Tag Archives: Government

Remember the horrendous scandal and the Media Blitz(es) That followed?

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Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina… Used government money to finance Argentine Tryst. A full Seven Hours every day for a month analyzing the story and berating him…. woops didn’t happen… Sorry.

Senator Larry Craig, (R) Idaho (I da pimp! bad joke) practicing the unsafest of all Sex Acts, random anonymous sex, in a Mens Room at the Minneapolis Airport, Married, family man, cheating on his wife.

They followed him everywhere, then when he disappeared they staked out his boat, his house, his mom’s house and his kids school trying to get pictures of him… ooopsie… That didn’t happen either.

Bob Allen of Florida, State Representative, (R) in a men’s room repeatedly, so afraid of Black Dudes raping and robbing him that he followed them into the John and paid them 20 a piece to fellate them…
Married, Cheating on his wife…
When he went in to Sex Rehab the National Enquirer poked cameras into every opening in the fence looking to catch a picture of him. Nope, not that either…
My favorite, Vitter of Louisiana getting caught with his diapers down… He of “Family Values” and Unimpeachable Morals fame.
All of them, when they apologized, did so clearly, succinctly and humbly, then submitted themselves to the questions of the repor…

Wait a minute. None of them apologized, at all, ever. Since they were all members of the Bu’ush Regime and active supporters of the War Of Terror, their actions DID affect more than just their families and thus, they DID owe America an apology. Not merely for being Sexual Hypocrites, but for the God-Damn 8 year killing Spree “their” troops have been engaged in. That’s pretty damn major. All of them made a big hoo-hah over criminalizing Sex between Consenting Adults and de-criminalizing Hate Crimes. (not just the Hate Crimes against gay People either)

None of them bothered with Rehab, none of them hounded and their families hounded for what’s now 3 Freakin’ Months, mon… nothing at all like what a guy who plays the dorkiest game in existence for a living is subjected to.

People PAY the government officials for leadership and for being Role Models for their kids. It’s one of the Job REQUIREMENTS for Christ’s Sake.

But a guy who plays a game for a living, is really required to do nothing but smack a very small ball with a very crooked stick into a very small hole that’s anywhere between 75 and 200 yards away.

And do it consistently. It doesn’t matter if they have a messed up politicial, social or personal life. Some of the courses he plays on had never had a Black golfer in any of their tournaments EVER when he started. Some of them at the time still forbad blacks to actually play there, pay to play there, with no chance at winning money. So why the anger? Are they really such shitty parents that they need a middle aged black man who they’ve never met to be a Role Model for their piglets?

Since WHEN? Would they walk into the Midnight Rose or the Brass Ass (for our international audience, those are local casino establishments) and march up to the Penny Slots machines, demand that in order to win (more like, LOSE) money at the One Armed Bandit they first have to pledge to be Morally Superior, saints in fact, and to raise the children of Millions of really lazy parents who don’t have the skill or ambition to do it themselves?

Shit, they don’t even do it for Professional Leaders like Politicians and Preachers (I bet Haggard thought he was sliding on this score)

P.S. all of them, except the Golf Player, are back at their chosen professions. And probably their favorite hobbies. The only one else who had a serious chance of losing his career is the preacher.

MC FogHorn Leghorn and the F’N MA

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Fat Fannie and Fudgebutt FredWith record high foreclosures due to predatory lenders and sham mortgages, who’s in favor of a taxpayer bailout to the Federal National Mortgage Assoc.?
Or how about public monies to save the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation? No takers? The homeowners are still screwed, but the lenders need our help. They’re shareholder owned, government sanctioned monopolies, and they need 25 billion. No sympathetic alms? Good thing both the FNMA and the FHLMC, appointed themselves the intentionally endearing nicknames Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to confuse our affections.

It reminds me of a classmate who reinvented himself on the first day of college. When professors asked our names or applicable nicknames, this skinny pocket-protector wearer told the class he went by “Bear.” And his unlikely reincarnation stuck. Thereafter “Bear” became that much less an engineering geek than his no more nerdier compatriots.

Fannie and Freddie may sound like personable natural derivatives of their acronyms, but the Appalachian appellations are official. When I was confronted about having apparently misspelled the cutesy MAE, being the purported colloquial surname of the usurious giant, I found there was indeed a formal spelling. Really? For a phonetic abbreviation? Couldn’t it just as easily be spelled with a Y? And why not Fanny with a Y, like Brice, Hackabout-Jones or the derriere? Too much impropriety for hillbillies?

Do the letters FN resolve to “Fanny” more than to the more modern and infinitely appropriate Fucking?

Where did MA become May? Why not Ma, like Ma Dalton?

And wherever do you get Freddie from FHL? I see Foghorn Leghorn for the first initials. Leaving MC for Mack as of The Knife.

The FNMA / FHLMC bonanza provides a textbook simple model of the capitalist stakeout of regulated/unregulated public finance: build a business, merge to create a monopoly, then loot funds to require a taxpayer bailout.

Knowing we are in over our heads

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One reason we have governments, for you inquiring civil libertarians, is for guidance. I can certainly think of two matters which might always evade common man’s grasp: nutrition and economics.

In spite of all best efforts to educate a public, we may have to agree that nutrition and economics are too big for the layman to grapple. We elect representatives to Washington to advise our lives about complexities like these.

Take for example the fudgsicle, it’s “low fat” but probably not on the whole going to make you skinnier. By the taste, the fudgsicle is made of sugar. So where does that put it, as obesity causal factors go?

Regulating calorie intake vis-a-vis carbs, electrolytes, supplements, additives, toxins and who knows what, is not a static math problem. It’s about maintaining a buoyant equilibrium as we move our bodies forward in our mortal trajectory. It’s like keeping the steam pressure up on an old locomotive, there was a reason the train drivers were called engineers. A steam engine didn’t start and go like its Lionel Train facsimile, it had to be tended, coaxed and fed lest it a) falter or b) explode.

Not everyone can be an engineer. We can read how-tos, and feel good about taking the levers, but ultimately the pop-guides are written to take us in circles to the next self-help over-simplification.

Likewise, not everyone can understand economic theory. We like to apply our bookkeeping common sense, our coupon-clipping savvy, and Nike GTD ethic to the federal budget: just balance it, but spreading greater prosperity is much more complicated than that. Try conducting even domestic trading with “neither a borrower nor a lender be.”

That’s why we elect administrators, that’s why we make them give big speeches to demonstrate their competence. We know we want smart people to be in charge. You’d think that concern would be intuitive, but we have learned it to be otherwise.

Evidently we need at the very least to be taught in our schools that our leaders must have more than the common sense of our drinking buddies. Our educational system must keep citizens up to speed to appreciate that governance is a demanding task. We don’t need to know the complexities, but we need to know enough to tell buffoons like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity that their homespun drivel is for uneducated morons.