Makes me think of Monticello

Talk about a rookie mistake. President Barry's press secretary let the thermostat out of the bag by revealing that The One like the Oval Office kept at subtropical temperatures. He'd better let his staff in on the fact that it won't do to rub the noses of the little people in the smelly fact that he's like most leaders in wanting us to "do as I say, not what I do."

At some level we realize that our leaders are eating high on the hog off of fine china in front of roaring fires up in the fancy rooms of the big house while we're eating scraps out of wooden bowls in our drafty little quarters in the basement; but that doesn't mean it's wise to say it out loud.

Makes me think President Barry shares some of Thomas Jefferson's ideas and attitudes with respect to social hierarchies. I hope he turns out to be as good a President as Massa Tom.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/01/obama_flinty_chicago_oak_or_de.asp

Perspective

Looking forward to Barry O's inauguration and the expected crowds, the government has officially declared that Washington D.C. will be a disaster area on January 20th.

I think that's a little over the top, openly declaring it to be a disaster area I mean, even though I started thinking of D.C. as pretty much of a disaster area at about the time Lyndon Johnson won reelection when I was a sophomore in high school in 1964. I was pretty ill informed back then. As the years went by I became better informed. I did enough reading about American history to attain some perspective and realize how naive I was back in high school.

Now I know that Washington D.C. has been a disaster area since at least July 4th of 1826 when both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died and the corrupt rapscallions down there realized there were no more of the founders around to look over their shoulders. July 4, 1826; that was the date when they started losing all shame. Not that they had a heck of a lot of shame to lose, because they were the natural product of democracy. And American Democracy, like all democracies, was doomed from the start. The amazing thing is how long it's more or less lasted. Even more amazing is that it seems well enough established to have at least a a certain amount of limping life in it, thank God.

For Winston Churchill was right on the money on the subject. "It has been said," he famously pronounced, "that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Which sort of gets me back to my point about officially declaring Washington to be a disaster area. It's much too late in history to take that step. And it's much too early in Barry Obama's contribution to history to make his inauguration seem like the reason for doing it.

Meanwhile, here's a pretty funny article by Robert Ferrigno of National Review that puts some perspective on the changeover from George Bush to Barack Obama.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWQ0YTk4YWY5ZDU5ZWE4ZGU1YTk0YWU3NzYyNzY4OTM=

The surprise of the week - Not!

I’ve had a couple of surprises over the past couple of days. First an old friend of mine who lives in Ohio sent me an email asking what I thought about the, uh, passionate public relations work John Edwards was doing on the side while he was standing by his wife like a moral paragon after she was diagnosed with cancer. Then two other friends asked why I haven’t written on this blog about the little package that apparently resulted from the extended game of “Squire and Milkmaid” that John and his PR honey were role playing to get their creative juices flowing, so to speak, when they were working on videos for his Presidential campaign.

My biggest surprise was learning that there are actually two people who read this blog. My second biggest surprise was learning that anyone was surprised that John Edwards was hypocritical enough to be privately conducting relations with his blonde public relations specialist while he was publicly professing everlasting devotion to his brunette marital relations specialist.

You see I think almost all politicians , and almost all other people who organize their lives around seeking power over other people, are users. I think being a user is practically a qualification for attaining power over other people. And I grew up hearing my Aunt Mary R periodically refer to politicians as whoremasters. So I’m hard to surprise about the result when men attain enough power to think they can keep it secret when they, uh, gather a few rosebuds while they may.

When the historians and geneticists revealed that Thomas Jefferson was playing “Who’s wearing the shackles now Massa” for a long time with Sally Hemings I wasn’t surprised. When I learned that Franklin Roosevelt was playing “Warm up the springs” with his secretary when he was supposed to be soaking in the warm springs I wasn’t surprised. When I learned that Dwight Eisenhower was playing “Bend over Beethoven, here comes the bratwurst” with his aide while he was planning the defeat of Nazi Germany I wasn’t surprised. And when I learned that Bill Clinton was playing “Moisten the cigar” with an intern in the Oval Office I wasn’t surprised about anything except the fact that Monica Lewinsky (Monica Lewinsky?) could get him excited enough to put a stain on her dress while he was talking to Yasser Arafat (Yasser Arafat!) on the phone.

So I’m certainly not surprised that John Edwards was playing “Sock it to you baby” with his PR gal while he was making a big show of loyalty to his wife and working on a plan to sock it to all of us by becoming President.

What did surprise me about the Edwards thing is that he’s only been paying her $15,000 a month to keep quiet despite the fact that he’s worth tens of millions from his years of suing and harassing and ruining honest doctors for providing the best care that medical science knew how to provide to mothers and infants. That $15,000 a month number surprised me because last year when he was still in the running for President and she was pregnant with expectation of their love child she could have presented him to the media trussed up over a barrel wearing only wingtip shoes and knee length black socks and she could have freshly paddled his scrawny ass cheeks so they would have a nice rosy glow in the pictures.

I can only conclude that she’s a poor negotiator.

Update - If you can't picture who John Edwards is you may want to go to this link, but only if you have a strong stomach - What a maroon! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AE847UXu3Q