My pick for The Big Game

As always, when you have two tough squads featured, like these two (who's playing, anyway?), anything can happen. It's anybody's ballgame. One thing's for sure-they'll both come to play. On any given Sunday, anybody can win. As always, the ground game is the name of the game. Unless it's passing.

Both teams feature time-tested coaches, who have been through the wars. Special teams are crucial. I expect both teams to use the nickel defense, then, as the game progresses, to move on to the dime and quarter approaches. One thing's for sure-this ain't for sissies.

Are you ready for some commercials?

Fran Lebowitz-The funniest (wittiest) woman alive

This post owes its existence to, 1) My desire to quote the eminently quotable Lebowitz; and 2) The fact that I have nothing original to say at the moment, excepting some minor frivolities at my Twitter page, which page, as its author, I highly recommend.

Anyway, you may recognize Fran from her role as Judge Janice Goldberg on Law & Order, a gig she got by walking onto the set and asking for it. (Would that all of life were so easy). Or, perchance,  you may've read, or heard of, that classic book of guidance for the sophisticated urban slacker, "Metropolitan Life".

In any case Lebowitz' pan fairly drips with apt scorn for the likes of people who would write a sentence like this one, and she rivals Groucho Marx as one of the most quotable figures of the 20th Century. Not sure about the 21st.

A sampling:

I've done the calculations and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.

Being a woman is of special interest to male transsexuals. To actual women it is simply a good excuse not to play football.
  
I must take issue with the term "a mere child", for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.

No animal should ever jump onto the living-room furniture unless absolutely sure he can hold his own in the conversation.

I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my conciousness expanded one unneccesary iota.

Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

funniest

"Obama calls for 'civility' at prayer breakfast"

Don't attack the other's side's motives, said The Great One.

In other news, the President later today spoke of the GOP and said:

"They're 'the Spawn of Satan'. I mean that in the most bi-partisan way possible, of course. In politics you have to work with people whose only motive is evil day in and day out. I, representing Good, indeed embodying it, must perform my burdensome duties in a universe, and with a Republican caucus, filled with all sorts of the worst ugliness possible. But, folks, I won't let all that hold me back. Even if Satan has pre-ordained that I be merely a great one-term Prez."

How often must unemployment claims rise...

...before such a rise is "expected"? Just askin'.

I mean, it's not as if the job market is booming, even if we're no longer in a downturn. Yes, we may not technically be in a recession, but jobs keep receedinnnnggggg....

The lack of job openings was blamed, as always, on minimal economic activity. The minimal economic activity was blamed on a paucity of jobs.

This vicious cycle will be broken when the stimulus kicks in, which you can expect any old year now.

UPDATE: The President's stimulus job numbers are either dishonest, dubious, or both. Perhaps the most egregiously deceitful thing he's said on the topic, among a long list of contenders, is the following:

Now, if you hear some of the critics, they'll say, well, the Recovery Act, I don't know if that's really worked, because we still have high unemployment. But what they fail to understand is that every economist, from the left and the right, have said because of the Recovery Act, what we've started to see is at least a couple of million jobs that have either been created or would have been lost.

Wow. There's too much crapola in that statement to even have time or space to comment on. Focus on the sheer foolishness of the central lie the President uttered here, as to the unanimity of support in the economic profession for spending hundreds of billions on fiscal stimulus. We all know that economists rarely agree on anything, let alone the multiplier effect, the crowding out of private investing massive Federal borrowing may entail, and the rest. Obama's treating the Federal Treasury as a basket containing an infinite number of free dollars will have dire future consequences, say more than a few of them.

The least fun you can have on ice

Dave Pinto at Baseball Musings explores, in Twitter form, the ecstasy that is curling:

“UPDATE 08:01:03: THEY’RE TURNING.



UPDATE 08:01:10: THEY’RE STILL TURNING.



UPDATE 08:01:21: THEY’RE STILL TURNING. [MY GOD IT'S BEAUTIFUL!]“


Thus Canadians show their preference for both the fastest sport on ice (hockey), and the slowest (curling). Those denizens of The Great White North sure are a caution.

Still trying to figure out why curling's an Olympic Sport and baseball once again isn't. The dreaded curling lobby must have beaucoup bucks.


UPDATE-The Soxaholix are fans of Dave's curling faux-Twitters.

Obama can't decide-Save or spend?

Obama's taking more abuse over once again advising "folks" (as he would condescendingly put it) not to "blow a bunch of cash on Vegas." This was part of a general commentary the Prez was making on forgoing spending-"When times are tough, you tighten your belts", said he.

Well, I'm all in favor of Vegas-bashing-the gaming gambling industry is a pariah, or should be. But why is Obama telling people to cool their jets on spending? He's going whole hog (plus steer, horse, house cat, etc.) on fiscal stimulus. He's more of a Keynesian than Keynes himself.

So why does he want people to be careful spenders? Does he think his fiscal stimulus plus what the Fed's doing will be enough? Is the Prez convinced that consumers don't matter, that the bright guys in DC have everything in hand, and that the rest of us just need to sit back and watch the prosperity flow?

Yes, it's a double-edged sword. Consumers do need to save more than they had in the aughts. But this advice from BHO just doesn't fit his economic policy, which says we need all the demand-side stimulus we can crank up.

More cognitive dissonance from The Smartest Man Alive.


UPDATE: Meanwhile Rasmussen says the public favors the supply-side view-46%-35%, they're for a tax cut for everybody, even (horrors!) rich people. So much for the politics of envy.

FURTHER UPDATE: Tax reform, Obama-style. You save, we spend, i.e.

23% of Republicans want their state to secede from the US!

Note-this post was originally published in unedited form. Here is the corrected version. It may not be any better.

A Daily Kos poll proves it! The Kos Kids did themselves a lil' poll where they pushed and prodded and got the most damaging, they thought, responses for the GOP's image. Except sometimes the nuts were right. Witness:

• 39% of Republicans want President Obama to be impeached- I say wait till he invades Luxembourg.

• 63% think Obama is a socialist-Well, duh! What do you think-he's a Bob Taft Republican?

• Only 42% believe Obama was born in the United States- Well, sure, if you consider Hawaii part of the US-in another disturbing Overheard in Philadelphia episode, I heard a guy talking the other day about why the NFL Pro Bowl was being moved "from Hawaii to the United States".

• 21% think ACORN stole the 2008 election -- that is, that Obama didn't actually win it, and isn't legitimately the president, with 55% saying they are "not sure."- All I know is, some moderate sounding guy who looks just like the current Prez was elected 16 months ago. Not sure if he's a Kenyan relative, or what.

• 53% think Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama to be president- Hell, that's self-evident at this point.

• 73% think gay people should not be allowed to teach in public schools- Well, no. Who'd teach modern hair design?

• 31% want contraception to be outlawed- Hell, 31% of Catholics don't want to forgo the Pill, let alone ban it.


H/t-Ann Althouse.

What hath Scott wrought, part II

The first person who calls Scott Brown a RINO deserves twenty lashes. He hasn't even been sworn in yet! I don't feel like linking to the people saying this stuff. They don't deserve the traffic-what little they'd get from this site. 

You know, sometimes the liberal media's criticism of the right is on point. Some conservatives are like the Muslim radicals who, when criticized for their actual or tacit support for violence, proceed to start a riot. There's no need for a riot over Scott Brown. Here the guy wins a most improbable victory, in a most improbable state-and region-but because he's not conservative enough, it's time to bring out the long knives. What the hell. As I said in a comment on one site, after his name you see R-MA, not R-AL, or R-MS.

Yes, I wish Brown was opposed to abortion across the board. But he will support some restrictions, such as parental notification. Someone opposed to Roe v. Wade cannot win in Massachusetts. Why is that so hard to understand? You take what you can get, even while you work for more. You work, especially, to elect pro-life people in Pennsylvania, and Florida, and Oklahoma, where you can elect a thorough-going opponent of abortion.

'Nuff said. The whole subject has me annoyed.

Obama's brains deficit

The previous post discussed the President's trust deficit-we elected an entirely different sort of man, ideologically, from what he presented himself as being, and this has only added to the "trust deficit" BHO decried in his dreary State of Union address. Such misrepresentation, in less polite circles than this blog, might be called "lying".

I ended the piece wondering just how smart the man really is. He clearly shows a radical (haha) inability to learn from his incessant screwups. He keeps beating his well-shaped head against the health care wall, for example.


I think there's a tendency to confuse "well-spoken" with "bright". Without a doubt, you can't be as good with the language as Lincoln, or for that matter Reagan, and not have serious smarts. But those men wrote much or all of their own stuff. I've never heard anyone say Obama writes his speeches, though I'm sure he's involved in the editing process ("Hey, more Bush-bashing! More Bush-bashing!"). Mostly he just reads the stuff his crack staff produces. That shows as much skill as Katie Couric possesses. And I'd rather look at Katie, thank you.

Of course, there's that law degree, from some Ivy League school. I forget which, and I don't feel like looking it up-Podunk Tech? You have to be real bright to get a law degree, right Vern? Well, I don't know. I've met some pretty dumb lawyers. I doubt that most of them have the intellectual chops my brother with a Chemistry PhD has.

The fact is, Obama rode a finely modulated voice, his ties to the Chicago machine, and a heapin' helpin' of racial guilt right into the White House. Now, we've elected plenty of non-entities before, but now we have two wars, another undeclared one, and a multi-trillion dollar budget to worry about. God help us.

Obama's trust deficit

Quick question-how can the President talk about a "trust deficit" (as he did in his State of the Union snooze-fest) regarding Washington's doings and then act as if he weren't even the slightest part of the problem? No reasonable person can say the low opinion Americans have of the Feds is all his fault, but how can the man at the top of the heap not be part of the problem?

Enough talk of the "culture of Washington". Actual people, cutting actual deals to benefit their benefactors, while ignoring the public's wishes on spending and more, make that culture. It isn't simply a given, an unalterable fact of life. Politically courageous people, like the man many thought BHO was, change political cultures. But Obama's done zilch to change the "tone" in Washington-he's no less secretive, ideological, and unmovable than his predecessor was said to be.

Not to mention the fact that Obama was in the Senate for four of the eight "horrific" years he incessantly decries. He acts as if he were just transported here from another planet to clean up the mess those less-evolved life forms created during the benighted Bush years. But nobody's buying his superior being act any longer.

So once again one must ask, How can a smart guy be so dense? Maybe, just maybe, he's not all that smart. He's unquestionably not showing much ability to learn from his mistakes, which is as good a definition of practical smarts as any other.

You know, while it's true that getting a law degree doesn't involve as much rote memorization as getting through med school, maybe it's time to research how many idiot savants have law degrees.