemnestra after being away for ten years probably wasn’t such a hot idea. And it’s not like he didn’t have chaste, or not so, examples immediately before his mind’s eye--you know Paris, Helen, Trojan war and all. But hey it did give outstanding material for a play by Aeschylus.

Which brings to mind the far more famous Greek tragedy Oedipus by Sophocles, or rather why Sophocles’ play is more famous than Aeschylus’. Because of Freud you say, well yes, but why was Freud transfixed by Oedipus? Notwithstanding Freud's reading (whatever you may think of it), I will say that Aeschylus’ Agamemon doesn’t give a troubled reading to the Progressive world-view: simply legislate against human sacrifice, cannibalism, and the like, and, in Freud’s day, have strong societal sanctions disfavoring illicit trysts. Ta da! problem solved.

Now I admit that is a rather trite reading, but then we’re talking about progressive world-views and solutions here not literary sublimity. But never mind that, we’re talking about Oedipus, and Oedipus, to the contrary, disavows, negates, does not conform even to any progressive world-view solution. And that my friends is a scandal of the first order. A scandal, an affront, to the progressive mind, which our hero, Freud, could not well let stand. Thus he found god in our unconsciousness, planted him squarely there, and named him--well you know the rest of the story.

My take? Well as the primary, profound, literary reading of the play, well, as Get Smart would say, “he missed it by that l-----l much.”

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“The new plan…is an honest attempt to advance in constitutional legislation along lines best calculated to promote smooth collaboration of all classes of society for the good of the state…‘Power is now given to the ‘productive forces of the state’ rather than to the mere representatives of territorial division. Each art, craft, trade, and profession will be represented in this…[the] first legislative body to be based on full economic representation.”

Wait a second that’s Mussolini’s Progressive Affirmative Action plan. Sorry about that, my bad. I’m sorry, too many notes and such, like things get confused, what can I say? [If curious Mussolini is being quoted by F. Lee Burns whom I mentioned in an earlier post.]

So lets try this again. Here’s the current California plan: “Each state must have a Delegation which is 50% female, 50% male or within one, and must have a Delegate Selection Plan that includes Affirmative Action Goals (quotas are prohibited [okay I’m laughing]).” Wait! Actually that directive comes from some national Democrat Party committee or other (hmm, I‘m having a déjà vu moment), but that’s not what’s funny, rather the imbecility of people who use the words “must have” and then in the same sentence say “quotas are prohibited”--must have flunked their SAT’s, or must be nimrods, or they must think we are, whatever.

So how does this break out--no, not as artisans and such as Mussolini would have it--we’ve progressed since then--no, these buffoons have their own categories. Lets go through them shall we:

As you can see there are conundrums rapt in mystery, fogged by confusion, lying inherent in this miserable riddle; for instance, can one person count more than Once? Twice? Three times Four?

Of course the Democrats, or should I say, Progressive party, are free to organize themselves however they wish. But as for me I’m not much of one for a party that describes my primary worth as my color, my sex, or whatever preferred, politically correct, superficial phenotypic trait.

And it‘s obvious isn‘t it? though the categories are nominally different as advanced by Mussolini and the Democrat Party, as they are clearly different on a Phenotypic level, there isn’t a hair’s breath difference between them on a structural Genotypic level, no, nary a difference between the two.

No of course not, I’m not bringing into this discussion that most exotic, infamous, distilled-evil National Socialism into this discussion--that guy and his ideology is to fascism what Stalin and his ideology is to communism (two peas in a rotten pod). No we’re talking about something like benign fascism, happy fascism, or Liberal Fascism.

Or as someone once said, “a rose is a rose no matter what you call it,” or something like that.

By the way did you pick up your copy of Liberal Fascism yet? If not go to the post below. I have a link there.

What’s that? “I didn’t say anything about Hillary?” Well, we have time yet to discuss Hillary don’t-cry-for-me Clinton.

No the grand flourish is not always the thing. Often a good cup of coffee and a long satisfying draw off a good stogy is just the thing. A fine morning under a blue sky with a bit of a crisp breeze and an allowance to simply look out at calm streets shaded with Maple like trees that don’t seem to lose their leaves in winter. I‘m not much of an arborist. There’s some kind of tree in our neighbor’s yard that has gone dormant, not a leaf on the thing, but these small finch like birds, and this one humming bird, and one lark (I think) are there just about every morning. Small things.

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Certainly Governor Romney took no small task upon himself, and he and his family shouldered that task nobly and graciously. He brought verve, intelligence and passion to our national dialog and for that we should thank him, and I for one do. Thank you Governor Romney.

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Moving as we all know is a large thing, on a personal scale anyway. Boxes here boxes there boxes boxes everywhere. And dust for some reason comes with the boxes. Cats don’t like moving. Initially anyway. But there are unearthed gems in every move. Did I mention I found my Horace. Yes, it’s true, I admit, I expected to find him. Would have been disappointed if I hadn’t, actually. So after a day of putting stuff here, dusting there and so forth I reclined on our two seater and opened up Horace where we had left off; he writes an ode To Maecenas (a patron of his I believe--among other things) and weaves a reassuring thought with the pay-off being this:

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Did you know that nephews are different than nieces. It’s true. Oh sure we could talk about the Wolffian duct system and such, but really no such discussion is necessary to acknowledge the Tabula Rasa stuff of Hume as twiddle twaddle. Yes I know, since at least the 60’s feminists and other progressives have hinged too much of their social policy on just such idiocy, what to do? As if the purpose of form begins and ends with the sex organs.

Anyway, nieces quietly ask aunty if uncle Jon is awake? Nephews see stirring and decide now is the time to attack and tackle. Nephews show off their bike riding prowess by relentlessly being on the precipice of disaster. Actually sometimes not on the precipice--that’s where the skinned knees come from.

Yes, this past summer while traveling through parts of the heartland--Kansas to Ohio, with Southern Illinois, Indiana, a trip to the Mammoth caves of Kentucky thrown in for good measure--we had (that would be me, Mrs. J, and Mrs. J’s father, my friend) the opportunity to visit with in-laws here and there on warm summer nights following, yes, hot and humid days. Good conversations ranging from the this of cooking to the that of politics: amiable and stimulating all. And the food was very good.

Oh and of course I played army with the boys with those plastic soldiers (they still make them). I lost. Too, we played star wars. I lost that also.

Gorgeous country. If you haven’t been there--well, you must.

Blessings. That summer trip was a blessing. Nephews and nieces are blessings. I’m thinking now about a couple of nephews who are in good health, one a graduate from college and the other in high school. Strapping good natured young men.

And cousins. Adult and young. And the young like nephews and nieces are wonderful, delightful, charming, and occasional trouble makers, aren’t all children? But now I’m thinking of one whom we are blessed to have with us. At a very tender age she had cancer. Prayers, medicine and love is what her parents provided, and we who knew them gave what we could.

Blessed.

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by Laura Ingram. And if you find things when unpacking, well, you lose things while packing. But thankfully I didn’t loose my copy permanently, and so I thought I would share a passage that I found particularly disturbing:

“the United Nations Children’s Fund (‘UNICEF’) has promoted its ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child,’ which would give children countless rights vis-à-vis their parents, inc