Dispatch From The Warm Front

Dateline: Tuesday, June 29

Well, it's only supposed to top out at a nippy 98 today. Yes, the tryouts for Satan's team lasted three days and we don't like to brag but we're pretty sure we're going to make the squad. The predicted high of 118 on Monday did not pan out, but the 116 obliterated the previous record of 112 set the day before, which smashed the previous record of 108 set the day before that. We made it. And Studley made it!

We made it without air conditioning. We were not especially comfortable but we most certainly survived, and during much of the time we weren't even that miserable. Contrast that with folks I saw complaining bitterly about how they weren't able to get their houses below 80 even with AC. And their swimming pools were too warm.

Of course, we're retired, and nothing was asked of us other than to sit quietly and not die. Our mailman, on the other hand, was sent out with a full load and instructions from the boss to also not die, but when he showed up in his salt-encrusted hat we gave him a tank of ice water and turned the hose on him and sat him down until his cells reinflated. As for his boss's instructions, it looked like it could have gone either way.

One friend up north reported that it had gotten up to 110 in her house when all the AC crashed the power grid. This is what I'm talking about: we've lost our skills. Hell, on our hottest day even the upstairs never got above 98. We exhaust all the air we can overnight and then button up the place tighter than Mitch McConnell's asshole. Sunday night I opened all the windows and pointed the fans out and took a cold shower and went straight to bed soaking wet with another fan on me, and I slept very much like the dead.

Part of the skills involve being able to tolerate a much wider range of temperatures than most of us have come to expect. We've become a shorts-in-the-winter and sweaters-in-the-summer kind of people, and we have nowhere to go when the system breaks down, which it is going to do.

The newspaper helpfully provided some tips for surviving extreme heat. For instance, it is suggested that you wear loose clothing to bed. Check! I've been wearing the very same suit to bed since I was fourteen (don't tell Mom), and it's gotten plenty loose. Portions of it are slouched up against other portions of it. At this point the underboobular area is my primary repository for perspiration but I have auxiliary folds in the back for off-site storage. I'm all set.

Here are my tips: sure, it's tempting to open some veins to let the heat out but be advised the relief is short-lived because the blood evaporates so quickly. So if you try this hack, you're going to want to really go for it. Similarly, you could stretch out in a kiddie pool, but remember you can drown in as little as four inches of water, so be sure to put in at least six to be on the safe side.

Better yet is to go to the source of the problem and eliminate Republicans. They've signed off on this entire debacle. As long as their preferred solution to the climate catastrophe is to make fun of Greta Thunberg, it will be crucial for us to take them out of circulation altogether. The liberal-softie way would be to vote them all out, but if they're bent on stealing an election, which seems to be their plan, stronger measures must be taken. To that end, please note that a shot through the heart is not recommended; the target is far too small and the bullet is likely to exit harmlessly straight through the spinal tapioca. Much better is to aim for the head, and possibly take out Trump's ass at the same time.

Wait! Am I inciting my followers to murder Republicans? Ha ha! Of course not! I'm kidding! Stand by.

 

In other news that should surprise no one, an enormous comet is heading our way. They're made of ice. I can't wait.

And If They Like The Weather So Much, They Can Go To Hell

 

Dateline: Friday, June 25

I've complained about heat before. It's what I do. The only reason people think of me as even-tempered is that it's not usually that hot. That's been changing fast. Scientists are reluctant to pin any one weather event on global warming because they're trained to be careful in their conclusions, but we all know the truth. We're looking at an existential bollixing. And we are both the bollixers and the bollixees.

Today I am filling bird baths and looking out at my bird friends Studley and DooDah and Dickens and Peanut Dave the scrub jay with anticipatory dread on their behalf, and envy that they are, for the moment, oblivious. There's a forecast out for this weekend for a heat wave so unprecedented that the actual precedents are cowering under the porch and peeing themselves. This never was funny, and it's not now.

This Monday, in gentle Portland, Oregon, a modest and temperate jewel of a city on a major river within sight of actual glaciers, it is currently predicted to reach 118 degrees. And it will dip all the way down to 82 at night. Up till now you could count our nighttime temperatures above 70--for all time--on one hand. So unless the nearest glacier slides right off the mountain and into our bedroom, we're screwed.

As regular readers know, I do not have, or believe in, air conditioning, and intend to survive using my prehistoric caveman skills, refined in the sodden swamps of northern Virginia. I do not intend to fire up a box that sucks up more coal power. That's how we got here.

But I'm beside myself, which is really bad, because both of me are too warm.

It's only in the nineties today, but I peek out of my closed curtains and think about asteroids. Isn't it a blessing that no one saw that monster of extinction coming, 66 million years ago? Just chomp chomp chomp like any other day, and then suddenly a blinding light and powdered dinosaurs everywhere.

But here and now, we know it's coming, we know we caused it, we know what to do about it, and we spend our days talking about trannies in the bathroom and the freedom to infect each other. We've known for over a hundred years. We were warned urgently forty years ago. Al Gore pleaded with us twenty years ago and the Libertarian/Republican conspiracy of doom responded by instructing Americans to mock him. They were not about to let anyone interfere with the lucrative rape of the planet.

Every one of them should have to answer, really answer, one simple question: What's your plan, Skippy? They do not have a plan. For anything. Anything except keeping power and money. They are criminals in the first degree and should be treated as such. Mitch McConnell and every one of the sons-of-mitches, the whole soulless lot of them, should be removed from society before they do any more harm, and punished appropriately. I'd suggest they be roasted at the stake, if there was some way to make that take a few years.

Just Another Wednesday

This post is set to go off at 3am the day after the election. I have every expectation that it will. I'll be asleep but it will happen anyway. There's always something technical that might gum up the works, but new days in general have a way of showing up on schedule. It's something you can count on.

I don't know what will have transpired last night. It's possible nobody knows for sure, even now. This is normal. It's important to know what you don't know. It's one of the hallmarks of a thoughtful mind. The cocksure are always missing something. The cocksure know everything all along, but it doesn't make them right.

I think most of us voters are driven by fear. It's a powerful motivator. The main difference between the two major American factions is what we fear. The faction I don't tend to vote with is afraid of a lot of things. In my view, most of those things don't exist. They are phantoms produced in the Devil's workshop to divert us from what we really should fear, to harvest our votes for the purpose of further siphoning off our wealth. Thus, the desperate refugee from violence is transformed into a murderous threat. Thus, a righteous movement of patriots marching for justice is transformed into roving bands of thugs. Thus, an attempt to claw back a share of our stolen treasure for the common good is transformed into the Socialist bogeyman, out to pick our pockets. These are the fictions manufactured by the real thieves. The fat cats. The wicked and criminally negligent destroyers of our future.

This faction has been conditioned to be afraid of The Other, and The Other has been defined so broadly it even includes me. A small, mouthy, entirely harmless human, still I am declared an enemy. I have repeatedly been declared an enemy by the president of the United States. I, and a solid majority of my fellow citizens, have been deemed unworthy of protection or even consideration. United we used to stand, but divided we elect Republicans. We're divided. Have we done it again?

I fear that our trust in our civilizing institutions, from the courts to the press, has been so degraded that we will crumble into gang warfare, featuring executions in the street and terrorist acts from all corners, with the heavily armed right-wing players the more dangerous by far.

What I fear more than anything is that we will miss our last chance to pull out of the death-spiral that is our devotion to fossil fuels. We may well have missed it already; we've wasted four precious years on top of another twenty years purchased by the Koch brothers, which they've blown on toys and party favors for their friends. Cheap energy has turned us into stumbling drunks, with decision-making abilities to match.

No matter what kind of world I've woken up to today, my path is clear. I must try hard to live up to my ideals to push my party where it needs to go, and resist the other party with all I can muster, and work for justice always, and do it peacefully. I once thought my political counterparts' brains had been scooped out and replaced by pudding. Of late I realize that pudding has been packed with nails and shards of glass. But I must remember to be kind. Kindness moves more hearts than belligerence. It's not easy. It will take stamina. But if we didn't have stamina, we'd be long gone by now.

I know we can't fight terror with terror. Not if we want to prevail.

The Price Of Freedom, TBD

You really have to hand it to the Republicans. They can call up a standing army at any time and not even pay the soldiers. The pawns can be found everywhere, like little dormant seeds in the soil, and all the Rs have to do is plop in some manure and boom, up they spring in their little flag outfits, loud and proud and fully armed, ready to take on the enemies of the plutocracy. And boy oh boy do they have plenty of manure. They ain't running out of that anytime soon.

Their aim is pretty transparent. They would like to be in power forever in order to funnel all the money from as many people as possible to the lucky few that own the propaganda arm, the presidency, and the courts. Of course that's a lousy way to raise an army. You can't get people up in literal arms by telling them you want them to work for minimum wage or lower with no sick leave and no pension and no medical insurance, just so a small number of people can own everything in the world. That's where the manure comes in. They have to make the people believe they give one shiny shit about gun rights and abortion and [cough cough] freedom and then, just like that, they've got their sad little soldiers, marching as to war.

Not really sure what a bunch of people screaming and honking and wiping their noses on the flag because of a public health order has to do with the right to bear arms, but in certain circles that case can be made without any logic involved whatsoever. You could accuse your mom of trying to take your Second Amendment rights away if she runs out of Nestlé's Quik, and nobody'd even blink an eye anymore.

I mean, what's the good of open-carry laws if they're making you march around the living room with your toddler all day long? The point is to brandish. Can't brandish by yourself. Look at them! All dolled up in bullet-proof this-and-that, bristling with firepower! Nothing's going to take them down, by God. Psst: Do they know just how small a virus is? Perhaps they're planning to rain bullets into the air in case we get a locust plague next. That, at least, would take down one or two locusts, making it more effective than trying to kill a virus with an antibiotic--Mr. President Science-Boy, sir.

And if you can't rouse enough rabble with an imaginary assault on gun rights, you can always remind people how many fetuses have been lost compared with the number of grandmas dying ghastly deaths alone in the ICU. That old chestnut! Never gets old.

Hell, you can raise an army by telling people Democrat Governors want to shut down their states until December just so people can't say Merry Christmas to each other. You can make up any old thing. There will always be willing buyers. Seeds...manure...sprinkle, sprinkle. Boom.

The demonstrations in Michigan and elsewhere have had some adorable touches. "Don't carpool," one organizer tweeted, "gas is cheap!" And so in a new natural world that has gone blessedly quiet and started showing signs of environmental repair and recovery in a few short weeks, amassing the maximum number of vehicles making the maximum amount of noise is bound to have the bonus effect of annoying liberals. Awesome, my dudes! Now, don't you feel better?

You don't?

Excellent. That means you're still exploitable.

When you get your socialist stimulus check from The Little People, a.k.a. the chumps who aren't rich enough to quit paying taxes, just mail them to Betsy DeVos and her family, who have sunk a buttload of dough into your little "grass-roots" organization. That's really her point, stripped down. She and her friends want the rest of your money.

Pikers, One And All

I gotta admit right up front: this impeachment trial is as partisan as they come.

Not because Democrats were gunning for Trump as soon as he took office.  That's just silly. These are Democrats. They've been infighting the whole time. Some of them have been calling for impeachment on grounds of obstruction as outlined in the Mueller report, some have preferred to challenge him with the emoluments clause, some of them have been too busy with the organic kale growers' lobby to pay attention; Nancy Pelosi herself was reluctant as hell to impeach; and it was only late in the game, when someone finally discovered the horse's head from Marie Yovanovitch's bed in a Kyiv dumpster, that the Dems finally said Okay, maybe we've got to go for it now.

Partisan? That would apply more to the obstinacy of the locked-in Republicans, every last craven one of them, who have looked on as Adam Schiff put the color glossies of the concrete shoes on the screen, and said, Okay, but those were illegally fished out of foreign territorial waters in defiance of treaty and none of us, Sir, is above the law. Stand down, Sir.

Some are saying Republicans are afraid to go against their party leaders, but it is unclear what they are afraid of. Is it simply a matter of a working policy of putting party over principle and power over truth? Or is something more sinister at work?

The answer might lie in the Republican reaction to one of Schiff's last statements, in which he quoted a White House source saying any Republican voting against the President would find his or her head on a pike.

Here we've had three solid days in which the House impeachment managers have built a brick shithouse of a case against the President and shattered any conceivable defense, and the whole time Republicans have either listened, fidgeted, or absorbed it all by cutaneous gas exchange through the mucus membranes of their skin; and all of a sudden, right at the end there, they are shocked at the very suggestion that they might feel threatened by the nice man in the Oval Office. Offended! Appalled! How dare you quote that news report, Sir!

And there is your clue. Whenever a Republican goes full Brett Kavanaugh on anything, you can bet that whatever they are accused of is one hundred percent true. The madder they get, the higher are the pikes.

So. They really are afraid. It seems odd to imagine that any grown man or woman would forgo a principled stand just because of a tweet threat from the Alliterator in Chief. Loopy Lamar? Lyin' Lisa? Munchkin Mitt? Sebaceous Susan? Naah. Can't be.

It's got to be serious Kompromat. There must be a dossier on every last one of them. Don't know where someone as upright as the President would find such material, surrounded as he is by only the finest American public servants and not even acquainted with the Russian oligarchy, but it's there. And it's got to be not only stuff that would threaten the Senators' precious power, but stuff they could never recover from. We're talking abortions obtained or paid for; we're talking not merely sexual affairs but affairs in which the good Senators are submissively involved with people who trace their lineage to the shithole countries. We're talking audiotape of them asking for plant-based burgers.

They're terrified.

The Billionaire Protection Party Playbook

There are 4,398 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for President. It's a sharp bunch. There are some differences in their proposals but they're all operating on the side of goodness. You should pick one or two you really like and toss them a few nickels and see where it all lands. What you shouldn't do  is worry too much about something called "electability."

Because every single one of them is electable. Most citizens do not like Donald Trump, and do not like him hard. Even most of the ones that do like him don't care for him personally, because he's rude and childish, but they like how that gets liberals all worked up. Of the remainder who really, really like him, a significant percentage will fall down go boom or soil themselves on their way to the polling place.

So if you really like one of the leftmost candidates (formerly known as Eisenhower Republicans) but think you'd have a better shot with someone beiger who can't be pinned down to any position, think again. It doesn't matter who we pick, because the attack machine will be the same for any of them. If we nominated that flamer Jesus, he'd get the same treatment. The massively-endowed think tanks and focus groups that champion the Billionaire Protection Party never let the truth get in the way of a good tactic.

The eventual Democratic nominee will be called a socialist. Doesn't matter that there aren't any socialists running, or that people don't know what socialism is. Most of the ideas Democrats are espousing are very popular. You call the very same platform socialist, and the public turns on them. There will be very sophisticated memes out there proliferating, depicting the candidate as crazed or drenched in red or wearing horns, because that is how we choose a President these days. If you ask the average voter what a socialist is, you will be told that it is a person who wants to take all you have worked for and give it to someone who doesn't deserve it. That's actually what the billionaires are doing, but the Billionaire Protection Party has plenty of cash to devote to confusing you about these things.

Once they've gotten the public all heated up about socialists, they'll start hammering away on the idea that our Democratic candidates not only want to take away what you have, but they want to make fun of you or shame you. They'll say they're coming after your favorite light bulb and your drinking straw and they'll force you into a skinny little car you don't want. They will say this is taking away your freedom. Focus groups have found that Freedom plays really well with Americans. Americans will happily ride the last glacier to rubble and pull the last fish from the sea as long as they still have their freedom. And they hate to be scolded. They will jam a dozen plastic straws in their sodas and blow black exhaust out of their big rigs just to stick it to the scolds and know-it-alls. This is exactly what a two-year-old would do, but the Billionaire Protection Party can afford to shower them with Legos and cheap candy so Mommy and Daddy can go out and paint the town red.

So go ahead and nominate a real grownup. You might just as well. The public might even surprise you and elect them.

The Urge To Purge

I voted last week. There were problems. Tater Cat kept stretching out on the Voter's Pamphlet, and I got so caught up trying to figure out one of the ballot measures that I overcooked my oatmeal. Other than that, things went smoothly.  The Voter's Pamphlet came through the mail slot a couple weeks ago and a few days later the ballots shot through too. If I could rig up the mail slot so they'd land in my lap it would be even better.

It takes me a few days to study the ballot, on account of having to attend to the oatmeal and the litter box and whatnot, but I've got plenty of time. And it's a good thing, too. I remember those awful days when we'd trudge through the rain to the polling place and the nice neighbor lady would hand us our ballots and we'd pull the curtains behind us and vote. They were tiny curtains, gave you standard hospital-gown coverage. The ballot always seemed to have a few surprises I wasn't prepared for and that took some time. And then there'd be some initiative that would be described like this:

"The result of a NO vote is to maintain the repeal of the prohibition of the anti-inflammatory annulment revision ban." This kind of thing takes a lot of study. You have to start at the end and work backwards, and you don't always have enough fingers. Filling in the bubble at that point is like snipping the last wire on an explosive device. One wrong move and you might have agreed to donate a kidney to a Republican. It's best done from an easy chair, next to a cat with extra toes.

So I'm certainly glad we switched over to this nice, 100% paper ballot unhackable home voting system. I'm sure the rest of you are satisfied too.

What? You still go to the polls? You stand in line for hours? Sometimes you discover you're not on the rolls anymore? Your chads are still hanging under that curtain? There's no paper trail? You can't vote if your address is a post office box? You need your birth certificate, a note from your mommy, and an 8x10 color glossy? What kind of a stupid system is that?

Well, color me horrified. Except in Georgia, where it would be in my best interest not to color me at all, lest I get purged. There's a nice black woman running for governor there and it even looks like she has a good chance unless something can be done about it. Fortunately, the white dude she's running against is the Secretary of State in charge of elections, so something is.

I do read these comment threads full of Republican apologists. I have to, otherwise I might be able to sleep through the night. So I know what the problem is. There are lots and lots of people out there who can't even be bothered to get a proper driver's license with a photo I.D. to show to the poll people, so they shouldn't be allowed to vote. If you're that lazy, you shouldn't vote.

Uh. The lazy ones don't vote, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

Oh! And then there are all those people still on the voting rolls who are technically dead. That's a travesty. Thousands! We must purge the rolls of dead people.

Uh. Dead people vote even less often than lazy people. If you think you see a bunch of raggedy dead people lurching toward the polling booth, they're probably just homeless. They should vote too--they probably have opinions and life experiences that we need to hear about.

In general, Democrats think people who want to vote should be able to vote, whereas Republicans think people who want to vote Republican should be able to vote. Personally, I think felons should be able to vote. Why not? I understand people think voting is a privilege, but isn't it a privilege of citizenship? Are felons not citizens?

Ah. Citizens. There's the real problem: all those immigrants coming in to vote in our elections. They won't call the cops if there's trouble in the neighborhood, lest they be swept into detention on mistaken identity, but they're lining up in droves to cast illegal ballots. It's a risk for sure, so the only possible explanation for this is they're getting paid by George Soros. We already know they'll do anything for a little bit of money. They'll even pick radishes and dismember chickens and stuff. So. Ipso whacko, they're on the take.

Well, clearly, some restrictions are necessary. We can't just have people expressing their democratic wishes willy-nilly. There should be hoops to jump through. Hoops! That's it!

Let's make everybody shoot foul shots for ballots! Or, alternately, let's make everyone pass a basic civics test--ask a newly naturalized citizen if you need help. Or let's wipe out the lazy contingent altogether by requiring everyone to walk a thousand miles through the desert. That, there, shows fortitude.

You'd Think They'd Be On Snow White's Side

The Trump administration has announced the rollback of major provisions of the Obama-era Poison Apple Elimination Act, prompting outcry from progressives who hate freedom. "How can the Republicans be in favor of poison apples?" they demanded on the Senate floor. Majority leader Mitch McConnell's cheeks plumped in an indulgent smile.

"The government should not be in charge of determining which apples are poison and which are not," he explained tartly. "This is simple overreach. The market is perfectly capable of sorting out the apple situation."

"That is absurd," thundered Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, exhibiting the first stages of flabbergastion. "It is entirely within the government's purview to protect American citizens from poison in their food."

McConnell had already left the chambers. "Hogwash," he replied, through a spokesman who vouched for his familiarity with hogwash. "This entire bill has had the effect of damaging the Apple Pie industry. Democrats simply don't trust Americans to choose their own fruit products."

"Democrats Wage War On Apple Pie," read the tabloid headline. Yellow-headed anchorettes from Fox News drummed the theme. Sources say the original Poison Apple Elimination Act was the brainchild of Democrat Senator Phil Necro after he was discovered trying to kiss a beautiful young woman who was already dead and in a casket. "I was merely trying to smell her lips to determine the cause of death so we can avoid this dreadful calamity in the future," he said, shortly before resigning to spend more time with his family.

In an interview on Fox News, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan assured Democrats that this action should not be taken personally. "The President is merely trying to target waste in government by rolling back all legislation enacted between 2008 and 2016. It is not possible," he said, "to conduct the careful review that Americans demand and expect while these laws are still on the books. They must be withdrawn before they can demonstrate any effects."

Democratic leaders met behind closed doors with speechwriters and polling experts to speculate on how they had become the anti-apple-pie party. It was agreed that nothing good could come of pointing out that Republican Rep. Morguetrotter had been caught in exactly the same situation as Senator Necro without suffering reprimand of any kind from his party. "I can hear it now," groused the consultant from Public Relations, adopting a mocking tone. "What Mr. Morguetrotter does in his free time is not something the American people care about. And unlike his Democrat counterpart, he didn't introduce needless job-killing legislation that hamstrings the apple pie industry. In fact, the congressman is proud to say he didn't do anything at all."

Everyone slumped.

"We can go ahead and let that Morguetrotter business play out on Facebook, as usual," the consultant went on, "but our constituents don't spread 'gotcha' memes like that as much. They're too wrapped up in climate change and civil rights issues."

"As well they should be," Merkley snapped. "Did you see that massive giveaway to the coal industry those assholes are cooking up now? They're pulling us out of solar and wind until they've taken down all the mountains in Kentucky."

The consultant riffled the papers in front of him, and stabbed a finger at one page. "Ah. Here it is. The Heritage Emissions Protection Act?"

Merkley lowered his head to his desk and began to pound slowly.

"Thing is, they keep funneling all the money to their wealthy cronies while ginning up all these controversies to distract us. Like that NFL taking-a-knee fiasco. How did that peaceful protest get to be a dig at our armed forces? How did we lose control of that story? It's utter bullshit."

"I know! Let's do it their way! 'Republicans take stand against jobs and American workers' rights by demanding that professional players exercising freedom of speech be removed from the football field.'"

"I'm on it," said an aide, tapping away at his phone.

"Fake News!" the President tweeted twelve hours later. "Nobody loves field Negroes as much as Republicans do. Believe me."

Listen.

Psst! Hey! I'm over here!

Not you, Donald. I know you can't see me. Don't need to talk about anyone's pussy for me to know that. We all know what you think of us. That's our superpower: you can't see us, but we can see you. You're a deeply insecure old fool, of only average intelligence and little education, who needs a lot of attention, and you elevate yourself by assuming you have nothing in common, even humanity, with anyone else. You further subscribe to the preposterous notion that wealth, no matter how it is accumulated, is proof of virtue. You're a boob.

I'm waving at the rest of you, right behind Donald. You guys have spent way too much time in your little clubhouse. But we can see you, even if you can't see us. We can see you, too, Speaker Ryan, even as you rise to our defense, scolding Donald and declaring that we women should be "championed and revered."

Oh, I swann, Mr. Ryan! Thank you! That's me, up there in the stands, in my pretty velvet gown, gazing in adoration as you arrive on your muscular stallion, your long lance in your hand! Now please help me down from this high seat you put me on and give me a little of your time. I'd like a word.

This is such a simple idea: I don't know why it's so hard to understand. But here it is: I'm not that much different from you. Believe me, it hurts me more to say it than for you to hear it. Even though I am female, this unknowable Other, I am a human being who was born and is going to die. That's a mortal frame around us we share, and it's more important than the bits we don't share. And I can tell when someone is looking right through me without seeing me. If you say you revere me, I know you have no idea who I am.

Some club. You know what you people are missing? Empathy. A plain and simple willingness to see other humans as the humans they are. The ability to accept that another's experience is neither the same as yours, nor ultimately that much different. Empathy means you should be able to imagine what it might be like to be a Muslim in a country that increasingly isolates and threatens you. Or an African-American who is repeatedly pulled over and searched for driving a crappy car, or a really nice car. Or a Syrian fleeing his only home with his bloodied children only to find there is no other home for him. Or an ordinary woman reflexively strategizing how to get home without being assaulted. Do some of us frighten you, or repel you, or bore you? That's a sign you need to listen harder. It takes practice. The more you are able to imagine yourself in someone else's skin, the more justice there will be in this world, and the closer we will be to achieving peace..

I don't want a champion. I'll be fine. There are some big things you could help me with: you could dismantle the for-profit health insurance industry. You could dismantle the for-itself wealth industry. You could change the tax system so that our shared burdens are borne fairly. You could recognize that economic growth is unsustainable and that the earth's resources are finite. You could put people and planet over profit.

But you won't. I can see you. I'll see you in November.

No Doot About It

I don't always notice these milestones, but it came to my attention that this is my 700th post here at Murrmurrs. So it seemed like maybe I should take stock or something. There are a lot of people who were blogging before I came on the scene, but the scene in general has petered out. Fewer people blog, and even fewer pay any attention to those who do.

But I'm still here. I'm here with a reduced number of readers, but I'm pretty sure that those people still dropping by are sincere and pure at heart and have come here of their own free will, and also they're bored at work.

You're supposed to have a theme. You're a quilter, or you're a Mommy, or you're an irascible political junkie with grindable axes. Everyone knows what to expect of you. With me, you don't know exactly what I'm going to write about--you couldn't, because I don't--but I do wear some of the same paths smooth. I care a lot about the environment and extinction, and the wholesale destruction of the global systems that had been sustaining us and our fellow planetary passengers for quite a long time. I'm interested in poop. And I seem to be really hard on Republicans, which would be totally unfair and unbalanced, except that they have so got it coming. They are assholes nine ways to Sunday, the whole lot of them. They want their nests feathered with stuff they've plucked off of you, and then they want to tell you to get your own damn sweater and oh by the way how many eggs you should raise.

So here's an example. Found this the other day, at the 5000-foot elevation of one of our local volcanoes. I don't know if this is poop or not. It looks like poop, but it also looks like some other kind of non-digestive consequence of some little critter's shovelings or perambulations; or even something that water did to dirt in its spare time. I poke around in doots just to see if any clues pop out, and if they don't, I slap their picture on the internet like this so someone smarter than I am can tell me what they are. These look to be made of plain dirt.

I mean, I would totally support a Republican, on principle, if I agreed with him, but on every single dag-blasted issue I care deeply about, and all the second- and third-tier ones too, they've got everything totally fucking upside-down. The solution to the climate situation is to declare it doesn't exist until they're done drilling out all the money. The solution to the obscene concentration of wealth in a few individuals is to make damn sure they're not taxed. The solution to gun violence is more guns. The solution to unaffordable health care is really unaffordable health care. The solution to abortion is discouraging contraception. The solution to the problem of gay marriage is--wait, what problem? They're insane. They'll bang a pulpit one minute and a young boy the next, and gin up five reasons to go to war on the way to prayer breakfast. They've got the word of the Lord at one end and the tailpipe of the pirate class at the other, and in between is the vacant space where they allege there might be a tangible soul worthy of protecting. No matter how thoroughly they fuck something, they won't pull out. The only thing they'd like better than lining their pockets is if they could stash the cash in a wallet made from the scrotum of an endangered tiger.

The nicest thing you can say about them is they don't mean a damn thing they say. Take the Mexican immigrants. They love them. They love the cheap labor, and they don't plan to do a thing about it. But they'll sure as hell use them to pry up votes.

Ruined water, ruined air, ruined lives, squandered resources, hypocrisy, and sanctimony. Poke around this kind of shit long enough, you know exactly where it comes from.

Whatever It Is, It's Contagious

In what analysts say is a sign that Americans are more divided than ever, clashes continued over the weekend between factions that believe the Ebola virus is God's judgment for Obama's attempts to divide Jerusalem and those contending it is God's judgment for Obama's embrace of marriage equality.

White House spokesmen protested the characterization, but were undermined when a report surfaced that the President himself had insisted on the presentation of bush meat at a state dinner, according to the neighbor of a cousin of a disgruntled White House sous-chef recently fired for an inflammatory meatloaf and chronic sauce incompatibility.

Epidemiologists confirmed the first Ebola case occurred when Obama was fifteen years old; this seems to underscore the complexity of Obama's plot in that it might have extended to several fore-Bamas. Observers had already pointed out the extraordinary family cunning involved in timing the future President's conception to coincide with the introduction of a state Americans were not even fully aware of, and which was considered too tropical and laid-back to maintain proper record-keeping. Others expressed skepticism that any African Muslim family could be so clever and far-sighted, noting that any association between the President's family and the virus could be more elegantly accounted for by invoking the phrase "the spawn of Satan." This theory also absolves God of responsibility, since it is generally acknowledged He never intended this disease to move beyond the colored folk.

Several pundits are warning of the likelihood that terrorists will make little Ebola bombs of themselves and fly to America to barf on people; others insist the terrorist menace had begun much earlier, noting that infected fruit bats are almost indistinguishable from drones.

Many express relief that at least the sheer diversity of opinion proves that Americans have not succumbed to a sheep-herd mentality. They cite the broad range of reasons given for Obama's orchestration of the epidemic, from his desire to elevate Muslims to his desire to impose martial law and take away citizens' guns. Either proposition is preposterous, according to some, who point out the epidemic began decades ago after Henry Kissinger expressed an intent to depopulate Africa using birth control, arms shipments, monkey parasites, and--as a backup--Dick Cheney.

Adding a note of levity to an otherwise dire national conversation, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) checked in from his newly rubberized office to declare that Obama was waging a war on women by deliberately endangering nurses, who are, or should be, women. "They set them up and then they throw them under the bus," he thundered, although others in his own party were equally vehement in their disagreement, preferring the rhetorical use of the phrase "sent to the back of the bus" for its ironic historical resonance.

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, inexplicably still alive, insisted that Obama engineered the epidemic because he thinks America is no greater than any other nation and that if Africa has Ebola, the United States should, too. Aggrieved members of the cabinet were overheard to complain that saying Africa has Ebola is like saying North America has pineapple trees. This reminder further inflamed the birther contingent, which sneered that Hawaii is not much of a state, really, and was only added to the union on paper to make the flag stars come out even. Nodding vigorously, an unnamed representative of the Palin family, which has always bristled at the presumed equivalence of Alaska and Hawaii, said she could see that point from her back porch.

Analysts urged caution, saying that it is too early in the epidemic to pinpoint the precise depth of Obama's involvement, or even determine who he intends to kill.

Screwed

Republicans as a group strike me as having a much better grasp of the Big Picture than their opponents. Not the really big picture--not the one in which all the consequences of their agenda come into view. But within their narrow, profit-centered worldview, their strategic view is wide. Once a threat is detected, say, the possibility that science-driven policy might dismantle the fossil-fuel economy, they band together as one, distribute the script, and read off of it in unison. And that is how meaningful progress toward sustainability is thwarted. The goal was merely to "create doubt" about man-caused climate change, and in that they were wildly successful. Successful to the point that even a thoughtful commenter on this blog was moved to say I don't know; maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle; maybe we can find something to agree on and go forward; surely things aren't as urgent as the scientists keep saying it is. That's all the doubt you need to maintain the status quo, because getting us off this train wreck is going to take a ton of sacrifice and cause a ton of disruption. Of course, the middle-ground solution is a sham. It's as though flat-earthers are battling the round-earthers, and they get the people to think I don't know. Maybe it's shaped like a bowl?

So now a slightly different script has been supplied to the conservative lights, and this one is aimed straight at science in general. Because there is useful science, the kind with the promise of great profit in it, the kind any company like Monsanto or Merck would pay for, and then there is basic science, and basic science is often not in the Republicans' best interest. That's why the Bush administration tried to scour it out of the EPA. And, after all, the budget for basic science would buy two or three perfectly good days of war in Afghanistan.

Fortunately for the enemies of basic science, there is plenty of research that lends itself to ridicule, like the snail sex research. Why, they ask, grinning, are the taxpayers asked to pay for snail sex research? (The question is rhetorical. Nobody wants to hear an explanation.) Or why should we pay to find out about duck sex?

But oh, they made a big mistake there. Because they totally need the duck sex research. Evolutionary Biologist Patricia Brennan has discovered that the duck sex act has aspects found in no other animal. The male duck has an amazing, lymph-driven, explosive, spiral-shaped penis. He does not erect it and find someone to put it in. No. He keeps it inside and makes the pertinent contact with a female duck and it detonates. It unfurls inside her in a fraction of a second. It's ba-da-boom without the ba-da. And because his penis is spiral-shaped, he is truly screwing, or trying to.

But we all know how hard it is to screw something in if the threads are off. And the female duck, as it turns out, has evolved an elaborate vagina designed to thwart any male she is not interested in. She has cul-de-sacs built right in, branches that dead-end, segments that are righty-tighty where  he is lefty-loosey. His penis begins to go off and that's when the twat thickens. It takes a sudden angle his amazing exploding duck dick cannot negotiate, and in no time his semen is sequestered in a dead-end far away from the egg. The female, if she encounters a male she actually is interested in, can relax the whole contraption to enable the desired mate to be more successful.

In other words, when it comes to over-aggressive drakes, the female has ways of shutting that whole thing down.

This surely bolsters the otherwise risible contention of Todd Akin that conceptions from rape are very rare and, by extension, that women wanting an abortion must have been asking for it, deep down inside.

Mr. Akin was running for office at the time. His position was rigid and he tried to come from behind but it was no use. He, and Richard Mourdock (R-IN), and others propounding their own personal science, were shut down in 2012 in their quests for public office, and polls showed that they were opposed by a tide of women. We don't know what they're doing now or where their views are being spewed, but at least it's probably some dead-end where they can't do much harm, and not the United States Congress.

THE VIDEO OBAMA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE

Big Dick--that's what he likes to be called--ushered the New Guy into the Situation Creation Room.

"Welcome to Operation Peg-Leg, the home of the R's. Everybody, this is the New Guy."

"Arrrr," everybody said, raising a hooked finger. The New Guy smiled. "So this is where the magic happens," he said, tentatively hooking his finger in response.

Big Dick swept his hand over the room. "As you can see, we're grouped into our constituencies--you've got your gun groups over there, your religious, etc., etc.," he said. A pair of Log Cabin Republicans waved from the most remote corner, behind a sneeze guard. "You're just in time to have a look at the latest material." Everyone turned to the big screen.

President Obama was speaking into a nest of microphones with an inner-city elementary school in the background. "We must make sure all our children, wherever they live, are given the attention they need to succeed, rich or poor, rural, or urban."


The New Guy frowned. "I don't know. That doesn't give us much to work with. It's hard to argue with. And he looks presidential."

The gang chuckled. "Show us some of that magic, Charlie," one said. Charlie poked away at a computer while the gang brought the New Guy up to date. "Ta-da," Charlie said, after a few minutes. The news clip was replayed.

Obama frowned into the microphones. "We must make...all our children...where...att-urban," he said. The New Guy's mouth dropped open.

"Whoa. Really? That's incredible. But it's all choppy. He looks like he's jerking around. Who's going to buy that?"

"'Jerking around,' or 'looking shifty?'" Big Dick said, slapping the New Guy on the back. "And hear this: there is nothing that can't be sold. Right, boys?"

"Arrrr," the boys agreed.

"Still," the New Guy said. "That doesn't seem fair."

Everyone in the room burst out laughing. "Oh my god, he's adorable," came a voice behind the sneeze guard, earning quelling stares all around.

"Don't be a child," Big Dick said. "Life is not fair. Look. We knocked down wages everywhere by shifting jobs out of the country, and we put the savings into our own pockets, and got the people to think it's the fault of the last two union workers left. And once we finish off the unions, there will be nothing to keep wages from hitting bottom. We invented credit derivatives and other things even we don't understand and sucked all the money out of the housing market, and got the people to think we need to get regulators off our back. We're sitting on the biggest pile of money since God hit the lottery and we got the people to think we shouldn't pay taxes, in case we start creating jobs, even though we've done just the opposite. And you want fair?"


"It's not that. But this--" the New Guy pointed at the screen--"it's not really true, is it? I mean, can we say that?"

"You want truth or you want the money? Can't have both. But don't worry. No one needs to tell a lie here. All we do is air the controversy on Fox. 'Some say Obama wants to make our children wear a turban. Sources in the White House are silent on the issue. If Obama truly does not have plans to compel our children to wear a turban, why has he not issued a forceful denial?' Like that. We can get three days out of that, easy. Then we send it over to our viral e-mail department."

"And that will do the trick?" the New Guy said, watching the new tape in a loop. As it became more familiar, the President was indeed starting to look more shifty than spastic. His eyes snapped back and forth. He didn't look trustworthy at all.

"Count on it. Between the erosion of critical thinking we've achieved by weakening our public schools and the deadening influence of reality TV, we've got over half the population unable to put together a coherent sentence. But they can click on 'forward' like nobody's business."

"That's the part I was wondering about, actually. I can see how we're driving the pro-life people to vote for us, and the anti-gay--sorry, guys--"

Sheepish grins and shrugs could be made out from behind the sneeze guard.

"--but how are we supposed to pick up the folks who are so dumb they can't even be bothered to go to the polls?"

"Everybody's got something that'll light a fire under them. And it's our job here to figure out what it is. Oh look--new grist for the milll," Big Dick said, turning back to the screen. Obama was speaking into a nest of microphones, the seal of the President majestic behind him.

"Make no mistake: we will swiftly institute a strong response to attacks by those intent on jihad on any of our friends and allies, including Turkey."


Charlie grinned and went to work. Members of the viral e-mail department looked over his shoulder, and then burst out laughing.

To: all
Subject: VIDEO OBAMA DOESNT WANT YOU TO SEE


Its not enough for the Obamacrats to confiscate our guns and make us drive tiny underpowered cars and force us to wait ten months for heart surgery under little squiggly light bulbs. Hes really gone to far this time, take a look at the video if you can stand it, its right there in front of us, but the lamestream media dont want you to see it:


[video: "WE WILL SWIFTLY INSTITUTE A TAX ON JERKY"]


Forward this to everyone you know!

To Dream, Perchance To Tweet

So I'm on Twitter, I guess. Now what?

This will no doubt resolve itself in time, but for now the thought of plunging in and learning the ropes makes me spin into reverie. This is a cherished ability of mine, to look clear-eyed into reality and veer away, and it's a significant component of my mental health regimen. In my reverie there's an on-ramp, and a man is walking up it towards me. That's me at the top of the ramp in a long homespun dress and a bonnet, a goose quill behind my ear. Sure, it seems a little girly now, but that's what everyone is wearing, and you don't have to put on any underwear. The man gets closer and closer. He has a broad, infectious smile. Why, it's Dwight Eisenhower, sure as shit! He gets up to where I'm standing at the top of the ramp and sweeps his hand downhill, indicating a mighty tempest of traffic going every which way. He's so friendly and pleased I can't help but smile back. But I'm uneasy. I'm sensing disapproval from my father. My father did not like Dwight Eisenhower.

"Why not?" asks Mr. Eisenhower, which startles me. Then I realize Mr. Eisenhower and my father are both dead, and had probably already had words. Daddy didn't mince them. He flang them out fully-syllabled in impeccable order, such that, even listening, you could tell they were spelled correctly, and anyone arguing with him was likely to realize he was losing even if he didn't know why. Mr. Eisenhower was still smiling. He was hard to dislike, actually.

I had to think about it. Most people liked Ike, and the main reason Dad didn't was that he wasn't Adlai Stevenson, near as I could make out. I was too little to understand exactly why we weren't Republicans, but we sure weren't. Being a Republican meant you had to join a private golf club and drive an Oldsmobile to it, and Daddy was a Peugeot-to-the-hiking-trail kind of fellow.

"Well," I said, thinking back, "I'm not exactly sure. I was pretty young. There was that whole Richard Nixon thing, and his obsession with the Communists."

"Was your father a Communist?"

[Pretty much. Let's just say he might have had Bolshevik sensibilities.] "I'm not sure it's any of your business," I said, getting my back up a little. Dad might have been on to something. "My father didn't think much of Republicans, and that was well before they all turned into lunatics."

"True," Ike said, his smile faltering a little. "Well, you're a nice girl. Interesting get-up. Weren't you born in 1953?"

Daddy, the Peugeot, and friends

I was, but I can wear whatever I want in my own reverie. I would have backed all the way into the nineteenth century, if I weren't conflicted about the whale oil.

"Don't mind me. You can wear whatever you want in your own reverie. Now," Mr. Eisenhower went on, putting a hand on my shoulder and fanning the other towards the swirl of traffic below. "Have a look. It's my Interstate Highway System," he said. "Do you like it?"

It looked pretty scary, tell the truth. I edged a bit further into the past. "I don't rightly know, Mr. Eisenhower," I said. "I reckon I can purt' near walk just about anywhere I've a mind to. And if there is somewhere I need to get to in a hurry, why, I can just ride my old donkey. I have a whacking stick to get 'er going with, too." I did, but I couldn't bring myself to use it. Don't tell Mr. Eisenhower, but I'd just carry it under my arm and bounce up and down on my ass, going unhh, unhh, unhh. If the donkey felt like going somewhere, off we'd go. It was good enough.

"You'd never use a donkey-whacking stick," he said, reading my mind again. "You're not the type. Try my Interstate Highway System instead. You'll love it. In no time at all you won't know what you did without it."

I transferred the goose quill to my other ear. "I don't know," I said. "I guess I don't see the point. Everything I need is right nearby." More important, I am uneasy about taking on something I'm currently quite capable of living without, and then not being able to live without it. Seems burdensome. Pick up too many things you can't live without, it seems like you're setting yourself up for a flame-out. Autopsy results indicate she died from a lack of an ATM, wasabi peas, and early internet withdrawal, compounded by the end of Boston Legal reruns. I gave Mr. Eisenhower an apologetic look. "It's so busy and loud. I don't know how to drive."

"Nothing to it." Mr. Eisenhower opened the door to a big, shiny car. It might have been an Olds. I sensed a cosmic raised eyebrow from my father, but I couldn't help but look inside. At least it was a standard transmission; that wasn't Republican. I got in and sat down, smoothing my dress over the bench seat. There were no seat belts, and plenty of room for the donkey. "I don't know," I repeated.

"You'll love it. Off you go," Mr. Eisenhower said, grinning wide, leaning into the window and smacking the shifter into neutral. The Oldsmobile edged down the on-ramp and picked up speed. "The manual is in the glove box," he hollered. I pawed at the glove box in a rising panic but found nothing but neatly folded state highway maps and a bar of dinosaur-shaped soap from Sinclair Gas. Below me the traffic was a blur. I braced for a terrible collision but when I opened my eyes again I was coasting to a stop on the highway with the traffic parting smoothly all around me. I sat in the car and looked around, then perused a map before snapping back to the present.

So I'm on Twitter, I guess. If you see me, honk. I'll be the one in the bonnet.

Pissed

Everyone's pissed. The Republicans are rolling out a template of candidates who promise to put God in their cabinets. The Democrats thought they'd already elected God and are vexed he isn't doing more smiting. The Buick of State is up on blocks and not moving at all, now that the Rs have taken all the wheels off, and the Ds can't figure out why the president isn't at least leaning on the horn. The president isn't blowing the horn because horn-blowing isn't an option for him. If he's pissed too, no one will ever know.

That option was taken away from him right off the bat. When Obama got elected, riding a tide of hope and joy, he presented a problem. As an attractive man with wide and fervent support, he seemed likely to thwart the Republicans' foremost goal, which was to reign forever and ever, amen. Something had to be done. The Republican brain trust got right to work. The most obvious defamation, that the president was a colored guy, was problematic. An entire oblique vocabulary would have to be employed to point it out; worse, some people might not even find it all that defamatory. Ultimately, they resorted to pure invention, building on the observation that, at the least, Obama's father was a colored guy, and foreign, and had a funny name, and probably associated with an unapproved version of God. From there it was a quick leap to the notion that the president had sprung full-grown from a planted alien pod and was attempting to destroy America from within by inflicting Socialism on it, which is their word for government for the people, as opposed to government for the people who have all of the money. And besides all that, he was still colored. They couldn't come right out and say it, but it was their ace in the hole, and there were other ways to get the point across. Michele Bachmann couldn't say it, because she, along with her husband, is a lady, but she could and did say he presided over a gangsta government. Michele is a subtle gal.

So Obama has his principles, which is why he still allows himself to be photographed playing basketball instead of wearing plus-fours on the croquet court, but he must never, ever, appear to be pissed. No matter how he is provoked, he must remain unperturbed. He is in the odd position of being too black for some and insufficiently black for others, but he cannot display so much as a snit, or the deal is sealed. He blows his top and it's all over. Michele Bachmann might as well just start referring to his "crack-ho economic plan" if he does that. So the Republicans and their propaganda wing have been poking sharp sticks at him for three years now. Occasionally a camera catches him in a momentary sun-squint and the photo is sieved for signs of irritability through three news cycles, but the Republicans might have to admit they misjudged his actual heritage. They are dealing with a man who came from a white mother and a Vulcan father.

It's the Nixon-goes-to-China thing. (Thanks for that, by the way, Dick.) No one but an ardent anti-Communist could have gotten away with opening up trade with a Communist country. In this country, you're not allowed to accomplish what you want, but sometimes you can do what no one expects of you. Obama can't act peeved, but Mitt Romney could fling himself down and have a tantrum in the grocery aisle, and be praised for unanticipated passion.

Some Democrats think Hillary Clinton could have accomplished more, but she would have been thwarted too. Any woman in that position would have had to whomp up a war so as not to appear too feminine, except not during her period, when it would just look bitchy. The only person who could get away with introducing real socialism would be Donald Trump. Myself, I want a president who will value education, make decisions based on sound science, institute a steeply progressive tax structure, and get serious about global warming.

I'm voting for Rick Perry.

Somewhere over there on the left you'll see an invitation to follow me on Twitter. It's not a very shiny button, but that's only appropriate. I barely know how to twit. Tweet. Whatever. But someday I will, and it might be funny. If you sign up real quick, you can be my fourth whole follower.

Shredded

Our cat Tater is a litter box whiz, unlike our previous cat Larry, who was less fastidious. When it came to distributing poop, Larry was a Democrat. But Tater is robust and productive and not at all private about pooping. She likes you to watch. After she's done, she turns around, looks at her output, and then scratches away. Not at the litter, but at the little plastic-lined wastebasket right next to the box. When we take the baggie out once a week to the garbage, it's shredded to ribbons. There's some kind of primal instinct going on here, but it's not very relevant. It's a little off-topic, in fact.

Tater's scratching of the bag and not the litter might seem like a case of cognitive dissonance, but that's only from our standpoint. From hers, she knows all she has to do is poop, and it's somebody else's job to clean up after her while she goes and sits in the sun.

This is one of the reasons we're pretty sure she's a Republican. She's got nothing at all on Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, for instance. Governor Walker took over a state with a $120 million budget surplus and immediately engineered a $140 million tax break for out-of-state corporations. Then he declared a budget emergency and said it was the fault of the unionized state workers. Scratch, scratch.

He's not interested in winning appropriate concessions from the workers. He's interested in taking away their right to organize altogether.

Unions seem to have a bad reputation these days, and they've got their problems, but they're a big part of what kept this good middle-class economic engine going for as long as it did. Until a bunch of people fought and died for the right to organize, workers didn't have much to say about their working conditions  or wages. Employers could pretty much write the ticket, especially if they were the only game in town. But, after banding together, workers were able to negotiate for a living wage, maybe health care, maybe even a pension put aside. Even their peers who were not unionized benefited from the standards they set. It wasn't a way to get wealthy, but it was a way to make a decent living, and all over the country, communities thrived, full of decently-paid workers and the people who sold them merchandise and services. Plus, most of us got weekends off.

Organized labor was one of the last remaining impediments to the concentration of all the wealth at the very top. But it has been much weakened, by design, resulting in a predictable narrowing of prosperity. People were encouraged to think of their homes as cash machines and the economy still raced around for a while like a cartoon coyote that zips over a cliff, before it notices that there's nothing holding it up.

This situation flourished because regulations were cast aside and a whole new pirate fleet set sail, folding and packaging securities into derivatives and other unrecognizable instruments. Nothing real was created. Some people skated away with all the money, and the rest of us were left buried under a collapsed pyramid of financial origami.

So the Republicans campaigned against regulation and cut funding to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Scratch, scratch.

Tax cuts in the Bush era diminished total income by almost three trillion dollars. So the Republicans concluded that tax cuts grow the economy and called for more.

They hate budget deficits, so they enshrined tax cuts to the top 2% and added $700 billion to the debt.

They're taking a good hard look at the laws of physics to see what might be done to loosen them up.

Undermining workers' ability to band together may have nothing to do with helping the economy, but it does help elect Republicans so they can sit in the sun.

They don't even care if you watch all this shit come down. They're not even covering it up, and it stinks. We've still got to clean it up and get it to the curb, but it gets harder and harder when the bag is shredded.

Drilling For Dudgeon

It is Day 60 of the BP oil crisis and President Obama still stands accused of maintaining levels of vexation insufficient to cap the well. Early efforts undertaken with a frowny face and lips pressed tightly together did not appear to stem the flow. Nearly everyone is certain that it will require nothing less than a serious fit of pique to get a handle on this problem, and many complain that Obama is falling short.

As is often the case, the American people have shown themselves ahead of their leaders in demanding action, as evidenced by the speed with which they clicked on the Facebook button "I bet we can find 1,000,000 people who think BP should just quit dicking around and plug the hole." Emotion is running high.

In recognition, Mr. Obama recently made a trip to the State of Dudgeon, on whose shores he was photographed kicking at snark balls, but it is clear that more pissiness is called for. With that in mind, Mr. Obama fired the head of the Minerals Management Service for gross negligence and corruption that began in the previous administration and may have continued into his own while he was busy frowning at the economy and the health care industry. Stated the National Republican Senatorial Committee: "This finger-pointing follows a deliberate pattern by the White House to deny responsibility for anything that takes place on President Obama's watch."

The White House responded with a statement of regret for the recent elevated sunspot activity. Obama himself declared "in case you were wondering who's responsible, I take responsibility. The buck stops with me," provoking Sarah Palin, checking in from Planet Huh, to retort that "the fundamental problem at the core of this crisis is a lack of responsibility. There's a culture of buck-passing at the heart of this administration."

As the oil continues to gush, many call for increased umbrage and question the efficacy of simple exasperation. Speaking to this issue, an interviewer asked Obama whether this wasn't a time to "kick some butt" rather than be calm and collected, a deportment that has so far failed to end the crisis. In response, Mr. Obama said: "I'm going to push back hard on this. Because I think that this is just an idea that got in folks' heads and the media's run with it...A month ago, I was meeting with fishermen down there...and I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially had the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick. Right? So, you know, this is not theater."

Headlines caught the gist ("OBAMA SAYS ASS") and pundits

immediately accused him of theatrics, suggesting his temperament was unsuitable for the job. Republicans pounded him for failing to step up as a leader. Mr. Obama side-stepped this controversy, prompting complaints about his aloofness, and extended a moratorium on new drilling for six months, which Republicans immediately condemned as being an egregious act of taking charge. Obama responded by calling for renewed efforts to plan for the post-oil age, infuriating Republican counterparts. "We are doing more than anyone to get to the post-oil age," a spokesman said, "by running through all the oil as fast as we possibly can."

Across the pond, Britons have faulted the President for failure to maintain a more diplomatic level of detachment. A Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, called the American response "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance." Meanwhile, the crisis of appropriate comportment has also snared the CEO of BP, who had been roundly castigated for his demeanor after saying: "I'm sorry...there's no one who wants this over more than I do. I'd like my life back." Puzzled by the uproar, he amended his statement to: "This is great. I'm having the time of my life," which also fell short of public expectations, and he remains hunched in his closet, confused.

Mr. Obama took his case for cooperation in a proposed energy bill to Republicans in a closed-door luncheon. He was met by solid opposition on all points, including choice of appetizer, and afterwards, Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas was quoted as saying "he needs to take a Valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans. He's pretty thin-skinned."

Geologists studying the issue have not been able to agree on the size of the President's reservoir of wrath, noting that despite eruptions of temper and efforts to measure the flow of snits, much of it remains below the surface. Republicans warn that they may need to provoke additional releases of rage before they will be able to slam the cap on him completely.