Define "Right"

President Obama says the economy is heading in the right direction.

I dunno. Does this look "right" to you?

Music to the ears

There are many words and expressions that have an internal aesthetic quality that acts as a kind of balm for the mind and spirit. "Mellifluous" and "euphonious" (appropriately enough). "Concatenation"; "azure"; "Come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy"; "a truant to where the blue begins".

And - one of my personal favorites - "Ex-Senator Chuck Hagel".

Happy Feet Friday

Here’s a tremendous collection of blues giants - Memphis Slim, T-Bone Walker, Helen Humes, Willie Dixon, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Jump Jackson, Shakey Jake – and they are jammin’.

From the shelves of the Paco library

On a recent trip to my favorite used book store, I finally bagged the illusive Prejudices: Sixth Series, by H.L. Mencken. The Prejudices series was published in the 1920s, and the sixth volume, like its predecessors, represents collections of essays that range far afield: music, literary criticism, religion, culture - even chiropractic and a suggestion for an appropriate burial rite for agnostics.

But it is Mencken’s writings on American politics that I have always found most fetching, and there is plenty here to engage the mind on that topic, much of which is timeless and all of it laid out in the most unique prose style that ever blossomed in the garden of American journalism. One cannot adequately provide a mere explication of the author’s themes; quotation is vital. So here are a couple of examples.

In the first, Mencken proposes a new model for choosing legislators:

Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency…

A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against their will, instead of by fraud and against the will of all the rest of us…

The disadvantages of the plan are very few, and most of them, I believe, yield readily to analysis. Do I hear argument that a miscellaneous gang of tin-roofers, delicatessen dealers and retired bookkeepers, chosen by hazard, would lack the vast knowledge of public affairs needed by lawmakers? Then I can only answer (a) that no such knowledge is actually necessary, and (b) that few, if any of the existing legislators possess it…

My scheme would have the capital merit, if it had no other, of barring the professionals from the game. They would lose their present enormous advantages as a class, and so their class would tend to disappear. Would that be a disservice to the state? Certainly not. On the contrary, it would be a service of the first magnitude, for the worst curse of democracy, as we suffer under it to-day, is that it makes public office a monopoly of a palpably inferior and ignoble group of men.

And here is Mencken on the subject of bureaucracy:

As the bureaucracy under which we all sweat and suffer gradually swells and proliferates in the Republic, life will become intolerable to every man save the one who has what is called influence, i.e., the one who has access to the very privilege which the Fathers of the Republic hoped to abolish…The obscure and friendless man can exist unmolested in the United States only by being so obscure and friendless that the bureaucracy is quite unaware of him. The moment he emerges from complete anonymity its agents have at him with all the complex and insane laws and regulations that crowd the statute-books, and unless he can find some more powerful person to aid him, either for cash in hand or in return for his vote, he may as well surrender himself at once to ruin and infamy. For if the job-holders don’t fetch him with one law they will fetch him with another. Their one permanent purpose in life is to fetch him – by the heels if possible, and if not by the heels then at least by the ears.

Marvelous stuff, and not the less true for being so drolly expressed. A delightful read.

Even Obama doesn’t want to spend money on this

Michael Wade at the Washington Examiner shows Barbara Boxer up as one of our more egregious plunderers.

The Obama administration has repeated its promise to veto any bill purchasing more C-17’s... Nevertheless, Sen. Boxer keeps pushing for the purchase despite the fact that, according to a defense industry insider, the Air Force already has more of the aircraft than it needs

Wade ends with an excellent summary of the problem:

So long as our leaders in Washington continue to spend our money for their own benefit, and that of their friends, we will have ballooning deficits and a decreasingly productive economy. Judging from the growing clamor of voices, such as in the Tea Party movement, the electorate now gets that. Our tax dollars are not for keeping the already powerful entrenched. The real question is, when will Sen. Boxer and her friends in Washington finally figure it out?

Never, I hope. Or at least, not before the election, after which - a consummation devoutly to be wished – it will be completely moot whether she and her friends figure it out or not.

Hare-brained

Wally the Walrus Democratic Rep. Phil Hare and his allies are now orchestrating a campaign against free speech in Illinois.

I’d like very much to see the Democrats cut down en masse this fall, and I would particularly relish the extinction of this clod’s political career.

We could also call it Barack Obama Day

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States on November 4, 2008 represents the most bone-headed collective decision made by the American citizenry in generations. Obama is the summation of almost every character flaw, intellectual deficiency and psychological problem manifested by presidents, individually, going back to at least the early twentieth century. Next to Obama, Woodrow Wilson is a study in humility; Warren Gamaliel Harding looks positively astute; FDR appears a model of restraint; Harry Truman is a paragon of bi-partisanship; JFK’s progress is a Horatio Alger story; Lyndon Johnson becomes the soul of probity; Richard Nixon is well-adjusted; and Jimmy Carter is transformed into a statesman of Metternich-like shrewdness.

I now put it to my fellow citizens, in words no doubt similar to those used by Mrs. O’Leary in addressing her maladroit cow: What have you done? True, the alternative was unpleasant; John McCain is a cranky, arrogant, conceited show-boat, whose commitment to principle always takes a back-seat to his commitment to John McCain. And yet it is difficult to imagine him attempting to tune up our health-care system with a wrecking-ball, or engaging in an unseemly game of “the dozens” with the Prime Minister of Israel. Would John McCain have appointed a pervert to be his Safe Schools Czar? One could get better odds on the likelihood of Kim Kardashian’s maidenhead still being intact.

I believe the first steps in undoing this historic mistake entail (a) acknowledging that a mistake was made in the first place, and (b) resolving to recall to the public mind precisely why it was a mistake, so that we may avoid ever doing anything so irresponsible again. I propose, therefore, that, henceforth and in perpetuity, November 4th be observed as a day of national contrition.

The day could be marked by readings of the constitution and the Bill of Rights on radio, on television and even, under the watchful eyes of federal marshals, in public schools. Fox News might broadcast a series of “man-on-the-street” interviews with penitent voters (their heads concealed in paper bags in order to preserve the sacred anonymity of the confessional). Dr. Thomas Sowell’s latest essay could be emailed nationwide, and Representative Paul Ryan could host webinars summarizing his roadmap to recovery.

Yet the day need not be exclusively somber in tone. I envision freedom fairs, where people may gather to watch realistic reenactments of the Boston Tea Party and the surrender of Cornwallis to General Washington, after which patrons can disperse among the snack-stands and sideshows, to purchase red, white and blue cotton-candy, or to knock the president off his perch into a tub of water (in effigy, of course!) Giant outdoor television screens will display video clips of Obama’s lies, evasions and inconsistencies. Cap the day off with that famous scene of the Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright calling down the Almighty’s damnation on America, and you’ve got an outing that will be remembered and cherished by the whole family!

Permit me to anticipate a complaint: “Hold the phone, there, amigo! I didn’t vote for him! What do I have to repent of?” Let us be rigorously fair in the matter: we are all to blame. Who among us doesn’t have a gullible friend or an uninformed neighbor, upon whom the employment of even modest hortatory skills might have resulted in a vote for comparative sanity? How many senile uncles out there might a loving niece or nephew have helped to a more judicious choice through the use of, say, an absentee ballot? Nay, we are all sinners.

“But,” you respond, “those are only sins of omission.” At first blush, I am tempted to say, “there you have me”. I readily admit that I am not a master of the high and ghostly sciences, particularly with respect to original source material. Far from it! In fact, my only brush with formal academic training in the minutiae of religion consisted in an undergraduate course I took as an elective – subject: the Bible - and which I had to drop due to a catastrophic grade on the mid-term exam. I had inexplicably failed to study the syllabus closely, and had, in addition, played the truant the week before the test, which carelessness left me completely stumped by an examination item that commanded me to list all the books of the Bible, Old Testament and New, in the correct order. Not only did I omit approximately a third of the actual books, I created a few new ones out of whole cloth. To this day, I occasionally amuse myself with the fantasy of some future archeologist poking among the ruins of Wake Forest University, and finding the brittle, yellowed remains of my exam. Should the archeologist take my list as authentic, I’m afraid he (or she, as the case may be) will search in vain for further evidence of the Gospel of Augustine, and Hercules, books i and ii.

However, I meander shamefully. Upon quick, but penetrating, reflection, I must reveal the fallacy in your argument. You see, although I am not a reliable scout when it comes to reading the audit-trail of Holy Writ, that is all mere theological accountancy. I have been properly catechized, and am no slouch in matters of dogma and doctrine, and I am reasonably sure that the Church Fathers did not allow for time off in purgatory, or an occasional glass of ice-water for the certainly damned, because of some putative discount attaching to sins of omission as opposed to some equally speculative premium for sins of commission. So let us all make amends on Contrition Day.

Naturally, there is exactly zero chance of this being declared a national holiday, given the present circumstances; not even the most vacant-eyed mouth-breather in the current administration would countenance such a proposal. I see this as a purely voluntary undertaking, at least for the time being. Perhaps a Glenn Beck or a Rush Limbaugh could put it over. And though it may be too late to fire the public imagination this year, we can observe the spirit of the holiday by going to the polls this November 2nd and knocking some of the props out from under Our Big Mistake.