Personal Musings category archive

From Reuters:

Today marks the end of the Bush stock market.

Pfui!

It’s his for weeks and months to come.

To paraphrase the words, if not the intent, of Marc Antony: The evil that men do lives after them . . . .

Furrfu.

(With apologies to Jono Bacon.)

How do I know?

Time Life is offering a metal anthology.

Now, where did I put that AARP renewal notice?

Someone told me yesterday that she was looking forward to hearing what I had to say about the Current Federal Administrator’s last scheduled press conference.

Please, I said, I’m trying not to think about him. I don’t want to write about that.

Besides, I said, I’m afraid it will make my fever and headaches come back, not to mention the shakes and chills.

Nevertheless, she said, I’m looking forward to what you write.

Man, I just want to see him ride off into the sunset on his mountain bike and go clear brush somewhere (I hear there’s brush in Van Diemen’s Land), while still holding my breath about what more damage he might do.

Remember, there’s a week left. He has demonstrated an impressive capacity for doing immense harm in short time spans. Now he’s down to the two-minute drill of his presidency. He has nothing left to lose.

Cause he’s lost it all.

Not just for him. For us.

And, of course, it wasn’t just him. It was him and the whole rotten Republican and neocon establishment, which finally got to work its way on the United States, leaving her naked, bleeding, penniless, and violated, lying in a ditch on the road to Crawford.

Let us consider the record.

• Pissing away blood and treasure on the Glorious and Patriotic War for a Lie . . .
• . . . and in the marvelous Wall Street sinkhole, because, well, rich people can be trusted to do what is right. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be rich, now would they?
• Deregulating the economy right into the sewer.
• Trashing a 250-year tradition–one not always maintained, but one not before trashed by God-help-me the Preznut–of treating prisoners of war with at least a modicum of humanity.
• Not just ignoring, but destroying truth.
• And displaying a general ability to get anything and everything wrong.

Oh, yeah, and remember how he was going to solve the Israel-Palestine problem by the end of his term?

Furthermore, picking up from the Blondie comic strip, his party even managed to sully the image of the plumbing industry.

But there is a bright side.

He seems to have brought the Republican Party right down with him. One can only hope.

Of course, now that party is back in the role of doing what it does best: fighting progress, blowing stuff out of proportion, making mountains out of molehills, and impugning the patriotism of honest Americans.

Come next Tuesday, I expect to be bitchin’ about the Obama administration.

(I also expect to be reading with glee all the news reports that will no doubt spill forth from decent, honest civil servants who have feared to speak of the abuses and corruption they have witnessed under the regime of neocon hack political appointees.)

Nevertheless, however much I expect to disagree with them from time to time, I look forward with relief to the prospect of a Future Federal Administration that so far gives no signs of actively working as to do evil.

I don’t mind policy disagreements. Reasonable persons can disagree in good faith. Not that any policy-makers ever notice me unless I drag out Open Office and write them letters.

But I sure am tired of the bad faith, tired of the lies, tired of evil done in my name.

In eight days, it will be January 21. Wonder what other stuff is waiting to come out?

The documents show that front-line (FDA–ed.) agency scientists, like many outside critics of the agency, believe that F.D.A. managers have become too lenient with the industry. In medical reviews and e-mail messages, the scientists criticize the process by which many medical devices gain approval without extensive testing. And in e-mail correspondence, they contend that an agency supervisor improperly forced them to alter reviews of the breast imaging device and others.

Ooh! Ooh! More gifts to Big Pharma.

And this would be a tragedy just how?

As the man sang, “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.”

I remember when National Football League quarterbacks were smart enough to call their own plays.

No.

Why does Microsoft think that persons with half a head will sell Xboxes?

Is it because persons with half a head buy Microsoft?

Does sweet potato pie count as a vegetable in dietary planning?

There’s a plumber parked in front of the house of one of my neighbors.

I’ve dealt with that company. It’s my first call when I need a plumber.

But life is a lot better when you don’t need a plumber.

Bushies are going around comparing the Current Federal Administrator to a Truman an Electrolux.

(Aside: I love my Electrolux. It picks up everthing. Dust. Dog hair. Pebbles. Leaves. Small rocks. Boulders. Subcompact automobiles.)

He’s what you get when you cross a Harding with a Hoover.

An expensive ersatz DustBuster. You know, a leadership vacuum that sucks, and doesn’t even do that very well.

Except that even a DustBuster–the real one, not the ersatz one–is useful in emergencies.

Why do the guys in those Viagra ads always have wives who look at least 20 years younger than the guys do? (Yeah, I know, it’s the casting dept., but really . . .)

Yeah, I know that Christmas was over a week ago, but this is just too well-said to pass up (emphasis added). Tom Noyes:

I had a great Christmas weekend, unspoiled by the failure of several retail workers to wish me Merry Christmas. But then, I don’t expect others to practice my religion on my behalf. I don’t expect others to show up for worship at my church, or gather with my family, or give to others if I can’t be bothered. The exercise of my beliefs is up to me.

That’s about one-third of the post. The remaining two-thirds are just as good.

Even if I did not already dislike Hampton Inns, the violence their recent commercial does to the Beatles’ “A Little Help from My Friends” would be enough to keep me from ever staying at one again.

As I have pointed out before, when conservative policies fail, conservatives blame everything except, well, their policies. From Paul Krugman:

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

There’s more at the link.

Conservatism is a failed and bankrupt ideology deserving the dustbin of history.

No doubt its adherents will continue to attempt to torment us with it.

Truth is their weakness, self-delusion is their strength.

Addendum:

Not directly related, but what Digby said.

I sure hope 40 cheese straws constitutes a balanced supper.

(Aside: The recipe is wussified. If you want to try it, remember to quadruple the cayenne and add some Frank’s Red Hot, then sprinkle the straws with cayenne before they go in the oven. Oh, yeah, and use a metal cookie press with the squiggly mold. A plastic cookie press won’t take the strain.)

I hear the groaner down by Fox Point.

Criswell predicts that the Bernie Madoff case will be the foundation of a Law and Order episode by March.

One of the benefits of having grown-up kids is quiet Christmas mornings.

One of the detriments of having grown-up kids is quiet Christmas mornings.

I cannot wait until I can remove the Backwards Bush Clock from my sidebar.

Over there —————————->

It’s been there for three miserable, disgusting, frustrating, perverted, lawless years.

It occurs to me that, when removal time comes, the clock may be gone, but Bush will still be backwards.