Archive for May, 2010
QUESTION: How much attention are Americans paying to the collapse of socialism in Europe?
It’s been a long time since any of us have studied Europe seriously.
To be honest — we wrote Europe off completely as a failed continent about a decade ago. It became the Suzanne Sugarbaker of the global scene – formerly glorious and formidable, turned bloated, spoiled, entitled, and generally hapless from years of overindulgence and irresponsible spending. All things considered, it’s actually moved into Bernice territory — without a clue in Hell as to what it’s doing, occasionally serving as comic relief, but unable to manage its own affairs with any modicum of competence.
We would compare America to Julia Sugarbaker, but we’ll have to wait until the Palin presidency to do that. Right now, our country’s in full-on Meshach Taylor mode — and not as the reliable and trustworthy Anthony…but as fey, weak, sputtering Hollywood Montrose. Thank you Dr. Utopia and the Hope and Change Gang.
If you don’t get the Designing Women and Mannequin references, then, bless your heart, you aren’t spending enough time with us here in Boystown. Hello, Netflix, to the rescue.
We think Americans, in general, aren’t paying enough attention to the collapse of socialism in Europe. Ourselves included.
Greece is going to destroy the euro and the EU.
It’s not the iceberg hitting socialism’s Titanic…it’s a debt-fed Kraken that could prove unstoppable. It’s Oprah, on the scent of cheesey-crackers and Pepperidge Farms salami.
Nothing can stop it.
This week, we want to bone up on what’s been happening in the Mediterranean states of Europe, in particular, where we remember a general laziness and sense of entitlement driving everyone we met on the trips we took overseas to Greece, Italy, the Balkans, France, and Spain. The worst offenders were in Greece and Italy, of course, where most days we’d spot the same men sitting around, doing nothing all day, drinking coffee, playing bocci or checkers, while apparently being paid healthy salaries from their government to be loafs.
Just how big of a problem is this — and what can be done in these countries to curtail this?
What’s going to happen in the next few months and years as Europe’s socialist system collapses, now that it’s become painfully clear there is no more money floating in thin air for these countries to keep doing things the way they’ve done them for the last 30 years?
It feels like a perfect storm for colossal global financial disaster, because all of this is happening in Europe while there’s a weak, fey American president who was raised to be an acolyte of all the policies that destroyed Europe.
Dr. Utopia wants to bring socialism to life in this country, just as it’s dying overseas.
Do the American people realize this?
If not, what will it take to bring them up to speed?
For those of you who have been following Europe’s demise the last decade or so, what would you say to brief Americans on what to expect in the months and years ahead — and what should the 45th president do, once she’s sworn in, to get the world back on track?
Can You Find the First Spouses on Sesame Street?
Can you identify all the First Spouses with these Muppets? We knew you could!
Last night, we watched the 5th season Angel episode “Smile Time” on Hulu. That’s the one where David Boreanaz’s character was turned into a puppet by demons from Hades who wanted to take over the world by stealing children’s life forces.
If that sounds familiar, it’s essentially what Obamacare does to the country via unfunded and unconstitutional mandates, while robbing the nation’s children of their future and stealing access to medical care from old people.
We’d rather deal with the puppets. Nothing made of felt is ALL bad. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, however…
As a fun resource for future projects, we thought it would be fun to try to collect as many photos as exist of the past and current First Spouses posing with Muppets from Sesame Street. We’re not aware of this existing anywhere else…but it could make for some fun montages in the future…and could give Chrissy the Hyphenated some great material for future Class vs. Crass installments. ”Class vs. Crass — with MUPPETS” sure has a fun ring to it.
Add links to any First Spouse & Muppets photos you can find, or email them to us at HillBuzz@gmail.com so we can collect them all in this thread.
Maybe, if we ask her nicely, Chrissy can photoshop a great image of Todd Palin with Sesame Street Muppets too…so we can all continue to look passed the Obama Administration and into the future Palin White House, and anticipate the day our first First Gentleman joins his predecessors in the company of Big Bird et al.
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PS – We really do love these images…and if any of us had kids, we would TOTALLY print them out and frame them. As it is, if we can find some really good shots of all the First Spouses during their Sesame Street appearances, we might just put them together into some kind of collage for Buzzquarters. They’re just so cheerful and random and odd. Love that.
Who's Dressed Better? The Current First Spouse on a Normal Day, or Nancy Reagan Intentionally Wearing a Ridiculous Costume?
Click above to embiggen
Who’s dressed better?
The current First Spouse, looking ridiculous by accident, oblivious to the Barnum & Bailey aspect of her “let’s get dressed in the dark” approach to appropriate attire — or Nancy Reagan, deliberately wearing a hodgepodge costume to intentionally solicit big laughs in the 80s?
Who looks less ridiculous, either by choice or by destiny?
We’re collecting all of these wardrobe comparisons on a new “Who’s Dressed Better?” page.
We’d also love any suggestions for future episodes — just send us a link or a photo to one of Michelle Obama’s outfits, along with any idea you have for something to compare it to.
HillBuzz@gmail.com
Tuesday Open Thread: May 11th, 2010
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What’s on your minds this Tuesday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
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A note on comments in the threads: WordPress is what it is. The spam filter exists because every day thousands of spam comments come in from Asian computers that are desperately and unendingly trying to post links to sites that are some kind of scam for Viagra and Cialis.
One of the things that really frustrates us is reading comment after comment complaining about a comment not posting. It’s a broken record we’ve had enough of. So, we’re going to start deleting all comments that complain about a comment not posting.
What some of you don’t realize is that every post here is archived — we hope forever. A thread can be zinging along with interesting comments…and then, bam, there’s two or three posts about some random comment not posting. It really makes the commenter look foolish, because more often than not, whatever they are complaining about will have double, triple, or quadruple-posted, along with the numerous complaint posts. It just takes a while. Welcome to WordPress.
Tired of it.
Had enough.
So, as of today we’re going to just delete those complaints, as they contribute nothing to the thread and are of no value going forward in the future.
It would be marvelous if those of you out there who do this would just stop. Some of you go to automatic moderation for a reason, based on nasty things you’ve said in the past either about us, about Hillary, or about the Palins. Others go into moderation for reasons we don’t even know — based on word choices, number of links you include, etc. Blame those Asian spammers for that, because WordPress assigns things to moderation on its own. We’ve added maybe 100 IPs to the moderation queue because of past attacks…the rest are WordPress added. There’s nothing to do but deal with it.
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Do Elena Kagan and Charlie Crist go to Halloween parties together?
This is clearly a Halloween party — that, or it’s a night out at the filthiest bar we can imagine, where cobwebs cover the back walls…and apparently the maid is too busy dressed up as Tinkerbelle to do anything about them.
We almost think there was a Disney theme to this party…with a drag queen dolled up as Cruella de Vil…the afore-mentioned Tink…and Elena Kagan dressed inexplicably as k.d. lang.
Maybe she’s “the boy from Flight of the Navigator, wearing a suit for the dvd release party”.
High-concept costumes never work.
Kagan seems like a lot of fun to hang out with, though, if she goes to Halloween parties at all. We never trust people who don’t like Halloween, and don’t like going to costume parties and having fun. Even if they aren’t EXACTLY dressed up — since it is hard for people in important positions to get way with wearing costumes in public. They always have to be aware that they’re being photographed, and those photos never go away in the age of Facebook and Twitter and random blogs.
It’s going to be interesting how Kagan handles the next few weeks of her life. Being at Harvard, in Boston, it’s not unthinkable she went to all sorts of events like this Halloween party, and was photographed with all manner of drag queens.
Why are pics of Kagan so close to drag seemingly readily available — when there remains an embargo of shots of Charlie Crist at the Green Iguana in Tampa, Florida, oranging it up in drag himself, like a bad Charlotte Rae impersonator? We know it happened. We know people in Florida not only know it happened, but have the photos. But, for whatever reason, Republicans seem wholly averse to exposing Crist’s reality to the public.
Will it be the same for Kagan?
QUESTION: Why does the White House still use the sexist and anachronistic term "First Lady" when Congress and the US Mint are currently using the more proper "First Spouse"?
This was a lark we had the other day, but now we think there’s actually something actionable, and very problematic for the Democrat Party, in our question of why the White House insists on using the sexist and anachronistic term “First Lady” when the gender-all-inclusive “First Spouse” is what should be the norm.
In 2013, First Gentleman Todd Palin will assume the nation’s hosting duties, following in the footsteps of the great ladies that preceded him in this position. Oh, and Michelle Obama too. Who is neither great nor a lady — in the refined and presentable sense, without debate on her gender.
We think the “First Spouse” terminology change would be a nice headache for the White House to have — as it would be tacit acknowledgement the 45th US President will be female. Either Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, with the odds on Palin should Obama insist upon pressing for a vainglorious second run at the White House.
About 12 people are aware of this, but the US Mint is currently issuing a series of “Presidential Dollar Coins”, which nobody uses. These coins are supposed to replace the Sacagawea dollar coins nobody used, and 80% of the public thought was Pocahontas. Those coins themselves took the place of the weirdly-shaped Susan B. Anthony dollars, which nobody used and many cashiers at gas stations or Arby’s thought were counterfeit.
Accompanying the “Presidential Dollars” is a series of “First Spouse Coins” — which was authorized by an Act of Congress, Pub.L. 109-145, 119 Stat. 2664, enacted December 22, 2005.
Here’s where things get really, really interesting with this particular Act of Congress.
(1) The term “First Spouse” is definitively used in the gender-neutral sense….DELIBERATELY avoiding the females-only “First Lady” terminology the White House insists on using on its website.
(2) The Act of Congress specifies that a president must be dead for at least 2 years for him to be honored.
(3) The most recent presidents to die — Nixon, Ford, and Reagan — will all be honored in 2016. Should Jimmy Carter die before 2014, he will also be honored with a coin.
(4) Nancy Reagan will be honored in 2016 when her husband Ronald receives his coin. The First Spouse may be alive at the time of issue of her coin; the Act only requires the former president to be dead for two years but does not require the spouse to be deceased.
(5) Should Carter, Bush Sr., Clinton, G. W. Bush, and Obama all live beyond 2014, then the program will automatically end and a new Act of Congress will be required to authorize continuation of the program at some point in the future when these former presidents are eligible for the honor.
So, at the time this Act was written, the only people eligible for the “First Spouse” coin were females — either married to the president at some point, or who served in the official hostess capacity in the White House during his term. The Act was written with the provision that once there’s a break in the line of issue — and there’s a period where no president would be eligible for the honor — the program would end.
So, Congress COULD have used the “First Lady” terminology since no male was eligible for this coin, and won’t be eligible before 2014 when the series reaches Reagan and the other most recently deceased presidents and their spouses. Since the Act specifies that future Congresses can reauthorize the program with subsequent acts, Congress in 2005 could have left it up to their successors to deal with the issue of Bill Clinton or Todd Palin.
They didn’t.
They used “First Spouse”, acknowledging the fact the 44th or 45th president would be female.
Congress, for once, was ahead of the game and remarkably prescient.
So, what’s with the White House wanting to hold back history and continue to preclude little boys across the country from dreaming of growing up someday to be the First Gentleman — either spouse to a female president or…to really make some heads explode, as partner to the future openly gay male president (after a successful Schock ’28 campaign, perhaps)?
If Congress and the US Mint use “First Spouse” shouldn’t every other institution using taxpayer money?
Like, the White House?
CHALLENGE: Do you know any upholstery that matches this latest Michelle Obama "blast of iconic fashion"?
Our most favorite Michelle pic ever - and we made it ourselves!
Without a doubt, our favorite thing we ever made for this site was the “Michelle cat-pee-nursing-home-waiting-room-old-lady-sofa-Dress” comparison.
We spotted this truly ugly dress on Michelle during the presidential campaign, and instantly knew there was upholstery SOMEWHERE that would match it. For three weeks we ran Google image searches for “ugly couch”, “hideous couch”, “old lady couch”, until FINALLY one morning we ran across a picture of the same fabric Michelle wears as “high fashion” instead used to make furniture that a cat sits on.
We just “knew” we would find this somehow, though we didn’t know when, and didn’t know exactly what the picture would look like. And the universe just sort of sent it to us one day.
That’s exactly how we feel with the photo of “National Fashion Icon” Michelle Obama above: on any other person, it would easily be the ugliest thing that person has ever worn. With Michelle, the ugliest thing she wears is that almost constant scowl and snarl — absent in this particular photo, but generally her favorite accessory every other day. Then there’s the hideous outfits she gallumphs around in, while maintaining they are “high fashion”. The only thing high would be you if you agreed that was fashion.
We know there must be upholstery from another era that’s waiting to be added to this photo to create another winner like the “Cat Pee Sofa” pic. We just don’t have any idea what that would be. The skirt looks like the nasty, checked pants a fop would have worn to Studio 54 to chase after Truman or Andy in the 70s. The blouse is clearly made from discarded patio furniture cushions salvaged from the Achille Lauro, then held in crates somewhere in New Mexico waiting for repurposing as “high fashion” like this.
Disastrous.
But, the current First Spouse has really thrown us for a loop by combining BOTH the checks and the floral print. They all wash together like the swirls of multi-colored paint sinking to the bottom of a jelly jar full of tepid water, after a child’s mostly cleaned off her watercolor brushes before preschool snack time.
We’ve long surmised small children assemble Michelle’s wardrobe each day. Uncharacteristic for how we see her behave normally, the First Spouse is 100% committed to ensuring these children — plucked from White House tours, no doubt — build solid self-esteem. So, no matter what they pick out for her, she smiles brightly and with immense kindness lies through her teeth to tell the children she loves it, and will wear it with great pride in her country for the first time in her adult life that day.
Because the only explanation for how terribly she dresses is that Michelle Obama has a soft spot for the talentless shorties who keep picking out the ugliest clothes imaginable for her to wear.
That, or she’s doing this deliberately as some sort of elaborate, meta, Andy Kaufman-esque goof on the nation.
Andy, is that in fact you? When you left us, you said you would return as a wrestler or something, and would appear on David Letterman. Instead, did you get an unconvincing wig and practiced identity-concealing scowl and raid the Saturday Night Live wardrobe closet for the most hideous pieces you could find — to engage in the most absurd performance art imaginable by going drag and creating the anti-First Lady character we all know as Michelle Obama?
Because, that would be really awesome if one day, in the midst of hectoring others about their weight, “Michelle” ripped off whatever “high fashion” she was wearing, unstuffed the airline flotation cushions from “her” backside, tossed the wig into the press pool, and shouted, “Fooled ya! It’s me, Andy Kaufman! I fooled the lot of you!”.
Everything would make sense again…and Andy could go back to hitting the ring with female professional wrestlers, no longer dressed as one.
Any ideas for upholstery that could match the latest “high fashion” above?
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UPDATE: One reader wonders if this “high fashion” outfit could have been even worse?
We actually think the boots would have made it better, because then she CLEARLY would have been dressed up like this as a joke, and not just wearing something she erroneously and delusionally thought was “elegant”.
Class vs. Crass: A History of American First Spouses from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama and Beyond — Part 12
h/t Chrissy the Hyphenated
And then there is Michelle Obama, indeed.
If looks could kill, this First Spouse would be an Uzi.
We’d advise never to get on her bad side, but so far, we’ve yet to see a good side.
Checkout 1-11 in the Class vs. Crass series here.
Thanks for the shoutout, Andrew Breitbart
Thanks to Andrew Breitbart for the Twitter shoutout today.
That was pretty awesome.
We long ago made a habit of BigGovernment, BigHollywood, BigJournalism and supporting Breitbart’s assault on the mainstream media.
We even dare to dream we could be contributors to one of the above — or BigTolerance when it launches — someday.
And we think there are plenty of stories here in Boystown and Chicago at large that could do a great deal of damage to the corrupt DNC nationally…if only we had a little help exposing them to a wider audience and had some extra muscle to help lift up the rocks so the world can watch all those nasty little bugs try to scurry away.
That’s Chicago, baby.
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Had to add this one, too, because we love Tammy Bruce, so it’s fun to see a shoutout from her too:
We’d love to do Tammy’s show some day — and we think we’d have a lot of fun and her listeners would get a kick out of hearing from Boystown.
If Ann Coulter could almost make us go straight, Tammy could make us kind of almost go lesbian.
First Lesbian SCOTUS Justice: Elena Kagan
Drudge Report’s running the headlines that Elena Kagan will be nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States today.
Whatever anyone says about her, this nomination could have been worse.
Our pick for the SCOTUS was Ann Claire Williams — whom we hope President Palin makes her first nomination to the Court in 2013.
You will probably hear us repeat that many times, because we’ve yet to find a better candidate for the SCOTUS than Williams. Honestly, we cannot impress this upon you enough, but if Lady Justice sprang to life in human form and walked among us, she’d be a lot like Williams in person. Quiet, dignified, reasoned, brilliance. There is no better pick possible.
BUT, looking at Kagan, we just have a gut feeling she’s going to be a lot better than some of you think. We think, in the years ahead, she’ll be a big surprise to the Left. We think, ultimately, she’s going to fill the Justice Kennedy role of moderating tie-breaker. If the Left believes it’s getting some kind of loony firebrand in the mold of “wise Latina” Sotomayor, they’re really out to lunch on this one. Kagan’s clearly to the Left of us, but she’s competent, she carefully considers what she does, and, frankly, she knows what the hell she’s talking about. She doesn’t need to tell people she’s a “wise lesbian”. She just is. When someone’s actually wise, she doesn’t need to put that on her business cards.
Kagan has never officially come out of the closet, but she will after she’s on the bench.
We envision her doing a big spread in all the gay publications — along the lines of Ellen’s “Yep, I’m Gay” TIME magazine cover.
Come to think of it, TIME will probably give her the cover for that.
Whenever we talk about someone being gay who isn’t Harvey Fierstein or Ellen Degeneres, some of you squawk that these things don’t matter — but they do matter, because Kagan’s nomination is a political strategy Democrats are running for 2010 and 2012. You need to view everything this White House does in terms of politics. You need to view everything the DNC does in terms of strategy. There are never any accidents with these people.
Obama promised the LGBTQ community he would strike down “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — but, that was clearly a lie. He’s not going to do that, and gays and lesbians will not be able to openly serve in the military under Obama. It’s going to take a Republican president to resolve this matter. Look for that to happen in 2013.
Obama needs to shore up his support with the Democrat voting blocs. Democrats are revving up Hispanics in hopes of turning them out in the fall. The White House and DNC are stoking racial tensions and painting all opposition as racists to make sure blacks and liberals turn out to vote against Republicans in November. Since Obama has alienated Jews and the elderly (by taking such a pro-Muslim, anti-Jewish stance against Israel and by decimating Medicare with Obamacare, respectively, or concurrently in terms of Florida voters), that leaves gays as a voting bloc Obama needs to mobilize for the fall.
LGBTQ publications are grumbling over DADT. The “you can visit your partner in the hospital” bone Obama threw the community didn’t have the impact the White House wanted because it’s been decades since hospitals refused gays the right to visit their partners when they were ill. Hell, when Sebastian’s ex, David, was hospitalized for a prescription drug overdose in 2006, Sebastian got to make actual medical decisions for him, as his emergency contact person. And they didn’t have any sort of civil union. They lived together, and Sebastian knew just about everything about him (except, ironically enough, that he was a prescription drug addict), but they weren’t “married”, with or without quotation marks. The hospital even had a big foldout couch they let Sebastian stay on in David’s room, and they’d talk to Sebastian instead of David when they were explaining everything that needed to be done to David — while David was sitting right there, wide awake, in front of them. Partly because David was so clueless and out of it, but mostly because Sebastian was clearly David’s partner/husband/special life friend/whatever you want to call it.
So, the LGBTQ community has for a very long time realized that all of those TV dramas about gays not being allowed to see someone in the hospital were just bunk. Not only can a guy see his boyfriend when he’s sick, but he can make decisions for him if he’s completely out of it and unable to do so himself — and no one really questions it. That scene in Queer As Folk in season whatever where the mean old nurse wouldn’t let Melanie see Lindsay when she was taken in for an emergency was just badly written fiction — no matter how awesome and gratuitously nude QAF often was.
The only way the White House gets the LGBTQ press, and by extension the community (which largely parrots whatever the press tells them to say), to forget about the DADT lie is to have Elena Kagan become the first openly gay Justice on the Supreme Court. That would be an earthquake in the LGBTQ community and would be all Boystown would talk about for roughly the next two years: A GAY SUPREME COURT JUSTICE…AT LAST AT LAST AT LAST…THANK YOU LIGHTBRINGER FOR BRINGING THE LIGHT! Remember the “Mission Accomplished” banner that made Bush look foolish years later in retrospect? Well, the gay community’s going to be printing up lots of celebratory garbage over this they’ll regret later too. And, like everything else, it will be Bush’s fault. Somehow.
If it’s a quick confirmation, Kagan might even come out before November. We definitely see her being the Grand Marshall at a Pride Parade somewhere next year. It is going to be marvelous PR for this White House with one of the key Democrat voting blocs…and it is going to be a big way this president gives his base something to offer in terms of achievement whenever their ranks begin to question what good electing him did. ”Well, we got our first gay Justice, and that was Obama that did that” is what they will be able to say.Factually, they would be correct. Score one point for the Lightbringer.
Kagan is a perfect choice for this plan because she’s not openly gay right now. And her soon to be revealed gayness is the reason she, not Diane Wood or another crazy person, was picked for the SCOTUS vacancy. Think about it.
Obama could still force through a lunatic while he controls the Senate. Republicans do not have it in them to drag out the confirmation of a Justice through the November election and into 2011 when they would potentially take back the Senate. So, if Obama wanted as liberal and as insane a Justice as possible, he could have even forced through Cass Sunstein. We doubt the GOP would have even put up a fight to stop him — always so terrified of being labeled obstructionist by the media they are forever so desperate to please (but so ignorant of the fact the media will always hate them).
Kagan is not a lunatic. She is not a far-Left crazy. So, why is she the pick, when the president is clearly a far-Left crazy who wants to inflict his Leftist craziness on the country?
She is the pick because after her confirmation she will proclaim herself the first lesbian Justice and it will be a Trojan double “unprecedented first” for this White House to score points not just with women (THREE WOMEN ON THE SCOTUS!) but also with gays (THE FIRST GAY JUSTICE!) and all the liberals who outwardly support gays (but, who really do jack for us at the end of the day to be honest).
Republicans will not bring up Kagan’s sexuality in her confirmation. If they did, it would be a big win for Democrats because then they’d get to paint the GOP as anti-gay. This is Democrats’ second favorite thing to do to the GOP, after painting Republicans as racist. Stupidly, many conservatives would help Democrats in this scenario, because we bet the Right would be unable to control its more ignorant and loudspoken morons and barbarians…who would try to make an issue of Kagan being a lesbian. We can already picture the comments in threads over at Ace of Spades and Redstate.
Republicans should, thus, just confirm Kagan. Let her come out. Celebrate her. Do not fall into Democrats’ trap.
Kick yourselves for not beating Democrats to the punch by picking a gay Justice during Bush’s term.
Learn from this strategic mistake and be prepared to remedy this by making the first Palin SCOTUS nomination the nation’s first black female Justice.
That will kick the SCOTUS up to 4 female Justices, with two blacks, and will take away a “historic first” from Democrats in the future.
Make the Justice Ann Claire Williams, and get one excellent jurist to boot.
