Lords of the Flies

This originally appeared on April 28, 2010, but ends up being MORE timely post-election than it was PRE-election.

The only additional thing you need to know is that, in my neck of the woods, this was the year without flies. Save for those cited in the story, it was a virtually bugless summer in my neighborhood: no flies, no spiders, no mosquitoes, hardly no nothing. No frogs, no snails, no commentary locally that I’ve heard. But I left the fluorescent light on all summer, and hardly drew a bug. An apt metaphor for the election, as  we shall see.

Beelzebub, literally the “Lord of the Flies”

Aptly, Beelzebub is associated with the sin of Pride, hubris. Plenty of that around right now.

Aramis made the following comment and correction, so we should keep this in mind:

Turkeys and Gobblers Roundup

Life goes on, except when it doesn’t. A guest posting from contributor TOMM.

1938 LIFE Magazine reprint of an RCA press release.

A roundup – politics, important medical news (eyes, Aids, and more), the usual flux of general emotional debility.

Doesn’t feel as though I’m likely to assemble such a congerie of doom again, so y’all can relax that reading this one may be the last such importunity from my little Fortress of Solitude. Instead, just go every day to Political Animal

• http://www.washingtonmonthly.com

for a brilliant, pithy, clearly thought out roundup of happenings in this crepuscular age, Ragnarok at the speed of crumbling infrastructure.

The Bible says that without divine intervention “there would no flesh be saved alive.” (Matt 24:22) What is truly striking to me is the number of people arrogant enough to think that that’s a Good Thing because THEY will be among that number, and all of their friends & family, but No One they disagree with because those SOB’s finally will be getting what they so richly deserve….

Happy Civil War

150 Years ago yesterday, according to the wonderful Civil War Online Dot Com “The American Civil War - The American Civil War presented day by day as it happened 150 years ago” the citizens of Houston County, Texas reacted to the distasteful (to them) results of the recent election:

• Good site to bookmark, BTW: http://www.civilwar-online.com

It would do well for us to remember that this modern Thanksgiving came about, in large part, because of what happened three years before the first Modern Thanksgiving, on Thursday, November 26, 1863.

A Happy Thanksgiving Without DeLay

UPDATED BELOW

With a minor tweak, Doonesbury® said it best:

BREAKING from The Houston Chronicle:

Bang The Dumb Slowly Some More

“We gotta stand with our North Korean allies.” – S. Palin

Palin Palm Pilot

This began as an update to yesterday’s story, “Bang The Dumb Slowly,” but outgrew its welcome in the prior post.

Palin Über Alles!

UPDATE 24 November 10 AM PST:

The P.R. flacks’ Day of Orgasms, today …

• HarperCollins settles Gawker suit over leaked Palin excerpts
• Sarah Palin Responds to Bristol’s Loss On ‘Dancing With The Stars’
• Palin Dominates Memeorandum news stories for slow Thanksgiving news cycle
• New Palin Book Offers a Road Map for a Run Against Obama

and, the pièce de résistance:

• Obama: ‘I Don’t Think About Sarah Palin’ (ABC News)
  By AMY WALTER, ABC News Political Director

Collusion? Collaboration? The cynical calculation of one P.R. whore using another to get ratings?

Bang The Dumb Slowly

I meant to ask you how you lived/what you believed
With nothing but your heart/up your sleeve
And if you ever/really were deceived
By the likes of me

Bang the drum slowly/play the pipe lowly
To dust be returning/from dust we begin
Bang the drum slowly/I’ll speak of things holy
Above and below me: world without end

“Bang The Drum Slowly” ~ Emmylou Harris/Guy Clark

There is a fundamental (emphasis on “mental”) misunderstanding in the coverage of the putative presidential campaign of Princess Palin: Sarah Palin is not running for president; Sarah Palin is being RUN for president. And that turn of the phrase makes all the difference in the world.

November 22, 1963

The angels weep

Scary that we have so forgotten our heritage that, while nothing related to the Kennedy assassination showed up nationally (OK: Damned little), David Frum, former Bush (the Dumber) speechwriter,  rolls this little polished turd for his weekly CNN column (note the date):

The right way to honor Ronald Reagan

By David Frum, CNN Contributor
November 22, 2010 8:52 a.m. EST

Washington (CNN) — We’re approaching the 100th anniversary of the birthday of Ronald Reagan: February 6, 2011. It’s time to begin thinking seriously about an appropriate national commemoration of this good man and great president…

How about you decide to drool over the Gipper on some other day, asshole.

Jumping The Shark

Yesterday’s post  (“GOP – The Musical“)  is a “Guest Voice” on my friend Joe Gandelman’s The Moderate Voice today — for which I thank him. I was a bit trepidatious that it might be too Dada for TMV’s readers, and the comments, perhaps, reflect this. One commenter felt that it “jumped the shark,” which seemed to me that he didn’t quite “get” it: my post was a perfectly rational NON-rational response to an increasingly PRE-rational political climate.

Today, MSNBC jumped the shark, by suspending Joe Scarborough for HIS campaign donations. Having kind of painted themselves into a corner with L’Affaire Olbermann, NBC chief Griffin was required to egalitarianesquely  enforce a rule that had already basically been more an embarrassment than a matter of ethics. In that black hole of bureaucratese, “If I let you do it, I’ll have to let EVERYBODY do it” — so universally beloved by school principals  – NBC finds itself the butt of jokes across the political spectrum — as bloggers find themselves trapped in the same reactionary cycle.

And, since I promised myself to catch up on the stack of e-mail and comments that courtesy requires a response to, I present, instead, the infamous 1984  interview with Mr. Stubbs, The self-proclaimed “thinking man’s teddy bear.”

THIS is what jumping the shark actually looks like:

GOP – The Musical

The country is ruled by people who are good at making money without being good at making things. So, when the Number Two richest man in America sends a mash note to our putative rulers, we must sit up and take notice, if only to calculate when our masters will pour some more kibbles and bits into our bowls. The bell is ringing:

Warren E. Buffett in the New York Times, yesterday [emphasis added]:

… Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered. People will second-guess your specific decisions; you can always count on that. But just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic — and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective.

I don’t know precisely how you orchestrated these. But I did have a pretty good seat as events unfolded, and I would like to commend a few of your troops. In the darkest of days, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair grasped the gravity of the situation and acted with courage and dispatch. And though I never voted for George W. Bush, I give him great credit for leading, even as Congress postured and squabbled….

Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.

Notice anything, anyBODY spectacularly … missing?

Another Football Post

Sunday, I wrote a long, 2449-word post on football. And, at the end of the day, I decided to shelve it.

Then I remembered this, a short-short story that says it just as well in 1383 words. This represents an intellectual savings FOR YOU of 1066 words. We must all be frugal in these grim and dark times.

And we must consider what things are worth.

Olbermann v. the Übermenschen

The invisible hand always leaves a footprint. Case in point: the conscious and intentional pursuit of Enemies of the Crypto-State™ (sometimes AKA the GOP) to destroy them in the wake of a rout. This is classical military strategy, but it is most assuredly NOT the spontaneous reaction of a grass-roots movement without any real leaders.

click for larger

Got that?

As “Leonard” says in Hitchcock’s  North by Northwest (written by the late , great Ernest Lehman): “

Phillip Vandamm: Truth? I’ve heard nothing but innuendos.
Leonard: Call it my women’s intuition, if you will. But I’ve never trusted neatness. Neatness is always the result of deliberate planning.

So, what about Keith Olbermann?