Eagle Has Landed

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

Last night, I dreamt I eagled a hard Par 4 at what seemed to be a championship golf course.

Yet, the real world version of me has ever played a round of golf in my life.

Someone tell me what this means.

Deja Vu

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

Why does this Richwine/Heritage NON-troversy seem so familiar to me?

And why do I think that Heritage really screwed its own pooch by firing Richwine?  (Yeah, I know, “quit.”  Quit, schmidt.)  Why do I think I’ve also seen THAT before?

I Was Dreaming of a White Christmas, Not a White Palm Sunday

It was according to the Lambert weather measuring station, which is the official reading for St. Louis, the largest ever one day March snowfall and the second-largest one day snowfall since it started taking records.  I would presume the largest was the famous 1982 blizzard.

I got 9.5 inches in Ballwin, my mother in South City only got 7 inches.  Meanwhile, back in ’82, while the official Lambert reading was something like 15 inches, it seems to me (and my mother confirms) that around our house there was close to two feet.

She Has Her Beans to Spill

And I’ve got mine. Remember, I have not yet spilled the biggest bag.

Yeah, I heard.  Claire McCaskill is writing a tell all about 2012, blah blah blah.  I almost literally have 87 different calls, e-mails and text messages from people telling me so.  Ordinarily, I would ignore, but because of the subject matter and who you know she’ll spend most of the book talking about, and because of who I am (or was) in relation to that subject matter, I guess I’m going to be semi-obliged to read the damned thing.

If that link is any indication, she’s giving herself all the credit for our primary win.  Yes, she can take a little bit of it, but she can’t take all of it.  See?  I’ve already debunked one distortion in her book before she even started writing it.

And also…will she be nice enough to use the occasion of this book to answer these questions for me and the world — From what I hear, there was more open verbal vituperative and personal hate directed at her by the women on her own staff than there was from everyone in our camp, Steelman’s camp and Brunner’s camp combined.  One, is that true, and two, why?

For You, Norm

Drudge Report

Shout out to this blog’s most frequent commenter so far this year, Puggg.

Front of Drudge Report as I write this:

Extremely Good

Your Blogmeister’s Phone

My phone woke me up overnight.  When that happens, it’s either extremely bad or extremely good news, usually bad.  But the Caller ID was from a local but unrecognizable number, so I didn’t answer.  After two more calls from this same number, I shut my phone off.

I just now looked at my phone, to see that that number called me nine freakin’ times in total within a 90-minute time span overnight, and five of those times, the caller left a message.  Turns out some black woman was hysterically trying to get in touch with “Laquisha,” because “Dontrell got hisself awwested and wocked up.”  This caller apparently needed “Laquisha’s” help to hustle up the bail money.

Like I said, my phone ringing overnight is usually extremely bad news.  But this time, it was some extremely good news.  Even better if Dontrell has to stay in jail for awhile.

I Just Go Nuts on Twitter

Twitter

I really flipped my lid over the trillion dollar coin (and a few other things) on Twitter last night.  Newer tweets come first, so scroll down to up for a forward moving timeline.

***

@firedogledford I know the anger you feel. Would a nice shiny trillion dollar coin calm you down any? (From me to @firedogledford)

@countenanceblog I don’t know about a race war. But I would love to bust a cap on Farrakahn’s ass!  (From @firedogledford to me)

Was I too harsh on the trillion dollar coin tonight?

The sad part? The trillion dollar coin doesn’t even pay for 10% of B.R.A.

@countenanceblog Nah-even strippers will know it’s not worth the platinum from which it is minted. (From @BelleauWould to me)

They talk about making it rain in a strip club? Spin a trillion dollar coin ’round the ole stripper pole, and watch pandemonium break out.

“16 of them MoFos, and you got, like, the whole debt paid off, d00d.” #SBOT

“A trillion dollar coin saved is a trillion dollar coin earned.” — Ben Franklin XVI #SBOT

See a trillion dollar coin, pick it up, all day long, you’ll have good luck. #SBOT

With a trillion dollar coin, the only town you can really go to is Harare, Zimbabwe. #SBOT

You can tell I’m really going to town with this $1 trillion coin nuttiness. (While it’s still worth something, I could buy the town.)

@usa67us Or hope? (From me to @usa67us)

@countenanceblog Can you imagine asking for change? (From @usa67us to me)

What if I wanted to use the trillion dollar coin to buy 30-round ammo clips? #SBOT

Maybe I could look up ancient Roman history and find the version of me that was making fun of everything as everything was falling part.

Cleaning my couch. Finding paper wrappers, dried up gum, trillion dollar coins, other worthless junk. #SBOT

I’m waiting for the first news story of a bank robber that expects to bag a $1 trillion coin but doesn’t, then goes bonkers.

Seriously, you know how much medicinal marijuana a $1 trillion coin would buy? Like, a whole lot, d00d. #SBOT

Then again, I’m sure Starbucks can’t wait for trillion dollar coins to get circulating so it can start vending machines. #SBOT

Don’t tell Rahm about the trillion dollar coin – Chicago parking meters are expensive enough already. #SBOT

Someone stole the trillion dollar coin and put it in a Salvation Army red kettle. #SBOT

I’m trying to figure out who’s the bigger gossip bottom feeder: X17 or Perez Hilton. (Not who has the bigger bottom.) #SBOT

Who names their magazine “GOOP?” Probably some dumbass actress. #SBOT

“Justin Bieber punched me!” Oh yeah, like anyone with a brain would believe that. #SBOT

Even the new Rolls-Royces look like pregnant roller skates.

Chamber Pot of Commerce wants immigration amnesty + more gun control. What could possibly go wrong?

I’m not worried about people spreading nasty rumors about me on Twitter, I’m worried about worse, that they’re spreading the truth. #SBOT

***

Missing the Forest for the Sapling

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

My reaction at first when the “Deport Piers Morgan” petitions started was this:

I didn’t know enough people were watching him to know what he was doing. I’m kinda disappointed that they’re only giving this nut a whiff of publicity. All he’s going to do now is say stuff that’s nuttier than what he said the night before, because now he knows what works to drive ratings. Leave the sleeping dog with no ratings lie on his network with no ratings, and he’s no threat to anyone and no threat to any article of the Bill of Rights. But import a kajillion Constitution-hating gibsmedat Hispanics, to join forces with our own kajillion-strong long time domestic gibsmedat obsolete bipedal farm equipment, and you might as well burn the whole Bill of Rights.  Some of the same people signing the “deport the limey nut” petition ignore the racial tidal wave in front of their own faces.

I’d like to fashion myself as someone who is keen on noticing and in earnest not rewarding purely publicity seeking behavior. So much political rhetoric these days is nothing more than shock value nut talk just to drive ratings and hit counters and ad cards that I can’t stand it anymore. It’s like American political discourse is becoming one spoiled petulant brat after another after another screaming louder and louder just to garner attention. One fool professor is calling to execute people who doubt global warming, for example. It’s not that he actually wants that to happen, it’s just that he wants to say something provocative to become a minor celebrity.  A certain and never-to-be-named-again-on-this-blog black sports columnist whose home paper is the Kansas City Star was once reasonable, but nobody was paying attention to him when he was reasonable.  He gets on board the nut express with “NRA = KKK,” and he becomes an instant celebrity.  You don’t think that a lot of other people are getting the message from that, loudly and clearly?   Even the New York Times is getting in on this circus of pure nut talk for shock value, especially on its ad-dependent website.

And I will agree with RJP when he eventually comments here that the financial media, (hint:  CNBC) are just as bad.

Jared Taylor writes White Identity, full of facts, free of factual and logical errors, and with language and prose indicative of someone who holds an Ivy League graduate degree back in the days when that actually meant something? Most of the world ignores. He might as well have screamed it from Antarctica rather than had it printed on paper. And poor Sam Francis, this coming February will be eight years without him — From what I see, it’s as if he never existed.

What I’m trying to do now is find reasonable rational diamond-in-the-rough kinds of sources, because I want to try to factor the shock value nut talk out of my life as much as possible and factor in people who can think and reason their way out of paper bags.  Another thing I’m trying to do is pay less and less attention to the kind of people and sources who pay inordinate attention to shock value nut talk and thereby allow that paradigm to work.

Isle of 2012

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

I vaguely remember one year from my childhood that there was, during the week between Christmas and the New Year, a claymation follow-up to the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer claymation usually aired early in December, and usually on CBS.  The premise of the New Year’s-themed follow-up is that Rudolph has to run right back out after pulling Santa’s sleigh in order to find a missing brat, who has to be installed in some chair for the new year officially to arrive.  Burl Ives narrated the original show, but I don’t seem to remember that it was he who narrated the New Years version.

In his search, Rudolph has to go to some sea full of islands indicative of a year already passed.

If there were such an archipelago, nobody would ever visit 2012′s island, because it would be nothing but “Call Me Maybe” parodies, “Whoopa Gangnam Style” parodies, “Hitler finds out” videos, Adele’s six Grammies, Justin Bieber gossip, the very last Stanley Cup winner, and Mayan calendars.  Even though, seriously, there are serious analysts and experts saying that 2012 was one of the very best years ever for humanity in general.

I doubt I would much much visit my own personal 2012 island, and the only reason I might wax a little nostalgic for 2012 from time to time is because I think 2013 will be even worse for me.

Then again, one of the major themes that will hit us in the face early in 2013 will be:  Hitler finds out that “Call Me Maybe” and “Whoopa Gangnam Style” parodies have gone out of fashion.

What Do I Really Want Out of Life?

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

I’m having to start to look myself in the mirror and ask myself some hard and tough questions, because my coping mechanisms which have held me together after November 6 are starting to fall apart.

To answer the question that serves as the title of this post:

1.  The Presidency, stat.  I should be President-Elect right now, filling out my cabinet, with, among other things, Jared Taylor as Secretary of State, Paul Craig Roberts at Treasury, Ken Cuccinelli as Attorney General, Joe Arpaio at HLS, Ann Barnhardt somewhere, William “Doc” Carter running the RNC for me (*), RJP somewhere, Steve Sailer, Unamusement Park, Paul Kersey (SBPDL), Hunter Wallace and Jack Ryan (Occidental Dissent) in important roles, for starters…

2.  A multi-billion dollar personal fortune, to fund the Presidential campaign I just won and my 2016 re-election campaign, with billions and billions left to spare even after that.  Even though none of my children (see #4) will inherit a penny of it.

3.  A whole harem of white hard body supermodels as my personal concubine (but they all should have different hair colors and different eye colors).

4.  At least two sons and at least one daughter.

5.  To own and live in this house besides the White House.

6.  An Audi R8, which of course you know is a personal desire — But from what I hear, they need to do a little work on the transmission, and the convertible version of the R8 needs to be a hardtop which looks like the non-convertible when it’s closed.

If I could just get the money, I get the feeling that everything else would take care of itself, i.e. I could buy everything else on the list.  Misogynist — Who, me?  Dopey me, it’s kinda hard to “buy” women that are already rich because they’re ultra-hot supermodels.

Really, I know I’m being facetious.  But I also know straight up that I could be doing a lot better and I should be a lot further along in life than I am.  I’m going to finish this year worse than what I started, even though I thought my ticket to ride was punched on the night of August 7.

(*) — I don’t blame you for not knowing who William “Doc” Carter is.  A chiropractor by trade, he ran David Duke’s 1990 and 1991 statewide campaigns in Louisiana for Senate and Governor, respectively, and Pat Buchanan’s 1992 and 1996 Presidential campaign statewide operations in South Carolina.  He’s a more “me-y” version of me, twice as smart at least.

When You Boil a Frog in Ointment

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

Like many days, my mother called me late today to chit-chat about what she did today.  Usually, I’ll let it go in one ear and out the other, but she had something interesting to say today.

Not long after I was born, anticipating that I would suffer from diaper rash, she bought a pound jar of something called “A&D Ointment.”  Of course I did, but I didn’t suffer it so often that she had to use up that whole jar before I got potty trained.  Long after I was, she found that the stuff was effective for rashes and burns and cuts and scrapes other than what comes from a diaper.  I know she had that jar for a very long time, and today she told me that the jar finally ran empty more than a month ago.  The stuff was still effective and didn’t lose its texture even being 35 years old — I’m convinced that in a Life After People (TM), A&D Ointment might last thousands of years.

She bought the bottle in April 1977 at K-Mart, the dominant big box of the day, for $2.99.  I know that, because nobody ever peeled off the K-Mart price label indicating the store and the price.

She bought a new bottle, again, a pound-weight plastic container, today, from Target, a very similar big box retailer.  Guess how much it cost.

$10.19.

You might think Wal-Martinez is significantly cheaper for their volume buying, but as it turns out, their website charges $10.17, and so is probably the case in their stores.

Do a little division.  1,017 cents divided by 299 cents = 3.4.  Do you think the average person of December 2012 is making 3.4 times more in real dollar take-home pay than the average person of April 1977?  I highly doubt it.

We All Want the Same Things

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

I’m going to use the occasion of this blog post to archive what I think are two very important comments I made to AR back in April.

“Blessed,” a black troll, wrote:

Replying to white_privilege_stigmata:   I think that you have some sort of problem!!!!! Usually haters just post once and go on the something else. But you stayed and had to comment again. Speaking as a black person living in American, I only want the same things that anyone else I know wants. The house, two cars, good job, 2.5 kids and happiness. If you are look for something or someone to hate.

I (“Question Diversity”) respond at first:

“We all want the same things.”

Sure, we all want the same things.  But is that supposed to be some sort of accomplishment, or more, a form of intelligence? Wanting it all isn’t an achievement, it’s a consequence of being human and having at least a room temperature IQ.  Every person on Earth has a theoretically infinite set of desired tangible and intangible goods, services and social conditions.  The discipline of economics was established to quantify and qualify how people and societies reconcile these infinite desires that everyone has with a finite set of resources.

Therefore, it’s true that everyone wants the same things, that being everything.  But that does not mean that:

(A) The races are equal

(B) Any one individual is equal to another

(C) Creating a set of circumstances where everyone has virtually the same resource set is feasible or desirable

(D) We all deserve everything we want, or an equal set of stuff to someone else in the individual or the collective

(E) One will get the things one wants just as a virtue of wanting them.

(F) Just the act of “wanting” something is morally equal to or tantamount to engaging in the behavior and actions of people that have something you don’t but want did in order to get.

I better stop there before I run out of letters.

I have heard a lot of blacks, and white liberals, and a fair number of white conservatives, genuflect to this faux egalitarian mentality, by saying that blacks “want safe streets.”  Of course, they say they want safe streets, but far too many belie their wishes through their actions.  When you say you “want safe streets” with your mouth and then commit murder and robbery with your hands, then you’re not going to have safe streets, and it also means you’re not equal to the people who both say they want safe streets and resist the urge to murder and rob, simply because your wish for safe streets is equal to theirs.

Later, I add:

Let me give you a practical application of my own axiom.

I want an Audi R8.  There are a lot of people who want an Audi R8.  But for various reasons, there are only a small number of Audi R8s to be had.  Therefore, there is a high barrier to acquiring an R8.

It is true that there are people who have an Audi R8.  That is because they are worth enough to this world that they have acquired the resources to overcome the high entry barrier that was established to reconcile the high demand for R8s with the low supply.

My only relevant equality with a person who owns an Audi R8 is that we both wanted one.  But that equality is so irrelevant to the greater reality of things that it might as well not be talked about as if it were some sort of credible social barometer.  The hard truth of the matter is that in spite of my wishes, I’m just not that valuable to the world around me such that I deserve an R8.  My actions will continue to belie my desires until either Audi R8s become a lot cheaper, my marketable skills become a lot more valuable, or a combination of both.

This is an explanation that all but the most devoted of communists and anti-economists will accept.  However, a whole lot of people can’t grok the analogy between an Audi R8 and “safe streets.”

Confirm in this AR thread.

Even if Todd would have won the election, I doubt even then I’d have the income punch to buy an Audi R8.  I sure as hell can’t do it now!

This Is What It Feels Like I’m Doing

But I’m usually wearing more clothes than this.  And also…this guy has better abs than I do.

VD in JD in STL

My mother told me she got a jury duty notice for the City of St. Louis in the snail mail today.

The first time I had to do JD, again in the City of St. Louis, was in November 2001.  Learning experience?  You betcha.  My mother and also a few other city-dwelling relatives prepared me, but they could only do so much.

When you first go into the Civil Courts Building, they direct prospective jurors to a large room on the first floor with lots of seating, with spillover space in an even larger room one level down directly underneath it.

A couple hours into sitting and waiting and feeling my brain cells die having to watch CNN, (I swore to bring reading material next time), a black woman Sheriff’s deputy (the operational security of this Court House is provided by the Sheriff’s Department in the City of St. Louis) presented herself to the assembled prospective jurors and blurted this out:

“Hey y’all.  If any a’y'all been convicted of a felony, you ain’t gots to stay.  Which means you can leave!”

Thanks.  I could have implied “you can leave” from “you ain’t gots to stay,” bad grammar notwithstanding.  Considering her target audience, I’m not surprised she had to qualify her own words.

At that moment, it seems like 40% of the people in the room, almost all of those getting up and leaving were black, did indeed get up and leave.  Actually, it wasn’t so much “leave” as stampede out.  I watched the whole scene, and I thought to myself, “is there a watermelon truck parked out front along Tucker that just made a last call?”  Just to prove that stereotypes are usually valid, one of the felonious members of the stampeding herd yelled out as he made his way out the door, “hey y’all, I know a fried chicken place not too far away!”  That in turn only served to embolden the part of the herd that had not already escaped to squeeze through the doors even quicker than they were already trying to.

It was then I realized, I was stuck inside Birth of a Nation, and I couldn’t get out.

Actually, once the herd moved on, (I wouldn’t have wanted to have been a waiter at that fried chicken joint), I actually did escape BOAN.  It wasn’t that much longer before I and a few dozen others was called to a higher floor to take appraisal of our case.  Of course, it was a car wreck lawsuit.  For as much crime as there is in the City of St. Louis, most criminal cases are pled out.  Most of the work for trials and juries in the St. Louis City-based state circuit are civil cases where the plaintiffs’ attorneys from all over God’s Creation venue shop the matter to a jurisdiction known for stupid jurors that like to stick big civil judgments to “the man.”  And from what I saw, it would be even worse in that respect if felons were allowed to be jurors.

I didn’t make it on that actual jury that day.

Twelve bucks not very well earned.

Something Else I Needed

At some point within the last two hours, I walked into an edifice unemployed and walked out underemployed.

I’ll tell those of you I know what I’m about to do.  But I start tomorrow morning and only get 29 hours a week, so that should be a clue that it’s really nothing important.

But I hated the two months I was unemployed between being laid off from the job I had in Carbondale, Illinois (not with SIUC, but heavily dependent on it), and getting the gig managing the chain of gas stations, that was in January-February 2010.  Mainly because I hate having nothing to do.  Money wasn’t a problem because of unemployment checks, but indolence drives me crazy.  Now, I’ve already collected one week of unemployment, and as it turns out, that’s all I’ll need, and my new job won’t make me much better off than collecting the other 19 weeks I could.  But idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

The way I figured, before this economy gets any more rotten, and before ObamaCare kicks in and employers knock many more full timers down to part time or convert them to “independent contractors,” and before another graduation season, I better take this job while it’s available.

What Doesn’t Kill You

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

It’s time for me to come out of the “closet,” and admit something which I’ve been hinting around for months, uselessly so because I’m sure most of you were able to put the drop dead obvious two and two together.

I was a Todd Akin staffer, and almost certainly would have gone onto his permanent Senate staff, either here locally or in D.C., if he would have won.

That said, I know stuff, and over time, I’m going to start blabbing about stuff, knowing full well that there are people who would rather that I not.  One such person has the initials K.R.  Inconveniently for them, it is extremely unlikely they’ll be able to figure out who I am.  Keep your dial locked to this blog’s frequency.

As you know from reading my posts in this space over the years, and my comments on AR, I am ultra picky, almost to the level of James Edwards style parsimony, when it comes to politicians.  I don’t spare even the ones I like from my wrath when they say or do something stupid (see:  Bachmann, M.).  Most of you who read this space regularly would think that Todd would be just another lamestream/religious right Republican that I would support half the time and make fun of the other half.  But if someone as picky as me was for him for the beginning, going way back to the brutal free-for-all Republican Congressional primary in 2000 for CD-2, that was because I saw something in him that I didn’t and don’t see in most of his analogues and contemporaries — that should tell you something.  I so believed and believed in the person of William Todd Akin, and still do, that I will spend the rest of my competent lifetime if necessary engaging in an unsolicited unofficial public relations campaign to save the good reputation of a really good man.  People can vote for or not vote for anyone they want, and they can have or not have whatever opinions they want.  But nobody in any good moral sense deserves the river of shit that was sent Todd’s way, especially when the truth is handier.  The left wing was bad enough, but far worse was the treachery and perfidy and backstabbing from so-called “friends,” such as the aforementioned K.R., Sean Hannity (who is now for “but it’s not amnesty” amnesty for illegal aliens), and that emaciated barbie doll in Florida (initials A.C.).  Among many others.  But it’s like I was always told, you will find out who your friends really are and are not in a crisis.  Over time, I’m going to name names, so you can find out who your friends should and shouldn’t be.

If I was taken back in time to the start of this campaign and told how exactly things would turn out, and that I would gain weight and gray hair for it, I would do it all over again, and not give it a second thought.

For the record, I’m not doing this to grease the skids for any comeback on Todd’s part.  He looked like a walking zombie on Tuesday and Wednesday, but he was able to pull himself together to give a gracious concession speech Tuesday night.  I know why he looked that way, too, because the pressure of the weeks and months long vicious campaign of eliminationist meat grinding hate against him finally took its toll.  I came into this process more jaded, so it didn’t shell shock me, even though a lot of things about the last several months surprised me.  But when I saw the zoned out look on Todd’s face for those two days, I made up my mind then that I was going to single-handedly save his reputation.  It hit me:  The 24 years of Todd’s political career until now were spent either in the state General Assembly from districts in western St. Louis County or in Congress from CD-2, which means that until this race for Senate this year, he lived a cocooned sheltered political life within safe gerrymanders.  But going from that to a statewide race is like going from college football to the NFL.  No, Todd will never come back to politics or much of a life in the public spotlight, and I don’t blame him.  He’s probably off to Hawaii after Congress adjourns its session next month.  Hell, if I or most of his staffers ever see or hear from him again, we’ll be surprised.  I’m engaging in this PR campaign for posterity and eternity, and for the sake of common decency.

I just wonder if he thinks it was worth it — Remember, he declared for Senate on May 17, 2011, and spent a good chunk of the time between then and this past Tuesday on the road.  That’s taxing enough by itself, but combine that with the shit stream after the Fateful Sunday, and being the obvious public face of the campaign all the while (duh, he was the candidate), unlike yours truly, who was just an onboard hack for a fraction of that time, and it’s a wonder he didn’t gain weight like I did.

Another reason this was worth doing is that I got close enough to the figurative slaughterhouse of politics that I have suddenly gained a keen set of instincts on who to trust and who not to trust, and not just in the realm of politics.  This is actually my fourth campaign as a staffer.  The three previous were a Congressional campaign (won primary, lost general), another Congressional campaign (lost primary narrowly), and a third party run for U.S. Senate (no expectation to win, only real goal was to beat 2% for the third party in question to stay on the state ballot).  This is the campaign that got me oh so temptingly close to real big time elected power.  It is said that people like the sausage but hate the slaughterhouse.  Most people’s involvement with politics is purely on the sausage consuming level — voting, and no more than superficial interaction with a political campaign.  I, OTOH, almost literally watched pigs being slaughtered over these last few months.

Funny, about three months ago at this time, I was making financial plans revolving around my income as a Senate staffer.  Now, I’m in a real mess, because the temp agency I used in between getting axed from my year long stint managing the gas station/quickie mart chain in 2010 and early 2011 and me coming on with Todd, which did provide me with fairly steady mainly accounting work when I was with them, has suddenly become a dry well.  I can and will have to collect unemployment for up to 20 weeks, but that’s it.  I better hustle up some kind of job in that time.

Comment if you must, but don’t expect me to delve into everything right away.  Yes, I’m spilling beans, but one bean at a time.  I know some of you will try to ask me The Big Question right now, but I won’t answer it right now.

Brilliant Analysis

Talking Head TV

Overheard some cable news show talking head who I didn’t recognize say this within the hour:

“If Obama gets more votes than Romney, then Obama wins.  If Romney gets more votes than Obama, then Romney wins.  Because at the end of the day, it is what it is.”

Just brilliant, so brilliant.  There’s nothing left to say after that, because if you do, you might wind up coming off as cliche-spouting.  Seriously, this goofball is being paid for his analysis but I’m not?

Now, back to serious stuff.  I wish polling judges would quit giving out these “I Voted” stickers, or at least people who vote would quit wearing them.  It’s an insult to people who choose not to vote, kinda like driving a certain kind of car well known for being environmentally friendly (yes, Toyota Prius and Smart Car, I’m looking at both of you), when doing so is essentially taking your dick out and waving it at the world in a holier-than-thou my-shit-doesn’t-stink sense.

And no, I don’t buy into the notion that if you don’t vote that you can’t complain.

The Game Plan For Tomorrow

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

Back on primary day, I picked a voting precinct in Jefferson County to hand out Todd Akin literature, because on my (what turned out to be dead on accurate) theory that Jefferson County was a bellwether for how the whole race would turn out.

And yes, tomorrow, I’ll be electioneering for Todd Akin again.  Only this is the general, and involves general election voters.  Therefore, my strategy is to pick out a swing precinct somewhere in central St. Louis County, in an area that is on the squall line between red St. Louis to the west and blue St. Louis to the east.  As a matter of fact, I already have the particular polling place chosen, (not saying which one it is), and that’s where I’ll be for thirteen hours tomorrow.  I’m hoping it’s sunny and serviceably mild tomorrow, in contrast to back in August when it hit 100 on primary day.  I knew in advance it would be hot that day, so that’s why the particular Jefferson County precinct I chose had its main entrance facing east, so the sun would be out of my face during the hottest part of the day.  I chose the particular precinct where I will be tomorrow because its main entrance faces south, and therefore the sun that will hopefully will be out will be in my face for the entire time between sunrise and sunset.  Of course, since sunrise tomorrow is twenty five to seven and sunset is five to five, the day won’t be as long as the entire time the polls are open, unlike in August, when the sun rose shortly after the polls opened and set an hour after they closed.  In contrast, tomorrow, it will be dawning twilight when they open, and closing will be two hours after sunset.

 

Change of Plans

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

I’m withdrawing my endorsement of Dave Spence for Governor.  He has a radio buy on local black talk and music stations complaining about how Jay Nixon doesn’t do enough for blacks and “sits by and lets black people get called the N-word without punishment.”

There is a Libertarian in that race, so that’s who I’ll be voting “for.”  Oh well, Spence never had a chance anyway.

Incidentally, in the two other statewide races where I won’t be voting for the Republican, I’ll be voting for Cynthia Davis (Constitution) for Lieutenant Governor and Dave Browning (Libertarian) for Attorney General, in the case of the latter, the Libertarian is the only third party candidate available.

Otherwise, full speed ahead on Todd Akin, Cole McNary and Shane Schoeller.

Town Hall Blogmeister

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

I’m going to take a different tack in analyzing tonight’s debate.  Yeah, I’ll do the conventional stuff later.  But I want to put myself in the position of a candidate and answer the questions as if I was a candidate.

***

JEREMY EPSTEIN:  Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment. What can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?

BLOGMEISTER:  You’ve been hoodwinked by the education-industrial complex.  What I will do as President is to lobby for Federal legislation to overturn the Supreme Court decision Griggs vs Duke Power.  That decision essentially prohibited employers from using performance and intelligence tests to make hiring and promotion decisions, and this forced employers to use education credentials as a proxy.  This forced many young people into the college market, and since college became a de facto requirement for a prosperous existence, colleges had carte blanche permission to raise tuition rates year in and year out far faster than inflation.  (Of course there are other reasons for the soaring costs of college, but they’re not germane to this question.)  As for being able to support yourself, I will do all I can to change immigration policy to prevent the deluge of cheap non-white labor legal and illegal aliens, to sway the job market in favor of demand, i.e. the employee class.

Once upon a time, in-state residents were able to attend their state’s public institutions for free of charge, as long as they were admitted.  I am in favor of returning to that paradigm.  The catch is that far fewer people would be accepted to college.

PHILLIP TRICCOLA:  Your energy secretary, Steven Chu, has now been on record three times stating it’s not policy of his department to help lower gas prices. Do you agree with Secretary Chu that this is not the job of the Energy Department?

BLOGMEISTER:  Yes, I agree, because the Energy Department should not exist, because its functionality should be folded into the Commerce Department.  And the energy policy of the Commerce Department should me to maximize the energy supply as reasonably as possible to keep energy prices as low as reasonably possible.

MARY FOLLANO:  Governor Romney, you have stated that if you’re elected president, you would plan to reduce the tax rates for all the tax brackets and that you would work with the Congress to eliminate some deductions in order to make up for the loss in revenue. Concerning the — these various deductions — the mortgage deduction, the charitable deductions, the child tax credit and also the — oh, what’s that other credit?  Oh, I remember. The education credits, which are important to me because I have children in college. What would be your position on those things, which are important for the middle class?

BLOGMEISTER:  I propose converting the Federal income tax plus FICA into a single-rate earnings tax with no deductions other than the per person individual, spousal and dependent deductions.  This will greatly reduce the cost of complying with Federal income tax law, and preclude lobbying and political concerns from engineering the Federal income tax laws and making them unduly complicated.  It would also eliminate the requirement for most people to file a tax return.  April 15 would truly be just another day.  I have borrowed/stolen Ross Perot’s idea of a reverse stair stepped capital gains tax, to prevent the rapid buying and selling of assets, especially corporate stocks, that only serves to beg for job outsourcing.  I also want to eliminate tax-exempt foundations and trusts, as they are largely escape hatches for the Top 0.01% and their income.

Along these lines, I favor eliminating the EITC, because everyone who has an income above the level of one’s personal and spousal and dependent deductions should have a net positive tax liability.  This gives almost everyone skin in the game.

KATHERINE FENTON:  In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?

BLOGMEISTER:  I don’t intend to rectify the non-existent “problem” because there is no gender pay gap, ceteris paribus.  To the extent there seems to be one, it is because women tend to jobs that pay less, and because men will tend to work longer hours because of their “mission oriented” nature.  Feminists are demanding a government scheme called “comparable worth” where salaries and wages are artifically equalized, but I oppose that scheme because I think it’s a subtle effort to pay men less, not pay women more.

SUSAN KATZ:  Governor Romney, I am an undecided voter because I’m disappointed with the lack of progress I’ve seen in the last four years. However, I do attribute much of America’s economic and international problems to the failings and missteps of the Bush administration. Since both you and President Bush are Republicans, I fear a return to the policies of those years should you win this election. What is the biggest difference between you and George W. Bush, and how do you differentiate yourself from George W. Bush?

BLOGMEISTER:  I differentiate myself from George W. Bush because I am an economic populist, a foreign policy isolationist/pan-Caucasianist and a white nationalist, not a neo-conservative or a lamestream conservative.

MICHAEL JONES:  Mr. President, I voted for you in 2008. What have you done or accomplished to earn my vote in 2012? I’m not that optimistic as I was in 2012. Most things I need for everyday living are very expensive.

BLOGMEISTER:  The reason things are more expensive is that three rounds of quantitative easing has increased the money supply and therefore inflation, while the deluge of mass non-white immigration for cheap labor has depressed wages.  Therefore, the solution is to enact real banking reform that precludes inflation and restricting non-white immigration to sway the labor market in favor of labor.

LORRAINE OSARIO:  President — Romney, what do you plan on doing with immigrants without their green cards that are currently living here as productive members of society?

BLOGMEISTER:  The individuals in question are illegal aliens working at some sort of job.  By definition, some Federal crime was committed, either the employers knowingly hired illegal aliens, or the illegal aliens presented fake ID and may have committed identity theft along the way.  My solution is either to prosecute the illegals for slinging false identification slash stealing someone’s identity, and/or the employers for knowingly hiring illegal aliens, depending on the situation.  Deport the illegal aliens to their home countries either right away or after they complete their Federal prison time, as the case may be.  The only exception I would grant is for identifiably white people fleeing persecution of some sort, including but not limited to white South Africans on the verge of experiencing genocide and ethnic cleansing.

KERRY LADKA:  This question actually comes from a brain trust of my friends at Global Telecom Supply in Mineola yesterday. We were sitting around talking about Libya, and we were reading and became aware of reports that the State Department refused extra security for our embassy in Benghazi, Libya, prior to the attacks that killed four Americans. Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?

BLOGMEISTER:  I believe that President Obama himself deliberately denied security, because he knew AQ was planning a hit timed to 9/11, and he wanted AQ to kidnap Ambassador Stevens, because he wanted to negotiate for his release and safe return, in order to set himself up as an “October Surprise” foreign policy hero.  It went off the tracks when AQ murdered Stevens instead of holding him hostage.  And ever since then, this administration has been in full CYA/Pass the Hot Potato mode, including blaming a YouTube video that hardly anyone ever watched before 9/11/2012, and by deduction, blaming the First Amendment, and jailing the filmmaker for a supposed probation violation “for show.”

NINA GONZALES:  President Obama, during the Democratic National Convention in 2008, you stated you wanted to keep AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. What has your administration done or plan to do to limit the availability of assault weapons?

BLOGMEISTER:  There is no such thing as an “assault weapon,” therefore, I can’t and won’t do anything about them that I wouldn’t do in regards to all other firearms.  Before I answer the rest of your question, we have to start with defining fundamental terms.  A firearm by definition is a device specifically designed to give the average person the ability to do debilitating bodily harm or worse to another living being from a relatively long distance.  With that in mind, we have to have a different policy on firearms than we do on things that are not weapons, or even other deadly weapons — After all, a knife can be a deadly weapon, but you can’t kill a man with it from 100 yards.  My ideal of gun control is who, not what.  I favor vigorous enforcement of no-possession laws on people who by their actions prove that they shouldn’t be possessing firearms (including Mexican gangsters).  I favor extending the Federal prison time for felon-in-possession, if not that felons caught with guns actually do that time, that at the very least those charges are held over the heads like the Sword of Damocles while they’re turned around as supergrass (stool pidgeons).  I oppose firearms laws that deal with “what,” because they only serve to beg for Ruby Ridge.

CAROL GOLDBERG:  The outsourcing of American jobs overseas has taken a toll on our economy. What plans do you have to put back and keep jobs here in the United States?

BLOGMEISTER:  Tariffs, adjusted on a per-country basis effectively to remove the competitive advantage of cheap labor and lax environmental regulations in low-wage low-regulation countries.  Trade should be freer (but not totally free) with countries most like ours, i.e. white countries in central, western and northern Europe, and also Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and most restricted with countries the least like us, which is to say most of the non-white world.  To prevent the outsourcing of intangible goods, we should use of interstate commerce laws to require that call centers for American customers be placed in America and have native born white American English-speaking employees.  To prevent the underappreciated phenomenon of “outsourcing by insourcing,” that is, importing the non-white legal immigrant cheap labor to do the job in the United States in lieu of outsourcing the actual job to another country, I favor the elimination of most if not all of the legal immigrant visa programs created in the Bush 41 administration.

Trade among individuals and institutions within our country is not the same as trade between countries, because countries have interests and responsibilities toward their citizens that individuals qua individuals do not have.

CANDY CROWLEY:  Mr. President, we have a really short time for a quick discussion here.

IPad, the Macs, the iPhones, they are all manufactured in China, and one of the major reasons is labor is so much cheaper here. How do you convince a great American company to bring that manufacturing back here?

BLOGMEISTER:  iWhatevers are all Apple products manufactured by Foxconn, and Foxconn does all their manufacturing in China.  I would use the Federal government’s power of trade regulation to force Apple and/or Foxconn, as a cost of being able to access the lucrative American domestic consumer market, to source a small percentage of its employment base to the United States, preferrably for a facility built in a rust belt swing state to employ native born white American men in the low-average IQ range.

BARRY GREEN:  Hi, Governor. I think this is a tough question. Each of you: What do you believe is the biggest misperception that the American people have about you as a man and a candidate? Using specific examples, can you take this opportunity to debunk that misperception and set us straight?

BLOGMEISTER:  Since I’m not actually a candidate, and I’m pretending to answer these Town Hall questions for the purposes of this blog post, I can’t answer this question in terms of what is misunderstood about me as a candidate.  However, I can answer that question from the perspective of a misunderstood man.  The most common criticism of me is that I’m a know-it-all.  The problem with that criticism is that I’m all right and the world is all wrong.  In other words, I’m not at fault for being a know-it-all, people who don’t like know-it-alls are the problem.  Almost all of the progress responsible for taking Homo Sapiens from being nomadic hunter-gatherers to the present is due to the obsession and passion of know-it-alls.

Being a know-it-all is a feature, not a bug.

***

Come to Think of It

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

Only nine percent of attempts call someone result in useable answers for a survey or poll.

I have never been called for a political poll, in spite of the fact that I live in a swing state.  Well, it’s not a swing state this year, but it was in 2008, 2004 and 2000.  Too, there are always downballot races and mid-term races.  My mother has never been called for a political poll, either.

My mother has been of legal voting age since 1965, and I since 1995.  You would think that in all that time, the law of averages would have meant that one of us would have gotten “hit.”

Clairvoyant Me

Lafayette Square

Remember this house from my LS House Tour?  Click for full size.

This is 2043 Park Avenue.  Of all the houses in LS, this is the one I’d live in if money was no object.  (And money had better be no object:  I bet it could bag a million if it went on the market today.)  And those wooden doors are nine feet tall my my estimation, so you can use that as a guide to scale the size of this house.  I figure there’s somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 square feet of living space inside.  If there is a basement, and if the basement fills up the size of one of the above ground floors, and it’s finished, then it could easily be 11,000 square feet.  One thing these pics don’t show clearly is that the roof is railed off with similar French-style iron railing to the front second floor “porch.”

Turns out there is a reason why I like this house so much, and it’s kind of eerie, considering what I’m doing for a living right now and have at points on and off through my life.  The architect who designed this house did this as practice before he designed this house.

Another Milestone

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

Some time tomorrow, this blog will roll past two million on the hit odometer.

It seems like yesterday I hit the first million, and that took a long time.

The First Pop Record of My Conscious Memory

Memory Lane

My mother has photos of me playing records on my toy record player as young as two and a half years old.

“Physical,” Olivia Newton-John, 1981, was the first pop record in my conscious memory, when I was four years old.  One of my female cousins, who was 11 at the time, was obsessed with this song, and played it over and over again, even when my mother and I were at my uncle’s house, and we were there quite a bit.  This is the twelve-inch single version that plays at 45 RPM, but she had the regular seven-inch 45 record, with the standard MCA “cloud and rainbow” label of the time.  Though I remember her record looking a little different than this.

I remember being at my uncle’s house one day that year, and it had to be Thanksgiving because I remember a lot of turkey imagery about the house.  The timing would be right because “Physical” was released in September.  At one point during the day, I was alone in the room where my uncle kept his expensive component stereo system including what I now know to be a direct drive turntable, and Pioneer was the manufacturer of all the components.  That’s where all the records of the house were stored, and I found “Physical,” and I knew it not as much from reading the label but from the cloud and rainbow on the label.  But I couldn’t reach the turntable to play the record, because as a four-year old, I wasn’t that tall.  I looked for something to stand on, and found it in the form of a foot stool in the kitchen.  I guess my mother and uncle saw me taking a foot stool, and followed me to see what I was doing.  Just as I got on the stool to set up the record on the turntable, I heard my uncle screaming from behind me, “What the hell are you doing?”  Then my mother implored him to leave me alone, then told me to continue doing what I was doing.  It took me quite a bit longer than usual, because an expensive Pioneer component stereo system was far more complicated than a kid toy record player, but damned if I didn’t get that thing a’goin and that record a’playin.

I’m Hired

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

Actually, re-hired.  I (re-)start tomorrow.

 

One of These Days

Your Blogmeister’s Desk

I might be able to tell what I know now.  All I’ll say is that a lot of people talking about a certain hot issue at the moment don’t know what they’re talking about.  I really can’t blame them for not knowing, because there’s no way for them to know.  There are also other reasons why I don’t hold it against them.

I’m Fired

I was fired today.

Why?  I forced my boss to choose between myself and his own son.

For those of you who know me,  you can fill in the blanks yourself.  For everyone else, I may able to tell the whole story in time.

Dear Bill Maher

I didn’t own a car when I got my first official photo ID.  I had to take the bus to the Department of Revenue office on South Kingshighway to get it.  I was 14 years old.

Best Regards,

Blogmeister

My Favorite Gymnast

London

German Elizabeth Seitz.

The hottest of the lot this year.

For the record, my fave from 2008 was American Alicia Sacramone.  People fawned over Shawn Johnson.  Yeah, she was cute, but she was too “girly” immature cute for my tastes.  Sacramone was (and still is) a gorgeous woman.

Let’s Do Lunch

Des Peres

There’s a Chick-Fil-A at West County Mall.

UPDATE

Left the salt mines just after 11 AM, and it took me about five minutes to drive to WCM.  But between waiting for a parking spot to open up, waiting in line for my order to be taken, and waiting for the food, I finally got my order at 1:07 PM.  I have my headphone radio with me, listening to Rush, and he said that a relative of his is somewhere in this crowd at this very same mall.  I also have my laptop with me, and I could get a lot of blogging and some real work done while Waiting for Godot.