Music of the Day: Chris Standring, I Ain’t Mad Atcha’

RATING: S (Serious)

Post-Inauguration Beverage of the Day: Alaskan Amber beer

Cabbies in Chicago want to be able to charge $50 if the customer vomits in the cab. Any story that has the words “vomit” and “cab” in it is inherently funny.

Our Ridiculous President (ORP) unsuccessfully tried to pretend he didn’t know about the second Iranian nuke facility. . .until he got outed. . .by the Iranians.

More humor from Our Ridiculous Vice President (ORVEEP), who said, “Not all Democrats are created equal, while most Republicans are.” I’m not sure who he was attempting to insult here. . . .

Here’s a funny story for you young people out there who voted for ORP; if you choose not to have health insurance (because, maybe, you want to spend your money on something else), guess what? “Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead.”

Ted Kennedy is dead, but the joke is still on the taxpayers of Massachusetts. “The city of Boston spent $431,000 on overtime costs to deploy 629 police officers, 48 firefighters, and a raft of other workers for the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, according to information released to the Globe yesterday under a public records request. City officials said a federal grant for “urban areas security’’ would cover $400,000 of the cost.”

The always humorous Obama administration is doing its best to keep America safe: “Even though the Border Patrol now reports that almost 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is not under effective control, and the Department of Justice says that vast stretches of the border are “easily breached,” and the Government Accountability Office has revealed that three persons “linked to terrorism” and 530 aliens from “special interest countries” were intercepted at Border Patrol checkpoints last year, the administration is nonetheless now planning to decrease the number of Border Patrol agents deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Finally, just remember that if you vomit in a Chicago cab, it’ll cost you an extra fifty bucks.

That’s all the humor I can take for one day.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Atlanta Rhythm Section, Spooky

Rating: (S) Serious

Post-Inauguration Beverage of the Day: Red Stripe Beer

Yesterday’s freak show at the United Nations did have one extremely fortuitous proposal from “the king of kings,” Mr. Gadhafi, of Libya. In his speech, he suggested that the United Nations move from New York to Libya; I, for one, think this is a wonderful idea and one that should be adopted immediately. Actually, this idea is long overdue. . . .

My own proposal was to find an old USN aircraft carrier, refurbish it a bit, refuel its reactor, float it out about 300 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, and call it the new home of the United Nations—the hangar deck could be modified to accommodate the General Assembly, the ship could easily handle four or five thousand “diplomats” and bureaucrats and terrorist thugs posing as heads of state, and we’d never have to worry about having another UN meeting in New York. If we had to, we could even rig up some remote control devices to flood the bilges on command and sink the damned thing if necessary.

But Gadhafi’s proposal is a sweet deal, too—we wouldn’t have to give up an old carrier, and we’d still be rid of the expense of upkeep for the UN, letting Libya foot the bill for housing, construction of a big-ass tent for the General Assembly meetings, catering, and so forth. So, with this posting, I am calling for the House of Representatives and the Senate to immediately adopt a bill, for passage and transmittal to President Obama for his instantaneous signature, ratifying Colonel Gadhafi’s proposal for Libya to become home to the United Nations. This would be a boon to the citizens of New York, it would reduce or eliminate American spending on an increasingly marginal organization overrun with nut jobs, and it would open the door for the United States to establish an organization of democratic nations in the commodious space now occupied by the UN.

So, thanks to ol’ Mo for this opportunity; please write or call or e-mail your congressman and/or senators and encourage them to accept Mo’s offer TODAY.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Men at Work, Who Can It Be Now?

RATING: (S) Serious

Post-Inauguration Beverage of the Day: Coffee.

Digest these, if you please: Fidel Castro praises Obama; Carter calls Obama’s critics “racists;” Gadhafi (this week’s spelling of his name) hailed Obama’s maiden U.N. General Assembly speech; Ex-KGB guy Vladimir Putin praises Obama’s decision to scrap European missile defense; and from the not-too-distant past, Hugo Chavez praises Obama.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m seein’ a trend here. Our Ridiculous President is garnering a lot of praise from some pretty unsavory types. Let us review.

Fidel Castro: Brutal communist dictator, oppressor of his own people for decades, mass murderer, a man who one could say is no friend of freedom.

Jimmy Carter: Anti-Semite; disgraced former one-term disastrous president who reacted to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by not letting American athletes go to the Olympics (that really showed those pesky Soviets!); oh, and don’t forget his reaction to the hostage-taking in Iran, which consisted of hand-wringing, indecision, and inaction.

Vladimir Putin: Anti-democratic Russian strongman and, as noted above, ex-KGB guy, former (sic) communist.

Hugo Chavez: Venezuelan dictator and minor thug hoping to someday achieve major thug status.

The only guy yesterday at the “United Nations” who didn’t praise Obama was the loon-dog from Iran, who just rambled and mouthed one lunatic phrase after another.

Here’s another trend I’ve spotted: True democrats, people who stand for liberty and freedom, say little or nothing about Our Ridiculous President and his policies and apologies and other pronouncements. ORP snubs America’s friends, as he did yesterday with Gordon Brown.

Interesting.

Obama: Praised by America’s enemies, ignored by America’s friends. Perhaps this was what was meant by “change.”

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND

Music of the Day: Will Bernard 4-Tet, Medicine Hat

Post-Inauguration Beverage of the Day: Andrassy Tokaji Aszu’

RATING: S (SERIOUS)

So, what are those not-so-good-excuses, AJ?

First of all, I still work—even though my profile says I am “semi-retired,” I’m really only half-semi-retired, which means in plain English that I have two part-time jobs (which, to be completely honest, equals about one full-time job). While neither really requires much heavy lifting, combined they consume a fair number of hours each week—not nearly as many hours as MLB’s professor-job requires, but still, I’m not sitting at home in my PJ’s watching ESPN all day, nor am I clicking from one website to another in a never-ending attempt to keep up with the idiocies (spending; massive debt; foreign policy capitulations) of the current administration.

Second, MLB and I still have a wonderful life together, despite her many hours preparing for classes, being in classes, and reading and grading the stuff turned in by the students in her classes. We see movies together, we travel together (mostly), and we spend most of our waking hours together.

Third, we have a one-year old puppy, sweet Maylie, who consumes a lot of our individual and collective time; we say she’s privileged, others might claim that she’s spoiled. We don’t care what others say—we like our doggie and we like spending time with her. Lots of time. She is, after all, the World’s Best Dog (WBD).

Fourth, even though all four kids are grown up, degreed, working, and living in other parts of the country (or the world), we do have fairly regular contact with all four, either through phone calls, e-mail, snail-mail, or actual face-to-face visits.

Fifth, we have fairly active social lives with good friends here at home and around this wonderful country. We even have friends and correspondents overseas, former students who write or call or, if we’re lucky, visit. We love spending time with our many friends here in our quiet little mountain burg, just talking, or having a glass or twelve of wine, or seeing movies, or having a glass of the Tokaji that CLG brought home from Hungary.

Sixth, we both still read books, magazines, periodicals, and on-line publications, although speaking only for myself, I don’t read nearly as many as I should. . . .

Seventh, we both have family in various other places around the country—we stay in touch with those folks either through regular, or frequent, sometimes lengthy phone calls, e-mails, visits, or snail-mail. Sometimes this means that MLB and I travel in different directions at the same time.

Eighth, I still like to chase a tennis ball around, despite low-back pain, a sore arm, hips that are beginning to make weird popping noises, ruptured discs in my neck, knees that ache after too much running around, ankles that get my attention with occasional sharp pains, and a game that hasn’t seen significant improvement in many a year.

So there.

Finally, I’ve been working, fitfully at times, on another writing project that has consumed a lot of my “thinking” and almost all of my keyboard-pounding-time in the last few weeks; this project seems important to me now and I have made a commitment to myself to write something every day—this means that time I normally would spend in a never-ending attempt to keep up with the idiocies of the current administration I now spend doing something more constructive—but it also means that my blog-posts have been reduced to a trickle.

It remains to be seen how much further effort I can put into keeping up with the peripatetic Mr. Obama and his administrative legions of tax-cheats, dissemblers, sycophants, charlatans, “community organizers,” self-proclaimed communists, obesity-regulation-czars, and other bunko artists: Mr. Obama appears on television about every 90 minutes to blather incessantly on about the latest and greatest new initiative or program or, most absurdly, unfair treatment of him and his administration on the part of the press (it’s okay to laugh—that’s really funny!)—this whole thing must be part of a grand strategy to keep everyone who has a job, a family, an intellectual life, a social life, a pet, or any other non-political activity, from staying current until such time as one throws up one’s hands and says, “Oh hell, I don’t care anymore. Who can stay abreast of all this hogwash? Where’s my beer?”

That being said, I’ll try to do better with the postings here; if you have been coming back to the blog and have been disappointed with a dearth of AJ’s maunderings, rants, fulminations, speculations, hyperbolic over-reactions, and the occasional giggle, I apologize and hope to regain some momentum in the days ahead.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

. . .to all faithful readers of AJ's blog; I have many excuses, none of them good, of course, for not writing here lately, but I won't use any of them. What I need to do is make a commitment to get back to the blog in the next couple of days, so check back again by mid-week.

Have a wonderful summer-to-fall transition!

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.