Digression Analysis

I forgot I had wanted to post this awhile back. It's a little more nuanced that "what's the fucking point of dividing by one?" but I think the idea is the same.

A math grad
by Dan Brown

Math’s a matter some make
More of than the norm. I’m
Thinking of a math grad
I shared a loft with for a time.
Who a while back had had a break-
Down, he once confessed from bed

To bed. Nothing he thought about
A lot… . He pauses. Then goes on
To speak, sane-seemingly enough,
Of a funny class of functions. One
Whose characteristic graph starts out
With the usual smooth take-off,

Somewhere along the line goes
Into a beauty of a loop-
De-loop for whatever reason, then
Picks its rising right up
Where it left off, and never does
Anything like that again.

The Power of Samantha

From LGF

Remember "I trust him, because I don't believe him?" This is pure, 100% distilled Obamka... This is the essence of our president. File this in your mind along with that phony head-shake and elbow-tap he gave Biden the other day after his comment towards Roberts. There are no extenuating circumstances. Pathetic.

All Hail Porkulus!

I was sifting through the stimulus bill today and one line struck me as rather funny, oh and I found a typo!

"None of the funds provided by this Act may be made
4 available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the
5 State, unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is
6 approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date
7 of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich
8 no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illi9
nois."

So what if this bill were to pass during the impeachment hearing and they decided not to impeach him? No money for Illinois? I'm sure they would just pass a new provision or something to say...oh it's okay now for Illinois to get the money even though Blago is still there. Call it the "Caught scoring political point provision" or something idk.

I also noticed that this will create a special oversight committe just for this bill and then another board or something to direct the oversight committe. All of these people to be hand picked by the president. Recovery.gov will be the website to follow the money trail, should be blogger fodder for...oh...the next century.

Viva Zyprickxa

Dude, you should have a talk with your uncle about this. Awfully discouraging, although not suprising, to see the daddy and baby Bush connection here. I'll bet they come out with a new miracle drug to help all of these Zyprexa users lose weight and make a few more billion dollars.

Sarah Palin or Nancy Pelosi?

"Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those--one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

Wait, so the way to help children in the midst of this "terrible fiscal budget crises" is to fund the people who want to help prevent their birth? Now that's change!

Even if this wasn't completly insane and we actually look at this statement on it's merits as James Taranto does...

"In the real world... while it is true that prosperity tends to be correlated with lower fertility, the latter is an effect rather than a cause. Today's unplanned pregnancy is tomorrow's consumer of baby products and next month's worker and taxpayer, so that subsidizing contraception, whatever its merits, is the opposite of an economic stimulus."

On Barney

My hatred for Barney Frank knows no bounds. As hatred tends to do, my ability to produce meaningful language seizes up any time I think of him. So, I'm thankful for VDH for his thoughts on the big Purple Chair of the House Financial Services Committee:

"...he enjoys the exemption accorded to the proverbial raving but glib street-corner prophet who accosts you, flips you off on the street, and shouts in your ear and in public all the way to the car before trying to mount the hood and grab the windshield wipers."

Thank you sir, may I have another...

Puerile Pledges and (to?) Our President

I guess I'm just parsing words...



Pay close attention now!



Is it just a semantic slight of hand? A little linguistic legerdemain? Incontinence? hmmmm.....

A montage of puerile pledges to Change. Or to Obama? He wants us to believe in ourselves, just not too much... Nevermind, he's not the change either, you see; he's just got the vision. But it comes from him... to us: The Word.

I remember hearing the tripe, "be the change you wish to see" a lot lately. Read: "Be the change I see." I must be unfairly parsing words, because it seems to me like some guy is just trying to get people to do what he says...

The caterpillars of totalitarianism are beginning to re-emerge... Pretty!

That Depends on What Your Definition of "Do" Is

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Just a random quote I found that kinda relates to the last post.


UPDATE: That swearing in was bizarre. Roberts fucked it up and Obama knew it.

"Our Constitution... Documents That Are Imperfect"

[Obama is talking]

"...but with the blood, sweat, and tears, of future generations... like our nation itself, [it has] a capacity to be made more perfect..."

This is beyond "Living Constitution" stuff, this is Android Constitution (no, I can't do better than that)...

He just stopped his speech to respond, "I love you back," to a fan, er, citizen -- "I love tur-ur-urkey, oh I love you!"

...next breath...

"What's required is a New Declaration of Independence not just in our Nation, but in our own lives, our own hearts, from ideology and small thinking..."

"I'm like, all I hear is clapping..."

The reason he ran for President was that, "Our politics had grown too small for the scale of the challenges we face." i.e. I can be George Bush better than George Bush was George Bush...

...random identity group montage...

I know Chris Mathews had that chill up his leg or whatever, but Obama sounds like he's the one with the chill (or is that just the cold?) when he says he's heading to Washington. Seriously, it's almost like he's tripping and saying, "this is soo sweet" to his buddies; his voice cracks when he says, "I'll be taking you with me!" It's almost like he's just your "average... person" that is just so amazed he has the opportunity to fill such big shoes... But don't be mistaken! That would make him an unqualified token. Nah, move along. He went to Harvard, remember?

"In our own lives, let's build a government that's responsible to the people." WTF, does that mean?

He did say at the beginning that our rights come from our maker, not our laws... That was the closest I got to agreeing with him on anything. But do we "cling" to those rights? Agh, who cares... FREE HEALTHCARE DUDE!

BTW, Fox News "respects" and "admires" Obama for trying to "heal the country."

Obama at WaPo!?

"'There goes our journalistic objectivity,' one reporter quipped."

That reminds me of being a teenager when my parents would ask me on a Sunday morning what I was up to the night before. "Got drunk and drove around while trying to avoid the cops," I'd say with a big smile. If they were fooled it was only because they wanted to be.... But I digress...

Hellcat, did you see him!?!?!?

A Confession?

Yes it is five in the morning...no sleep for the weary.

So I just finished watching a Hitchens interview where he talks a little about the fact that he had always known from a young age he would be a writer. He said he knew this because that is what he was, he could never imagine himself doing anything else. Which got me thinking how much I've always envied people who've had this same experience. I've thought long and hard about who I am and what I should be doing and in doing so realised I don't have a 'knack', as Hitch put it, for anything whatever. At least not for anything monetarily tangible. What I have discovered is the truth that it really does take all kinds to make our secular experiment work.

Mark Steyn does a beautiful job making my point in a different context. When asked how he reconciles, so to speak, all of the different things he writes about, music and theatre ect, he says that in an ideal world he would love to write more about music, theatre, and film but the fact is we don't live in an ideal world. He goes on to say that at some point if there are great things going on in the world and you want to say something about them and you don't, it's not going to be any concelation to have a great cd collection as western civilization falls apart. That if you value the freedom to stroll into a piano bar and hear a great singer sing 'The way you look tonight', that even that small experience is at the apex of the whole cultural foundation. You can't "share off the pleasures of a 32 bar song from all the big geopolitical issues, they are explicitly connected".

Perhaps those of us not blessed with the assuredness and talent of Hitch still have an equally important roll to play if only we could realise it. Once we realise that you can't "share off" the neccessity of the plumber from the accountant, or the janitor from the ceo, can we truly take and hold our place with dignity. As much or as little, it's hard to tell right now, as I believe this to be true, I also fear it to be a life long struggle. So I guess the best that we can do is to surround ourselves with people to share that struggle with.

News of the Day

Eliot Spitzer is recomending stimulus money be spent on transformative investments, not bridges and buildings.

"It is a unique moment to build a new foundation. It would be wise to ensure that a significant portion of the stimulus package is spent on new investments that may not be quite as ready to go but are surely more important to our long-term economic viability."

Among his recomendations is to set up a smart grid to increase efficeincey in the energy sector. This is already being done in numerous countries most notably Italy which is experiencing a payback of about 500 mil Euros a year. The cost of the set up was about 2 billion creating an astounding four year payback. Spitzer also encourages the new administration to set up the infrastructure needed to sustain non gasoline vehicles, giving more incentive for consumers to actually buy these vehicles.

Spitzer also includes electronic record keeping for healthcare as a top priority and providing funding for a robotics team at every school. Overall he says these changes will set the stage for the next "great American economic miracle".


Paging Dr. Gupta, diagnosis "Tokenitis"

The Washington Post reports that Barak Obama wants CNN Journalist Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be our next Surgeon General. According to the post "His appointment would give the administration a prominent official of Southwest Asian descent and a skilled television spokesman".

Personally, I think it's brilliant.

I Miss Grey Area

Bill Ayers is now an official blogger at Huffington Post. Color me surprised; but it appears as if grey is in short supply. It's black and white these days: the dim-witted and the enlightened.

So, here's a random thought on how I think Mz. Huffington is going to die some day: tricked into her debut snuff film by a "distinguised" Hamas leader and "scholar" -- her as the star of course... He was just so mysteriously intruiging!!

Another random thought/prediction... When they start figuring out where Bernie Madoff spent all the money, as they have started a bit, they will find out it all went to "charity." And to his lifestyle of course, but most to "charity"...