Tex the Pontificator

The American Digest has a parody of the Yorick scene from Hamlet. Called Obamlet, the parody puts Obama in the role of Hamlet anguishing over how to proceed in Afghanistan. It is well done and on point, but beyond how to proceed in Afghanistan, the parody's point is symptomatic of how the Obama administration has failed to live up to what supporters projected onto Obama in the election.

Obama’s election some thought was auspicious.
The policy changes they thought quite delicious,
But now it’s in doubt
How things’ll pan out.
His promise now seems meretricious.

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Labels: Barack Obama, doggerel

Eugene Volokh reports on a Canadian suit in which the plaintiff, a Rene Joly, alleges that he is a Martian and that others, including those sinister Americans, are conspiring to prevent him from proving it. The judge, however, explores the relevant law and finds that, to have standing in his court, one must be either a corporation or a human being. Since a Martian is neither, the plaintiff gets poured out. Who says there's no justice in the trial courts?

Joly alleges that he is from Mars,
And blames us Americans for psychic scars,
But the ruling says Martians will always lack standing.
Beware all you aliens, you better start banding
And working together so you still can sue
And keep on enjoying an earthly mileu.

Martian equality is now our new cry.
Rouse up your brothers; you must not be shy.
Illegal aliens are common, I know,
But here’s a new twist, you’ll see that it’s so.
Go look in the mirror to pose and to preen,
For unlike most aliens, like Kermit, you’re green.

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Labels: doggerel, Miscellaneous

"Scary Fundamentalist" reports on testimony by Jennifer Lynch about Canadian Human Rights commissions. Canada's experience with these censors is a warning of what will happen to us if we drink too much multi-culti Koolaid. Though I gather the hearing did not go well for Ms. Lynch, it apparently went better for her than she deserved.

What caught my eye was that "Scary Fundamentalist" included doggerel in the post, so here's some doggerel not by me:

There once was a Justice Committee,
Where Lynch went to plead for pity,
With faux grin displayed,
The members waylaid,
Time’s up and she’s still sitting pretty.

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Labels: cultural divide, doggerel

The Wall Street Journal reports that Daniel Ortega, unsurprisingly, has made an end run around Nicaragua's constitutional term limits. He will now no doubt become president for life or as long as he can possibly hold on. Nicaragua returns to jail without passing go or collecting anything resembling freedom. This is the same fate the Obama administration is trying to foist on Honduras.

Ortega’s now stolen Nicaragua,
In a move that was tried by Zelaya.
He’s leader for life,
Despite all the strife,
And that’s how they cut the papaya.

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Labels: Barack Obama, doggerel, foreign policy

The Obama White House's Nixonian war against Fox News is much to be regretted in a country where political speech is supposed to be unsuppressed. But Obama comes naturally to the impetus to suppress things he does not like.

With rules that are used in Chicago,
Like Bolsheviks chasing Zhivago,
When you’re on the run,
They pull out the gun.
Barack, he learned well and evolved so.

10/26/09 Update:

A reader emailed me the following:

Dude, you talk real nice, but considering how short it is, you sure do leave a massive load of easily-debunked pus in this fevered wound of a blog entry. I guess my first question would have to be what your definition of "a war on Fox News" is.

The White House hasn't denied any of their reporters credentials, and hasn't tried to take Fox off the air. They just don't feel like sitting down and having to deflect massively spun questions, distortions and half-truths from what they've rightly described as the propaganda wing of the GOP.

("Nixonian"? Look up Roger Ailes' background sometime.)

This "war" is entirely in the drug-addled mind of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. The White House's "attacks" are to merely say "nope - don't want to be interviewed by you." The remainder of their input is to explain this reasonable policy, when asked. It's Fox making the actual attacks.

So, how is this a war? I'm just curious.

Oh, and “Nixonian”?

It was Ailes whose guns were all large-bore,
And he used to give newspapers what-for.
Just because all his tricks
Were to calm Tricky Dick’s
Paranoia doesn’t make him a man-whore

The guy who wrote this disagrees.
With the pattern that I see.
But my heart o’er that won’t bleed.
I’m delighted someone reads.

To reply, email texthepontificator at yahoo dot com.

Labels: Barack Obama, doggerel

 
















This cartoon used to appear on this site, and I still get a lot of people looking for it.

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Labels: jihad

The blogosphere is replete with comment on Obama's abrogating compensation agreements at firms receiving TARP money. Professor Bainbridge has a cogent post that includes this point:

The bottom line thus is that Obama is having his minion coerce TARP executives and employees into ripping up contracts Obama doesn't like so as to assuage the populist public. In doing so, Obama and his appropriately entitled "czar" are exhibiting a basic lack of respect for the rule of law.

Despite the wailing of the left-wing Cassandras at the time, Bush was never the threat to the rule of law that Obama is.

Abrogating contracts is Barack Obama’s plan.
Cutting back excessive pay, he sticks it to the man.
Why should Obama care that contracts aren’t enforced?
He blows away your vested rights, not feeling your remorse.

Contracts were the settled way we planned into the future.
The recent abrogations leave a rift without a suture.
Undermining confidence, Obama's biggest feature.
Trust in government alone, now, that’s the message from our teacher.

If he can cut back pay because he thinks its way too high,
He can change the price on all the things that you have gone to buy.
If you’re the one who sells things, then you have no way to know
If Obama will just change the price and tell you where to go.

When you can’t rely on business terms of all the deals you’ve made,
You cannot know if you can keep the sums that you’ve been paid.
You’re left to plead your case to distant bureaucrats,
Officious functionaries knowing less than mewling cats.

Success will not depend upon your marketplace acumen.
You’ll need to cultivate a set of skills that don’t like excess lumens.
Who you know and who you stroke, to whom you give out favors,
These are things that now will set the outcome of your labors.

To reply, email texthepontificator at yahoo dot com.

Labels: Barack Obama, doggerel

Ricketyclick on White House Communication Director Anita Dunn:

Mao Tse Tung, ladies and gentlemen. Seventy million dead, one of the oldest, richest cultures on Earth burned to the ground and replaced by gray concrete and black pajamas, the worst genocide in all history, and the architect of this chaos is the “favorite philosopher” of the woman who sits with the President of the United States and passes His Holy Words to you unwashed proletarian masses and your children.

Dunn’s favorite philosopher’s old Mao!
What can you do but say wow?
A murderous old brute,
The thug sure could shoot.
His insights, they ended with pow!

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Labels: cultural divide, doggerel

Politico reports on the Senate health care bill's proposed tax on so-called Cadillac plans:

The tax is designed to pay for reform and lower costs by making the so-called Cadillac plans less attractive for insurers to offer.

The Democrats tell us that we must believe
From private health care we must be reprieved.
I’ve always assumed they mean to imply
Public health care beats what we can buy.

It’s high-end health plans they now want to tax,
But not for the things that plans like that lack.
It’s high-end health plans they want to reduce;
It’s high-end health plans they deem an abuse.

With high end health plans the bar is too high;
Public health plans can’t reach for the sky.
Tear down the good things the people now have;
The poor public option will seem like a salve.

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Labels: doggerel, Obamacare

The New York Times reports:

A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

The article goes on the suggest:

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

I am utterly innocent of advanced physics, but I am skeptical of this explanation of the fate of the U.S. supercollider. To explain what happened, all one need suppose is legislative incompetence, a far less exotic explanation than that the Higgs boson is altering the past. Occam's Razor.

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Labels: Miscellaneous

Yahoo News reports:

Saying the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is in "serious jeopardy," the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee says more troops are needed to combat an increasingly potent Taliban.

That's Dianne Feinstein talking. Similar stories of Democrat waffling on Afghanistan abound. What to do is ultimately in the President's hands. To quote Stevie Wonder, heaven help us all.

The war in Iraq, Dems often did knock
It strayed from the war in the ‘stan.
“The Afghani war we prize more by far,”
The Democrats cried to a man.
Hail to Barack of the Khyber Rifles.

The votes were collected, Barack was elected,
The war in the ‘stan’s getting harder.
Now the Dems aren’t so sure of Afghanistan’s cure,
Or of guarding the Pakistan border.
Hail to Barack of the Khyber Rifles.

“We don’t need to win” is now the new spin,
They’re selling us, oh, such a sleek horse.
Their idea’s so neat, let’s go for defeat,
Embrace being bin Laden’s weak horse.
Hail to Barack of the Khyber Rifles.

Talk of the Taliban there in Afghanistan,
Clearly a salesman’s slick pitch.
Feared weak after ’Nam, they posed like Van Damme.
Naught but a bait and a switch.
Hail to Barack of the Khyber Rifles.

From old talking points, they’re now out of joint;
Their prior positions are trifles.
Barack is the man who adds to the plan
Charisma and charm by the eyefuls.
Hail to Barack of the Khyber Rifles.
Hail, hail, hail, hail to Barack of the Khyber Rifles.

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Labels: doggerel, jihad

I was searching for other political doggerel sites and was disappointed in how little I found. Then I ran across a site with the linked poem. Here's a excerpt:

send Clowns without Borders
into the cities and mountains
hand out lutes and fiddles, harps and drums.
Soldiers, fresh from Boot Camp of the Arts,
would distribute cameras and watercolors

What do you suppose the Taliban, never mind al Qaeda, would do to Clowns without Borders or people handing out musical instruments? Has this person ever seen "The Kite Runner"? Read the whole poem for full effect.

Send Clowns without Borders into the 'stan?
That by golly's a Hell of a plan.
They'll tell the Talib to lay down their guns.
"Let's twist up balloons and have some real fun."
Incredulous Taliban, standing dumbstruck,
May take a whole minute to run full amok.
Let's warn all the clowns to take a quick chill:
They best had not go without making a will.

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Labels: cultural divide, doggerel, jihad

This week's Carnival of the Vanities is up.

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Breitbart reports:

House Republicans have failed for a third time to oust Rep. Charles Rangel as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

Poor Charlie Rangel
Feared he might dangle.
For cheating on taxes and such,
But along came the House,
Which forgave the louse
And saved him for being in dutch.

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Labels: Congress, doggerel

There was a time when the mainstream media would have had us believe it was a major failing of George Bush that he did not follow the advice of certain generals whose advice the liberals agreed with. Apparently Eugene Robinson, no doubt among others, does not agree with the advice of General McChrystal.

Bush had a problem with the war in Iraq,
But Bush is long gone; the Pres is Barack.
“Listen to generals,” George Bush was then told,
For some generals lined up with liberal scolds.
Afghanistan’s where the troubles are now,
And listening to generals puts you out on a bough.

You don’t need to listen if you don’t want to hear.
We can’t let the facts with our plans interfere.
Obama is weighing the options, transfixed,
On which course of action best helps politics.
Now General McChrystal, he asks for more troops.
Why won’t the warmonger shut up and salute?

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Labels: Barack Obama, doggerel, jihad

JammieWearingFool links to a video in which Janeane Garofalo vehemently accuses all Obama opponents of racism. Lord have mercy.

Janeane Garofalo spews her slurs;
Republicans are, she says, just curs.
Opposing Obama has got to be racist:
She can’t imagine another basis.

The limits of Janie’s imagination
Suggest a lot more, in my estimation,
Of Janie, herself, and how she thinks
Than suggesting Republican-hate group links.

Political control of the economy’s at stake,
And liberals want to cut up the cake.
Conservatives think that will make us much poorer
And fear the liberals will put up a fuhrer.

Janeane’s apparently not even able
To comprehend what we see on the table:
The total remaking of American life,
Fostering envy and fomenting strife.

Though Janie sure shows lack of insight,
It's not that she is not very bright.
Instead I think she’s so blinded by hate,
That all she can do is erupt and berate.

This sort of invective comes often, of course,
Given what passes for public discourse.
I sometimes wonder how mankind’s survived,
With serious debate so greatly contrived.

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Labels: cultural divide, doggerel