Sadly, No!

OBAMACARE SAVES THE ECONOMY!!!!!!!

Brad — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:12:27 +0000

Hey, if we’re going by Kudlow Logic, doesn’t the stock market’s rise this morning indicate that Obamacare has saved the economy???

(Not that I really think this since I’m not a moron. But if we’re going to play the game that way…)

HCR: MOAR Wingnutty Blarg Blarg

HTML Mencken — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:59:44 +0000

Shorter Bill Kristol
The Weekly Standard
“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Barack Obama”

Thank God for Republicans and their future majority which, in the next few years, will finally suffocate the last gasps of liberalism before Obama’s health care reform legislation incites the Prussians to invade and destroy us.

Shorter Powertools
Powerline.com
“Silver Linings”

That’s ok, liebruhls: We will have the last laugh. Meantime, we’re going on a diet. Obama, your death panels will never take us alive!

Shorter Confederate Yankee
“Media Matters I Stated An Obvious Truth”

Guh-huylk! Ahh done said oncest that anybody callin’ healthcare a “right” needed killin’. Now Ahhm-a sayin it agin, Media Matters, so you’ns better have yer ears on.

Shorter Michelle Malkin
“[Blah Blah Blah]“

Oh, you gloaters will pay. You, Pelosi. You, Obama. Oh yes, you will get it. You WILL PAY, DAMN YOU! BLARGH BLARG!

Shorter Perfesser Corncob
Instapundit.com
“[Wahh Wahh]“

Et tu, Fox? You put that Democrat asshole Geraldo on the air with his incomprehensible Mexican accent while we’re layin here all butthurt? Really?

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Deep thought

Brad — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:33:54 +0000

If my grandmother if still alive tomorrow morning I will feel betrayed.

Consider this an open thread.

HCR: Wingnuts Say Blarg!

HTML Mencken — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:00:47 +0000

Shorter Mark Steyn
National Review
“Happy Dependence Day’”

Just as socialized medicine turned Canadians, Britons, and the French into huge pussies, so too will Obamacare transform Americans from heroic muslim-slayers into wimpy fagg0rt hippie appeasers. Goodbye, beloved American Empire; hello, New Caliphate.

Shorter Charmaine Yoest Infection
The Wall Street Journal
“Abortion and the Health Bill”

Obama’s all like, “well, not really,” but I know that if this bill passes it will mean more abortion, abortion, abortion, abortion, because Democrats are abortion-loving aborters who love abortion.

Shorter Editorial
The Wall Street Journal
“The ObamaCare Crossroads”

The reason health care costs are out of control is because of communist programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Naturally, like the commie socialist marxist commies they are, Democrats want an even bigger program. Hence, Obamacare, the most direct assault on the “vitality of American capitalism”, like, EVAR.

Shorter Shrieking Harpy
“America’s Day of Wreckoning”
“Bye Bye Miss American Pie”

Virtuous tea partiers are being smeared! Obamacare is going to be passed! There’s no doubt now that America is run by a foreign power! Viva la counter-revolution! Obviously Obama is the new Allende.

Shorter The Forgotten Street
“Is Obama the New Allende?”

Nice democratically-elected leader you have there. Be a shame if there had to be a coup or something to get rid of him.

Verbatim Republican Congressman to Bart Stupak

Babykiller!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

I Love The Smell Of HCR Passage In The Morning In America

D. Aristophanes — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:24:16 +0000

… it smells like victory. Get those virginal throats ready, Real Americans! We have achieved ramming speed on health care reform! w00t! &cetera:

Central To His Point, As They Say

Tintin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:47:02 +0000

ABOVE: Jay “I Am A Teabagger Too” Nordlinger

Shorter Jay Nordlinger, America’s Shittiest Website™
Racism Today

The fact that health care protestors called a black man “nigger” rather than lynching him is proof that our country is no longer racist.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

The Self-Shortering Of Argie McBargle

Gavin M. — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:59:23 +0000

Megan “Two Sheds” McArdle, The Atlantic Monthly:
Politico’s ‘Doc Fix’ Memo: Fake, But Accurate?

Mar 19 2010, 3:37 PM ET

Update: Please READ THE POST before launching into your attacks. Hint: the headline is name checking a famous quote, not suggesting that this was a valid idea. Had you read the post before beginning your cringe-inducing denunciations of my “hypocrisy”, you would have, um, known that.

Let’s look at the post again. Nope, there’s not much for us to do here but add some formatting. This process is for you in some way, uh, Matt.

But hold on. Megan, I know you’re there; I can smell the x-tini vapors from the ginger- pomegranate- anger- and cackletinis, as well as from the underlying home-alone buzz of narcissistinis from the bottle marked “I’m not the bottle; you are.” Turn on your voice recognition input-output software for a minute. I think it’s under ‘accessibility.’ O hai! Here comes our friend Colin Abomscaire. Let’s get him caught up on things.

Check, test, ahem. Nope, there’s not much for us to do here but…mmm, prepare to play this Tales from Topographic Oceans compact disk, and add some formatting. The formatting is for Matt, see?
For Matt, see, Colin?
CD, See, Colin?
For Matt, see, Colin?
Enter: Yes.
Yes. Are you sure? Yes.
…Is the band whose compact disk is playing, or not, Megan, hello are you there? Welp, guess we’ll see if this slows her down at all, not that any physical or moral boundary ever seems to.

She might be a Mac user, since magazinos, journalists, and people paid as journalists often are, and I don’t know how you do this to a Mac, but it’s probably something like, Apple can erase your hard drive remotely at any time, but you aren’t allowed to access any folders without going to the Apple Store, where an admin will add privileged user credentials to your service plan. There should also be, if I’ve perceived these things correctly over the years, a shockingly easy way to do it by typing ERASE SESAME or something, that old-school Mac people are now generationally familiar with, but that’s now mounded over on the Internet by ten million forum discussions in which recent Mac users debate questions like, “My Mac isn’t working. Should I press squiggly-something?” or “What does the ‘control’ key actually control? If it’s programs, why is there also one on the opposite side?” Oh right, the formatting:

Shorter Megan “Widey McGyre” McArdle:¹

Above: Arthur Rackham, illustration from McAlice’s Atlantures
in Montherland (1907)

Megan “Lit & Stretchy” McArdle,² The Atlantic Monthly:
Politico’s ‘Doc Fix’ Memo: Fake, But Accurate?

Update: Please READ THE POST before launching into your attacks. Hint: the headline is name checking a famous quote, not suggesting that this was a valid idea. Had you read the post before beginning your cringe-inducing denunciations of my “hypocrisy”, you would have, um, known that.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

One of those read-the-rest-ratings, such as people do, would only step on the beautiful fading resonances of her final chord. It would be a number like no. I mean by this the number, no, which is defined as zero except without all that non-nothing stuff that zero has stuck in it, such as the ability to denote decimal places. You may ask, “How many decimal places does the blop-blop, something with the jim-jam…” and if you’re discussing the number, no, the answer is not even none, not even zero decimal places. The answer is, “How many decimal places does the blopNO.” And if they start talking again, you say, “By mathematics, talk equals NO.”

That’s how you’d have to truthfully answer, and it’s about what an objective read-the-rest rating would have to be. Also, is it me, or does The Reincarnation of Peter Proud sound like an Edwardian stage production with lots of, you know, Being Earnest, if you varda my palare?³

Notes:

¹ Cf.

² Cf.

³ Porn version: The Reërection of Dixie Rection. I go now to eat of the Diareëse’s Peanut Butter Cup. I have for her a song:

Waah do you fill me up (fill me up),
Nutter Butt, baby, just to let me down?
I quote Ezra Pound:
“Either move (or be moved),”
I ain’t whist-lin’ Dixie-
-Rection’s a didgeridoo…
O-oh, a canned demand: (a map, Lacan),
Maná-la-pan, ma candy-rú.

What? You’re lookin’ at me like you got a nanimus against the human spirit.

I wrote a play about people’s nanimosity. It’s about a guy named Lart who’s sitting on a bench. Lart, Poor Lart, it’s called. “Lart, poor Lart.” And Lart sees his friend, LaVie. “Say, LaVie,” he says. And LaVie answers, “Come see Cumsah,” because Cumsah is their friend. And LaVie opens the laundry bag he’s carrying and inside is a giant bag of cheese popcorn, a couple big tubs of ice cream, and about a hundred Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, along with DVDs of Albert Ayler, Sun Ra and his Arkestra, and Pharoah Sanders, and some toy cars and army men and a mini strobe light; and Lart is like, “Bong voyage!” LaVie says, “Bong march, eh?” but Lart jingles his keys. “To da coupe!” they say.

And since the play isn’t a Kia Sephia or a Geo Prizm, you might not want a giant spoiler for the end, so I’ll just tell you the day-new-mon of Act One. At Cumsah’s house, they’re all waiting for GoDonuts, ’cause Flat Amir and Estra gone out for some, except “nothing very definite,” according to Amir. Lart commiserates with his friend Les. “Lart, poor Lart,” says Les. “Les, miserable Les,” says Lart. And all this is going on, and then, just as LaVie is getting into a whole unfortunate thing with this big palooka Shawn, Plus-Sized LaMame shows.

You’re lookin’ at me like you don’t have a raisin debt.

You need to go out and find your raisin debt. This is just cheese news, but I owe a lot of my raisins to gourmet food gatherings like the Savoir Fair and the SoupCon. All the tetta-tets and P.A. dettairs, talkin’ about Chef Doovers, and Mater Dotel, and Sue’s Chef and their chefsty cuisine. It’s true. Helped me to set up my me’s in place. I used to be like, “I’m glad this is fo’ Grah, ’cause I wouldn’t like none myself.” Now I just love it how the S-car go.

Horse derfs. Now, I prefer those at the beginning of a meal. Amuse ghouls — those can upset your stomach, but if you’re a ghoul, I guess you won’t mind the squirrel eyeballs and stuff in ‘em. The ol’ can of peas, a moose bush. Oh, look at the time: Dick’s wheat cans. Nerf. I gotta go; it’s nearly findy-sickle, and my show is on. …On Shonté; it’s a show on a girl named Shonté. Sure. Oh, me too. Ta-ta! Or as they say in La France: Late ‘Ta,’ Same Wah.

My big secret

Brad — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:51:43 +0000

Hey guys. Not supposed to let this slip until tomorrow, but Obama has promised that I can run my very own death panel once reform passes tomorrow. Yippee!

Let me know who is most deserving of my judgment in the comments! Eeeeee! So excited!

Shorter Bill Kristol

Brad — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:37:22 +0000

Health care isn’t like civil rights

The health care reform vote doesn’t count unless you have an 80% majority of Congressmen voting for it. See also the cases of No v. Backsies and Smelt It v. Dealt It for precedent.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

They do stuff differently in other countries

Brad — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:50:42 +0000

I know I keeping banging this drum, but I think it’s important to point out the vast differences between conservatives in other countries and wingnuttery in this country. Here’s the latest example:

Tory leader David Cameron details plan for bank tax

Tory leader David Cameron has announced plans for a new tax on banks – even if other countries decide not to do so.

Mr Cameron has dropped his condition that he would only introduce such a tax if other countries did.

In a speech in London, he said the levy was “necessary” and the banks were one of the “vested interests” he was determined to confront.

Labour favours such a tax but only with international agreement. Lib Dems say banks must pay for taxpayer protection.

It is of course perfectly fair to question Mr. Cameron’s motives:

The Tories, who have not yet provided any details of how their scheme would operate, hope that by adopting a more limited measure if the UK acts alone they will avoid driving banks into exile.

But this really isn’t about whether or not Cameron is being sincere or not. It’s about what the general public accepts as legitimate discourse. Over here in the U.S., any tax on the banks will be immediately dubbed a communist plot. Over there it’s framed as a matter of basic national survival and financial security. Compare and contrast this to some of our esteemed conservative leaders:

Boehner’s comments come as bankers prepare to descend upon Capitol Hill to press for changes to the bank-reform legislation, which they wouldn’t support in its present form. Boehner said he urged bankers not to be shy when meeting with the lawmaker staff members and to send a message that new regulations and taxes translates to into banks having less available for lending.

“Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves,” Boehner said.

See the difference? In a halfway sane political culture, John Boehner would pay a major price for encouraging Skeletor to thwart financial reform. But in America it’s always considered cool to kiss up to our Corporate Masters, even if they’ve wrecked the entire economy. I don’t know quite how to fix this — between the accounting scandals of the early part of last decade and the epic Wall Street meltdown in 2008, I thought we would have learned not to trust these assholes. What the hell will it take?

Kickner Kuhnspiracy

Gavin M. — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:15:00 +0000

Jeffrey T. Kuhner, The Washington Times:
Impeach the president?
The ‘Slaughter Solution’ would violate the Constitution

The “stain resistant” pots who are viciously blaxploiting ordinary Americans in a shoeshine-slathering hot tar rampage are unprecedented in literally being pot-shaped holes punched in the fabric of space through which oozes the pure, sentient blackness of Hell. Yet flabbergastingly, in their demented fury to de-cook your food, these pots seek to anally rape into law the totalitarian Hitler-Marxism of the kettle-blackness libel.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Notes:

¹ Title explicitly cf. while shaded a bit with cf., only accidentally cf., and pieces of kite, the materials you never catch-uh.

:Þε∞ Whutzip? No, I’ve got over that Thomas Kuhn phase. I was having too many observations that didn’t fit into his theory.

My new tag since then is LaOcoön, ’cause it’s right in the series of those LaReference names, and also ’cause it’s a Trojan Horse filled with the serpents of diacriticism. Because do you know who will pronounce it right, even after seeing the diacritical perched right there trying to be friends with them, like in coöperation? You know who, you know who?

Noöne, that’s who. Bahaha! Goodbye, I must sustain myself with the flesh of the Chocodile.

High Noonan

Tintin — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:08:31 +0000

Shorter Peggy Noonan
Now For The Slaughter

Obama’s postponement of a trip to Australia because he needs to stay in Washington to secure his domestic health care reform agenda is much more detrimental to the international reputation of the United States than George Bush’s invasion of Iraq over non-existent WMDs.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Stupid Questions, Etc.

D. Aristophanes — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:00:58 +0000

… riffing on the new news that Debbie Schlussel has discovered that Sean Hannity is a mendacious douche. Previous iterations include Charles Johnson’s awakening to Pam Atlas’ utter lunacy, Patterico’s enlightenment re: Jeff Goldstein, and assorted wingnut cottonings to Glenn Beck’s deep-seated unhingedness.

Interrogative: When do we, the longstanding voices of sanity in these matters, get any friggin’ credit at all for having called these spades, spades for years and years and years? Too lazy to link, but we’ve seen a marked rise in rightbloggers actually linking here (and to other lefty blogs) for evidence/support for their various excommunications of former bedfellows … yet nary a word of acknowledgment for being goddamn right all along, begrudging or not, comes our way.

Not looking for new allies, just some common courtesy.

The Schlussel-Hannity dust-up

Brad — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:47:24 +0000

Yes, I’ve been following it but I can’t really take sides yet. How the hell am I supposed to tell which one of them is full of it? Could they both be wrong?

UPDATE: Just wading into it now. There’s some great shit going on here:

Yes, sadly, there are a growing number of anti-Semites on the right, and Erick Erickson is one of them.

Plus — Ollie North is involved??? Wow-wah-wee-wah-wow. I have no idea who is lying here. This may be one of those rare situations where you have an unnatural convergence of crazy resulting in all sides of the dispute somehow being correct.

Gee I can’t imagine why health care reform is unpopular…

Brad — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:25:50 +0000

As I’ve said before, I believe we should pass the current health care bill simply because getting uninsured people covered is important and because it’s sadly the best our corrupt political system can give us right now. But Jesus, I don’t have to feel good about it. Ezra inadvertently explains why:

This year, the Obama administration succeeded at neutralizing every single industry. Pharma supports the bill. Insurers are incoherent on it, but there’s not a ferocious and united campaign to kill the proposal. The American Medical Association has endorsed the Senate bill. The hospitals have endorsed the bill. Labor has endorsed the bill. The business community is split, with larger employers holding their fire.

You can take that as a critique of the bill’s deals and concessions. But it represents a remarkable level of industry consensus.

See, yeah. When I voted for Hope’n'Change two years ago, I didn’t think it would involve bribing the living shit out of every major stakeholder and interest group in the country. We used to have political leaders who would relish taking on unpopular special interests in the name of the public good. If anyone knows what happened to that sort of political courage, I’d be glad to know.

A Load of Laughing Boy

Gavin M. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:45:52 +0000

Doop-doop-doop, readin’ the Internet. Hey, what’s this?

Harold Witkov, American Thinker
What I Will Do If ObamaCare Passes

Wow. See, when they talk about that Superstring theory, this is what they’re talking about. If you imagine timespace as a finite yet boundless corridor in one of those Czech-produced Tom and Jerry cartoons from the early ’60s with the hep jazz and the tape echo sound effects and so forth, then reading American Thinker is like the phenomenon that occurs when you’re chasing a mouse out one door and through another at an increasing rate of speed, back and forth across the corridor with increasing motion blur and more frenzied slamming sounds, until you stop halfway through a doorway, blinking your eyes in synchrony with a marimba cue, and regard your own butt sticking through an opposite door, waggling at you in synchrony with a ‘who, me?’ cue played on a viola.

One such butt is Harold Witkov, right-wing humorist.

I have done everything I could to help prevent ObamaCare. I have signed petitions, written letters to my representatives, and penned various articles for American Thinker. Still, I have a growing fear that ObamaCare might happen,

Because this is the funny thing: We have done everything we could to help pass health care reform! We have signed comedy names on anti-ObamaCare petitions,¹ written not only letters but words, and not words solely, but rude words furnished with loud punctuation, to ours but mostly other people’s representatives, and panned articles at American Thinker. In this we have proceeded further, having upon them also punned² — nicht war, Wutkopf?³ Still, we have an exactly opposite growing fear to Witkopf’s that health care reform might happen due to his perverse and dumb efforts, wasting the effort of our well-conceived and smart ones.

so I decided that it would be wise to have a “Plan B” for myself just in case.

Or worst of all, that health care reform will both happen, rewarding his fear, and be so compromised as to suck at reforming health care, punishing our hope. So we decided that it would be wise to have a “Plan B” for Witkopf just in case.

As I see it, coverage for an additional thirty million Americans is going to mean an eventual shortage of doctors and care. Despite what President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi tell us, ObamaCare is going to result in the rationing of health care. When that happens, I want to be ready.

He’s going to medical school!

Nope, that would be an attempt to make something better, and conservatives are driven by an urge toward gleeful worsening. Their notion of the requited life, their ‘passion’ not just in the word’s recent sense of pastimes and desired things, but rising on occasions near to the Shelleyan heights of the classically passionate, is to be forever incited to throw their hat on the ground and stomp on it, cursing in rack-frap phonetics.

Yes, this Plan B must start with the premise that an additional thirty million Americans will have access to medical care, and will end up with a scheme to sell people’s organs on eBay, or with the figure of C. Everett Koop bent under a hail of rocks like in Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery.’ It would make sense if hospitals were dynamited, if plague corpses were trebucheted through the windows of office skyscrapers. This should end with Duane Jones shot by the rescuers and his body burning on a pyre of zombies. Because that would show them, and there you see what happens when the rat hat frack-a-sack of all the [stomp-stomp] frab-jappin’, shig-wappin’ fad apps that ever [jumpity-stompity] crab-jacked a wag-’n'-fap shack.⁴

Bad-gum librul hat frackers. Fracked my hat, lookit it.

Here are my top four “Plan B” safety-valve ideas if ObamaCare passes:

Or worst of all, ours up there will be funnier.

1. I am going to buy the book by that guy I see on TV all the time, author Kevin Trudeau. His Natural Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About will be looking pretty good by the time health care rationing starts. In fact, I think that there are a lot of good books like his out there. I am going to purchase them all. I am going to buy a new bookshelf and fill every shelf with natural cure books. If I die before I read them all, I will have my wife sell them on eBay. I am sure she will get a good price for them once ObamaCare kicks in.

If health reform passes, I am going to blindly support fraud and quackery. Har-har, I’m buying all the quack books, see? Help, ack, look how dumb you’re making me be. Hitting self on head with shovel, dancing jig in dog poo.

When someone mentions buying a whole new bookshelf as part of a way-out, full-tilt 180-degree rampage of sarcastic self-victimization, the impression I’m given is that their storage problems are the opposite of mine. I always seem to have room in my heart for a stranger’s hard luck, but seldom live fewer than three shelves to the wind — meaning that if I went to Ikea right now and got three Snåljåps in white birch laminate, or even said slicka mina nötter, oändlighet and splurged on three of their distressed bubinga Sluthögs, with the bookshelf lights on them whose utility I’ve never clearly seen, as soon as I Allen-keyed them together and shoveled their maws full, I would be already setting books on fire to keep from buying shelves.

That’s sort of an allegory. ‘Shelves’ is health care reform, and ’setting books on fire’ is like those 30 million Americans.

2. I am going to sign up for self-hypnosis workshops and order self-hypnosis CDs. While perusing the internet, I discovered that there is a whole other world of health care beyond the conventional.

Surprisingly, this wasn’t mentioned in any of the natural cure books.

If I am going to be subjected to health care rationing, I may as well give self-hypnosis a chance.

Hello, self. I just want to warn you — I can’t be hyp[snap]WTF, how is it Tuesday already? Why am I mailing all these tea bags to[snap]zzz.

3. I am going to get out my old Q-Ray Bracelet and put it on. It never did help my herniated disc pain one darn bit, but it’s not doing me any good sitting in my underwear drawer.

Unless that magnetized underwear has been staving off chronic crotch and butt pain.

Wait, a Q-Ray Bracelet? Yeah, ho-ho, alternative medicine, guffaw. Let me go into my underwear drawer and dig out that old glow-in-the-dark plastic spider that I bought for eighty bucks because they said its bite would turn me into Spider Man.

This time, I am wearing it ’til I die. If that happens sooner than later, I bet my wife can get a good price on eBay for that, too, once ObamaCare starts.

There’s definitely a joke in that refrain, but what is it? Quackery -> die -> wife -> eBay. Quackery -> die -> wife -> eBay. Damn it, what’s the jokey part?

This actually annoys me. I’m a humorist, if I’m any kind of one at all, who takes risks. I’m adapted as it were to a high-stakes win/fail environment. Seriously, is the funny thing selling stuff on eBay?

If so, and also not unseriously, shouldn’t we now be experiencing this like a sighting of the wife-buys-startling-hat cartoon, circa like 1982?

4. I plan to find myself a top-of-the-line faith healer. I am talking bona fide, not like that charlatan who worked on Andy Kaufman.

A charlatan indeed, if Andy Kaufman were dead.

If you’re talking bona fide, this guy heals people in fast-motion to ‘Yakety Sax,’ or maybe I’m not even paying attention.

There is a safety-valve idea “#5″ I am considering should ObamaCare pass, but it is kind of humiliating, and I would need the help of my wife.

If you’re talking boner ride, the two words every man needs to learn are ‘Yakety’ and ‘Sax’

I start by ordering an adult Clifford the Big Red Dog Halloween costume (I saw them for sale on Amazon). My wife brings me into the local veterinarian on all fours with a leash around my neck. She provides the vet with my stool and urine samples and explains, “This is my big red dog, Clifford. I would like him examined thoroughly. You are welcome to draw his blood and take X-rays, but he is not to receive any rabies or distemper shots. If I have to leave him, that is fine, but under no circumstances should he be neutered.”

This could only be improved by Harold waving at the veterinarian and saying, “Hi, I’m Clifford the Big Red Dog.”

That, plus it’s missing a fire hydrant joke. And someone has to say that things are “going to the dogs,” and someone has to exclaim, “It’s a dog’s life!” But hey, as soon as you say “urine samples,” we’re talking right-wing comedy Goldwater.

Exercise left to the reader: Recalcitrant Democrats are known as ‘Blue Dogs.’ Adult costumes are available of Blue, the dog on Blue’s Clues.

Speaking of canines, I recently found out that there is private health insurance coverage for pets available. Imagine that: Dogs and cats can get private coverage, but under ObamaCare, citizens will one day lose that option. On the other hand, our pets and their owners will one day have something in common which they never had before if ObamaCare passes: death panels.

Aha. Before, the dog-costume idea ended like this:

I start by ordering an adult Clifford the Big Red Dog Halloween costume (I saw them for sale on Amazon). My wife brings me into the local veterinarian on all fours with a leash around my neck. She provides the vet with my stool and urine samples and explains, “This is my big red dog, Clifford. I would like him examined thoroughly. You are welcome to draw his blood and take X-rays, but he is not to receive any rabies or distemper shots. If I have to leave him, that is fine, but under no circumstances should he be neutered.” And then, having unloaded the responsibility for a punch line onto the veterinarian, we just stand there. He stands there looking at us, and we look at him and stand there. “Hi,” I say, waving. “I’m Clifford the Big Red Dog.” We’re standing there when this happens, and as we do this, a lonely train whistle sounds in the distance. I wave my floppy red paw. My wife sobs; a wind sighs through the pines.

Now I hear ‘death panels,’ and I’m seeing an ending. “Oh my God,” says the wife holding the leash and an empty collar. “I forgot to explicitly say no euthanasia death panels!” Oh my God, it was just a prank!

“It’s a dog’s life,” confides a whitely gaseous Harold, waving his paw and stepping on a whitely gaseous escalator. His wife leaves to hit eBay, and a sign is revealed: TO DOG HEAVN DOG FUD NO BAD DOGS.

I sure hope and pray that Obamacare fails. But now that I have some “Plan B” safety-valve ideas, I am feeling much better should Obamacare come to pass. I do hope that others will make use of some of my ideas. I am sure we can get through this if we all pull together.

Pull my finger.

Notes:

¹
Laura Lynn Hardy, C. Wrong Mills, Aretha A. Spinosa, Bertha Tragedy, Jeanie à la Gia Moráles, Hugh Minault, Thieu-Ho Minh, Al Zosprak, Sara Thustra, Jens Eitsvongut and Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, Gyaltsen Demo Rong, Twyla d’Aïe Dölz, Darren Teague Rice, Iggy Homo, DeWilt Tappauer, etc.

²
These words should correctly be pronounced — i.e. ‘may be momentarily amusing if pronounced,’ but these shadings of meaning were more appropriate to our grandparents’ age of analogy than to our age of digitality, with their numbers carried to a fire in buckets while ours are sprayed from technology — uh, correctly pronounced like the word pwned, in the manner of Buster Keaton standing in warm ocean water, which is to say with a silent ‘p.’

We have ‘oanned’ various articles at American Thinker, and further have ‘ounned.’ Because as Tom Lehrer told us, “A thing you’ve ‘pawned’ becomes ‘owned’ instantly, If you just add…” Ah yes, there it goes. The moment of amusement has gone. Memes, being digital, are fleeting, and this goes not zero, but one plus one or even binary 10 times for the hehe, or humor meme, and the eem and/or ime, or e- and/or i-meme, meaning not twice for each thing, but one time per category, totaling two times in, you know, because binary 2 is written as ‘10,’ and ’silent e,’ and it all gets tied up at the end up with something about Tom Lehrer being a mathematician, or so I imagine.

Uh, e-meme. With the, uh, ‘e-’ prefix being a general descriptor (different from ‘i-’ such that ‘e-technology’ includes Internet- or ‘i-technology’ in addition to non-i items such as Internet phones, while excluding the merely electronic, such as computer architecture) for things that are futuristic, i.e. that are from the mid-late ’90s with design cues from the early-mid ’60s. Dispelled of such fumes, or futurist memes, the future is a… Ah yes, there it goes. The moment of amusement has gone.

It was a mome, anyway. The mome is a kind of meme that’s like a fleem, only less fleeting and more momentary, if the clear distinction between these words stands up to the test of yawn, oh I guess not. Yay, porn. Nom-nom, snacks.

No, what’s this paper here with the writing on it? “End it mathematician T. Lehrer.” This appears to be hate mail from Tom Lehrer to Lobachevsky. Oh, oh, it’s a Sitting Pwnadocker. Those are things worth auctioning, and they go down in what I call the Down Docks, in the box marked eBay.

Huh? The box is missing? Says it’s been moved to the Updock? No, no, crap, wait. [dials phone]

Hey, Jerry — what Updock? Hey, Jerry — what Updock? It’s shipped out with a form called a Wang 4? Packed in some snoo? Hey, hey, [dialing phone]

Hello, Martin? Buddy, where’s my pawn box? No, pawn, as in ‘pawn shop.’ Right. No, Martin, it was a tapas bar, tapas. Yeah, very funny. No, just the one box is missing. Yeah, written right on it in Magic Marker: “Sitting Ownadocker: eBay.” [hangs up] Wasting time… [dials phone]

Hey Artie, look, if there’s paperwork here that says Owatana: Siam, then what’s a Wang 4? You get one after you fill out a full set of Ward’s 4? Hi. Artie. Do you hear me? [hangs up] Do you care? [dials] Wendy, look, hi. What are Ward’s 4? Wen, no one listens anymore. Wen, no one listens; there’s no use talking at all. [hangs up, dials]

Sheldon, hi, trouble, yeah. Me with the pawn docks. ‘Docks,’ not ‘dogs.’ ‘Pawn’ p-a-w-n! Down in the pawn docks! Down in the pawn docks! Yeah, people put me down ’cause that’s the side of town I was born in. Right, you too. [hangs up] “Have a gooin’?” [dials]

Hell’s that supposed to mean, have a gooing? Have a goo-on! Hi, uh, Rachel, hi, you just called me and the, uh, phone picked up. No, I was just going to call you, but I didn’t actually dial. And the phone just picked up on its own, so…? Oh, he’s taking an hour off your pay. Yeah, it’s like what hicks do. ‘Bye. [hangs up, dials] So they’re docking… Martin? Hi, Hickory Dick, the dock is rocking my cock, equals rooster, uh, pop goes the goo on the weasel. Hello? [hangs up]

Holy jeez, cracking up. Get ahold of myself. [turns radio on, indistinct pop music] [phone rings]

Martin? Not me, I was standing over here when that happened. What’s up since earlier? No, it was a kid who ran off. I was standing over here by the radio when he did that. Look, one question: What’s snoo? No, I don’t have any amatta — what’s amatta? No, Martin, I don’t have a cluepal — you can be my cluepal. You can get a lifejack and I’ll borrow yours. Look, I don’t know what’s… A load of Laughing Boy over here? Marty, we don’t have huge inventory on detergents right now. I’ve been sitting ’til the evening comes watching the Tide roll away, wasting time, and frankly it seems like nothing’s gonna change, that everything still remains the same. Bottom line is, I can’t do what ten people tell me to do, so I guess… What’s that? How do you greet a who? A native what?

“How do you greet a Native American,” Martin, as in one or more are currently outside your office waiting for their presence there to be recognized? Okay, so do you mean hypothetically? As in, what you’re asking is, “Hey, what’s the standard etiquette of greeting a Native American if tribal affiliation and customs are uncertain?” Or are you asking with a specific tribe in mind, and if so could you identify them?

No, okay, wait. When you ask, “How do you greet a Native American?” are you asking me this question: “Cough-cough. Hi, I’m Marty, and I’ve got sweat stains under my arms. Hock-ptui. I’m wondering what greeting is considered best-practice for an idealized Native American Indian of no definite affiliation, hypothetically speaking?” Or are you asking this question: “Om-nom, eatin’ a sandwich, Marty here. How does youse greet a Native Indian, I mean not, you know…” and here you’re doing a pantomime of having six arms and you’re tapping your index finger on the middle of your forehead. No, that’s what you’re doing. “If you’re introduced to a Native of the Indian persuasion, I mean not, you know…” and here you’re pantomiming playing a flute with a snake coming out of an assumed basket and writhing back and forth. I’m seeing it as a snake despite the universal hand movements of ‘woman.’ You know what I’m saying. Okay, Marty, sure.

Okay, Marty, sure. Okay, Marty, I give up. How do you greet a Native American? I give up, Marty — How?

What? What’s all the laughing? Is this on speakerphone?

^{: Þε ∞}

My grafitti tag used to be TYOP, pronounced like it’s spell…whoah-whoah-wait, pronounced ‘typo,’ dammit, sheez, heh-heh, woo. Then briefly it was TYO, because notice there’s no P in it, please keep it that way. Then of course it’s a whole big thing with Tasers when all I was doing was urinating over the glass divider in the olice station, but I got off with robation because the logic was unimpeachable. I’m not currently doing graffiti because my current street name is LaCuÑa, and I mostly erase letters in other people’s tags. La Cuña means The Wedge in Spanish, and you’d think a nice bilingual pun like that would inspire some respect around here, but no, the next thing you find out literally over your bowl of cereal that Wednesday morning is that there’s some kid calling himself LaCuñita, or The Wedgie, going around putting the letters back into people’s tags. I’m just like, “What is this, a segment of The Electric Company?” And of course everybody’s all laughing and passing on to each other that I said that, as if it was the punchline I’d been striving to achieve this whole time. “Oh, don’t mind me,” I said. “I’m gonna go out and paint a 3 on a bald guy’s head, oh wait, this episode is brought to you by the number lick-my-nuts-infinity,” when actually I’d already changed my name and hence my game to LaKuhna, redirecting the metaphor toward Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and envisioning the tag -(2*10¢)-> to connote a paradigm shift.

See, life on the streets is about change, and connect that pun to the last while you’re at it. That’s what I mean: I think my next tag will be NO L, pronounced like it looks because there’s no Ë. My name might be Pvt. Ives, and you may ask, “Private Ives? ‘Zat like St. Ives malt liquor or sump’m?” And I may reply, shaking my fist, “It’s got no L, coward.” I mean, you have to stay ahead of them or else they start to catch up to you. There was already this guy last month called DJ Salinger who had two chicks on the mic he called Franny an’ Zooey, and I went up to him testing his game like, “Looks like your girl Zoë found a cure for chronic diaresis,” and he comes right back with, “Hey, you can diacritic or live an artist,” and I’m like, goddamn, I hope he had that one stored up.

My next name will be LaConic, and it’ll be all about the precise one-liner. The tag ought to be 1/3 ∏ r^2 h or a picture of a cone. Then I’ma sit here and wait for some Spanish guy to call himself LaCuba and tag himself a^3 with one of those hokey pictures of a cube you make by drawing two squares. You just have to stay in front, is all.

The number, lick-my-nuts-infinity, is equal to whatever number you just said, plus infinity. Then because someone could just be like, “Oh yeah? What I said plus a double infinity,” you add one of those compound infinities like the number of positive integers from one to infinity plus also the number of fractional expressions from 0 + 1/∞ to ∞ – 1/∞, times n, where n = this nut right here, oh wait also this other one over here, so that would be two, two nuts [thunder] ah-hah-hah-haaa [thunder, sound of fluttering bats].

And that’s times two, because then there’s the negative integers and a corresponding nuthole in timespace that appears to us as a two-dimensional shape like the old side-8 infinity symbol, that you can stick your nuts in, aright, and even with your nuts down in there, there’s still a total of zero nuts stuck in it. I’m not saying I couldn’t make this up, or that I wouldn’t make this up, but I’m saying that I didn’t have to. It’s the kind of trouble a mathematician deals with every day, getting their heads stuck in Klein bottles and whatnot, trying to all be ambassadors for high-functional autism, then when the wives try to put together a luncheon, they just head straight into the kitchen with their plates and the bowl of dip, and start yelling into each other’s faces about which is bluer, the number 7 or the key of D major.

Yeah, and then when you take your nuts out of it, the weird part is that your nutsack appears to the people in the vastly broad but depthless 2D space that divides our universe from the reverso-nutrageous universe to be a hairy figure-eight shape that grows, becomes more smoothly rounded, then splits into two unconnected, irregular circular shapes which get smaller in kind of a rough unison with each other, speeding up and slowing down together almost as if they were still somehow physically connected, with hair filaments appearing and disappearing radially around each, until they just shrink into nothing and disappear, leaving no trace that they ever existed.

That’s not even the weird part. The real weird thing is that if you’re one of the millions of people who’ve experienced some kind of religious or paranormal phenomenon, consider that what you witnessed might have been some higher-dimensional guy dipping his nuts through the flat side of our universe and into the higher-negative-dimensional one on the opposite side. What would some nine-dimensional guy’s ball sack look like in three-space?

See, the moment you start to think about it seriously, it starts to get eerie in a physics way, doesn’t it? You have to stay in front of these kinds of things, is what I’m trying to tell you.

ⁿ
The number, lick-my-nuts-infinity, is expressed symbolically as above, in the superscript text that sequences the prior footnote. But a more consistent approach to the sequential numbering of footnotes would place it always below whatever number of a footnote you would have just said, like a bibliographic nightmare from which a hollow-eyed Borges might shudder awake.

It would be something about a library whose volumes are catalogued according to strict rules of sequence, where this must be the very last footnote to appear in the last volume on the lowest shelf at the farthest distance from the infinite-volume set with nothing in it but a minus sign and infinite pages of ∞^∞^∞^, and so on. And yet, in saying lick-my-nuts-infinity, the librarian in effect resets the equation so that it is greater than itself, making it necessary to shelve another new copy of the volume behind the current one.

This wouldn’t bother Borges yet. What would get to him after a number of lick-my-nuts-infinities would be the problem: Is it necessary to shelve these physically identical, indeed indistinguishable volumes one behind the next in the chronological sequence in which they became logically necessary, and therefore appeared? That is, is it necessary to file them from from oldest to most recent because the values of the footnote numbers in them are determined and also ascending? Or can they instead be shelved in the uncertain order they’ve ended up in, because okay, you know, physically identical. Like, doop-de-doop, filin’ books, w00t, finished. Who would ever know?

Indeed, who? Borges thinks. And yet, the record of the past that creates, nay constitutes and mathematically determines this ever-advancing sliver of the present in which we ride, so often as though with our noses pressed to the wavy and unclear glass behind, or to the more darkly opaque glass ahead, so often seeing little of where we are, and all that sort of thing… Because of this, thinks Borges, is it not true that the very fact that one volume came before the next in time, that is to say, is it not true that the fact that the past is objectively real and its effects persistent, and that to the converse, it is only our perceptions of the past that are incomplete and fleeting, and must it not therefore be the case that the volumes are entirely distinct to Nature and in the mind of God — i.e. in the Great Card Catalog and in the texts it locates and orders? In short, mustn’t we give greater authority to time than to mere matter alone?

Because oh shit, thinks Borges — i.e. Man as an imperfect vessel for the divine — if God finds out I’ve been misfiling stuff in him, I am so screwed.

Or no, he then thinks. If I put things out of order into God’s mind, how will he even know?

“I heard that, Borges!” sounds a booming voice from the front lobby.

³
The surname Witkov is a Russian rendering of the German Witzkopf, literally ‘clever head,’ suggesting either that there was a smart person somewhere among Mr. Witkov’s progenitors, or that a fulcrum of irony was found in the noun, der Witz, which in a display of that subtly opaque Germanness that often accrues to German things, also means ‘a joke.’ Wutkopf, above, substitutes the noun, die Wut, and means ‘rage head.’ If for Russo-Germanic symmetry Wutzkopf is preferable, it means ’swine head.’

⁴
Sounds like hick wap, huh?

Srsly, Amy?

D. Aristophanes — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:25:45 +0000

Amy Alkon berates some random mother for taking extra milk for her baby’s bottle at the Starbucks while buying a coffee. Her commenters are predictably outraged — with the mom.

‘Can’t wait for Mommy to teach her kiddie ethics,’ La Alkon snorts.

Unfortunately, those lessons have been pushed back until such a time as the tot’s nightmares about the ginormous translucent red-headed lady who screams at mommy finally stop.

Next up for Amy: Screaming at people who ignore the ‘Customers Only’ sign at chain restaurant bathrooms.

An Embarrassment Of Selfishness

D. Aristophanes — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:21:10 +0000

Pinko Punko and DMC team up to bring it to soon-to-be NY tax exile Roy Edroso:

Time for another Bankster Benefit Concert!

Brad — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:26:00 +0000

John Boehner is a lonely voice looking out for the little guys on Wall Street:

Boehner’s comments come as bankers prepare to descend upon Capitol Hill to press for changes to the bank-reform legislation, which they wouldn’t support in its present form. Boehner said he urged bankers not to be shy when meeting with the lawmaker staff members and to send a message that new regulations and taxes translates to into banks having less available for lending.

“Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves,” Boehner said.

This sorta tough talk makes me feel all tingly… I’m going Galt in my pants as we speak!

To spur on the brave, powerless bankers in their noble quest to plunder taxpayers and swindle investors, I think it’s time for another Bankster Benefit Concert. This one will feature a brilliant song penned by commenter John Galtdof a couple weeks back:

Do They Know It’s Bonus Time?

And there won’t be bonuses on Wall Street for FY09
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is (pffft) options
(Oooh)
Where profits never grow
Can’t keep that bungalow
Do they know it’s Bonus Time at all?

Sing, you bastards! Let Wall Street know we stand with them against the wicked forces trying to hold them accountable for their destructive actions!

Weeeeeee shaaaaaall overcoooooooooome!

Yabba-Dabba-Doofus

Tintin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:03:08 +0000

ABOVE: Barney Rubble and James Taranstone

While I was poking around the WSJ, I saw an article by James Taranto, with an absurd headline, even by Taranto’s own standards — “How Abortion Subsidies Threaten Reproductive Liberty.” It’s only a small step from this to Murdoch putting his paper on check-out tabloid racks emblazoning each new edition with headlines like “How Restricting Calories and Increasing Exercise Actually Makes You Fat,” “How Health Care Insurance Actually Kills More People Than It Saves,” and “Photographic Evidence That Obama Is a Kenyan Mutant Space Alien Zombie Socialist.”

But even as absurd as the headline is on its face, Taranto’s article makes the headline look comparatively restrained. The starting off point is a statement by Bart Stupak, the House’s most truthful representative:

“If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says.

Democrats have also been telling Stupak that abortion funding is a stimulus measure designed to create a million new jobs for abortionists and that they plan on funding the cost of all these abortions with huge tax credits for serial killers.

The first thing one must say about this position is that when stated categorically, it is nonsense.

Ya think? Maybe that should have been Taranto’s first clue that no one was actually making it, but I suppose that, in his defense, Taranto, having made thousands of nonsensical arguments on his own, doesn’t find it odd that his opponents would do the same thing.

Sure, babies are expensive. But from society’s standpoint, that expense is a necessary investment–the only way to produce the next generation of productive adults. A society in which babies are a net long-term cost–in which the average person consumes more over his lifetime than he produces–is unsustainable. A policy aimed at reducing the number of babies born would be economically ruinous, because within a few decades it would result in a shortage of workers and taxpayers.

I’m fairly certain Taranto sent this gem of profound macroeconomic analysis to his WSJ editor with an email saying “Dat whiny-assed, sissy-faced Paul Krugman don’t got nuttin’ on me, baby!!!!1!1. LOL. Woohoo. Stockholm, here I come!”

Next stop on the Taranto express train: Demo-socialist-nazi EUGENICS!

But as a matter of cold cost-benefit analysis, not all babies are equal. Some are costlier than others, and not all grow into productive adults. In particular, certain disabilities … limit productive adulthood by causing … lifelong dependency. In order to be effective, a policy of using abortion as a cost-cutting measure would have to aim at preventing the birth of [such] babies … .

Of course, Taranto’s concern about aborting babies that might turn into non-productive, dependent adults might have a somewhat personal connotation for him.

This is known as eugenics.

That is what is known as ass-hattery. Yes, indeed, it’s just a short jump from government payments for abortions to forced abortions. That’s exactly what happened when the government started paying for fire departments. It was only a matter of time before the government started forcing people to burn down their own houses.