By Pablo Fanque All This Is That National Affairs Editor
I liked BHO's speech last night; it was his best speech yet, because it was the hardest. I liked the plaintive (as opposed to soaring) tone, liked that he hit at what he inherited, ripped into the GOP leadership, as well as the Democrats and the bi-party electioneering/posing and factionalism. Change 2.0. We could still get it right.
From another President's state of the union:
"Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are... running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution."
- President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, in Idiocracy ---o0o---
Here are some of the books I return to over and over in the moments when I need a laugh.
Henry IV, Part I - William Shakespeare A Cool Million - Nathaniel West Gargantua and Pantagruel - Francois Rabelais The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne Amerika - Franz Kafka Catch 22 - Joseph Heller Ball Four - Jim Bouton Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis Moo - Jane Smiley The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle - Tobias Smollett Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe The Good Soldier Schweik - Jaroslav Hasek Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson Rivethead - Ben Hamper Blue Movie - Terry Southern Most books by Carl Hiassen Trout Fishing In America - Richard Brautigan Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 - Hunter S. Thompson ---o0o---
David Dees is an iconoclast. I don't really know if he is trolling, or serious. He's brilliant in either case. Kind thanks to David Dees for permission to reprint some of his work here...
[ed's note: by Jack, largely because Pablo Fanque refused to have anything to do with this story. Is he getting soft on POTUS?]
This just seems so, uh, lame? Last week, BHO visited an elementary school class in Falls Church, Virginia. The sixth graders must have been a tough crowd. . .The President brought along two TelePrompTers.
I am probably reading too much into all this. There has to be some reason other than wanting to deliver a perfectly nuanced and cadenced speech. When you think about it, I bet George W. Bush would have skipped the prompters and fumbled through as best as he could (the autocue machine never did make him sound like an orator). With President Bush, you could understand teleprompters, but with President Obama, you know he could get through whatever speech he was delivering at the elementary school. On the other hand, no speech a President gives is confined to that room, as the press photos show. Even the most casual speech has the potential to end up broadcast to millions on the airwaves and cable networks... ---o0o---
The Beatles fishing from their hotel window at Seattle's Edgewater Inn. You can still fish there. Led Zeppelin famously dropped a line, and Frank Zappa wrote his song "Mud Shark" about fishing there. . .
By Pablo Fanque All This Is That National Affairs Editor
The Ex-Senator with his daughter
A couple years ago, Ex-Senator John Edwards was a serious presidential contender; a nice guy who spoke passionately for the poor and disenfranchised middle-Americans. [ed's note: Pablo Fanque was an early supporter of John Edwards] He was good looking, sunny even, optimistic, ran a clean campaign, didn't take cheap shots, and never ambushed or smeared anyone. He was an asset in the Kerry presidential campaign, particularly stacked up against Darth Cheney.
After years of prevarication, delusion, and denials, Edwards now admits he’s the father of an almost two-year old daughter and that he has been--as we all know--supporting his daughter and baby momma Rielle Hunter. He has not 'fessed up that he tried to get his pal and employee Andrew Young (not the Carter cabinet member/ambassador/pastor ) to take the fall for paternity. But that's OK. After being seriously burned by Edwards, Young decided to let the world in on just what went down. Yes, has his own axes to grind, but his story seems verisimilitudinous.
Edwards made his tawdry announcement in a press release (he’s in Haiti right now!). The country now knows he left his cancer-stricken wife at home and was on the campaign trail playing hide the salami with his videographer. When he was exposed, he spent the next two years engaged in an almost laughable cover-up. In 2007, the National Enquirer reported on Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter. The mainstream press barely touched the story until they had been scooped by the Enquirer and the story blew up in their faces.
"Game Change" describes Ex-Senator John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, as the couple from hell. Tim Rutten, reviewing the book in the Chicago Tribune wrote: "As reported in these pages, he is delusional, megalomaniacal, self-absorbed and breathtakingly irresponsible; she is condescending, viciously insulting and shrewish -- Lady Macbeth with magnolias. It's hard to imagine two people whose public personas have been more at odds with the private reality than apparently has been the case with these people."
Even the bright and long suffering "St. Elizabeth" is on the griddle in the book. As far as I know, these are new revelations. . .at least people have kept the lid on them in the last couple of years.
The aide, Andrew Young, sold a book proposal to St. Martin’s Press for an undisclosed price late last summer (the book is coming out in Feb. 2010). The proposal promised to blow the lid off Edwards' deception. Mr. Young quotes Mr. Edwards, the Dem's 2004 VP nominee who ran for president in 2008, as begging him to confess to fathering Ms. Hunter’s baby. If he did, Edwards promised, "he would be taken care of for life."
Following John Edwards'mea culpa, we wish him the best of luck personally, and hope he can balance his families, wife, and Rielle Hunter. Politically, good riddance, and R.I.P. ---o0o---
