Gosar the Gosarian

"By the way I'm a dentist. I read body language very, very well. And I can tell you're lying, Agent Strzok, because now I'm reading your MIND, using Dental Telepathy...!"

This Flagboy's Life

As Told to Scott Clevenger

My name is Lachlan Henley. I'm 23 years old, and I grew up in the small community of Blanched, Connecticut. I'm not sure why they picked me to be principal Flagboy to His Serene Majesty Ryan Zinke, First of His Name, Rider of Jets, Breaker of Regulations, and Queen of All the Interiors. I mean, I wasn't in the Army or the Boy Scouts or anything, but I did work as a PA one summer during junior college on Martha Stewart's TV show, and  maybe that's why, because this job is all about etiquette and protocol and stuff. But more than that...it's about honoring the flag. Specifically, the flag we had designed and made by AAA Custom Flag & Banner of Sepsis, Maryland...I think I'm supposed to mention their name, 'cause we got a discount.

You see, raising His Majesty's Own Standard over a building to show Queen Zinke is in residence...Well, I mean, that's an ancient military ritual -- so ancient nobody in the military's actually heard of it -- so it's kind of boring. I can say that, right? C'mon, you've seen military guys when a flag goes up or down; they just stand there like they're all playing freeze tag while somebody blows a sad song on a trumpet or a French horn or whatever the hell it is. Bor. RING.

But the Queen has a sense of style. He likes to zoom off in private jets to exclusive destinations like the Virgin Islands -- not when they're all soggy and gross after a hurricane, but like, when the weather's nice and there's a lot of European tourists, 'cause sometimes they take their tops off! It's true! Me and my friends Liam and Ethan and Blake went to St. Croix for Spring Break one year, and we all felt like we were the mayor of Nip City!

So I guess when you think about, I do have some government experience after all [laughs]!

More than most of the Cabinet, anyway. [Laughter dies. Smile is slowly replaced by a pensive and foreboding look as he stares across the Interior Department parapet toward the Potomac]

Anyway, so it's a solemn ritual that proves His Majesty's commitment to transparency by showing you what building he's in. Most of the other cabinet secretaries, you gotta file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out if they're in their office or not, but I haul down the flag when Queen Zinke leaves the office, and raise it over the Starbucks on E Street NW whenever he takes his motorcade for a macchiato. So really, people should be thanking me, instead of being such dicks, 'cause now they know which Starbucks to get their coffee at if they want to be in the radiant presence of the Queen of All the Interiors, or at least rub elbows with a guy who's seen areolas in the Caribbean.

When you get past all the glitz and the ritual and the bullshit, this job is about solemnity. First, I put on white gloves. Then I unfold the flag (refolding it's a bitch, but I took Elective Origami at Phillips Academy when I got cut from the Lacrosse team). Then I turn on my Bose SoundLink Revolve+ Bluetooth speaker, and play "God Save the Queen" as the motorcade approaches the building. But you gotta be constantly thinking in this job, 'cause the first time I hit the wrong playlist on my iPhone and accidentally blasted the Sex Pistols' version.

It's an awesome and humbling responsibility, but as I look back I realize how much I've grown as a person these past few months, and how much I've learned (like, always bring sun screen to work, 'cause you never know when you're gonna wind up standing on the roof). In some ways this has been the hardest job I've ever had, but like I told my friends last week when we were doing shots at the Caliente Cab Company in Arlington (it was Thirsty Thursday), I know that ultimately I'll miss it when I have to leave next week to take up my new position as National Security Advisor.

News From Tomorrow!

By S.Z.

8:00 a.m. New York Times reports that the President has shot a Democratic senator.

8:45 a.m. The White House Press Spokesman, Sean Spicer, tells reporters that nobody was shot, that the Senator just cut himself shaving, from what Spicer was told.

10:15 a.m. The new FBI Director, James Woods, tells reporters that it wasn't a senator whom the President shot, it was an evil alien replicant of the Senator.

1:00 p.m. Democrats call for the President to be investigated for violations of the Senate rules regarding decorum.

2:30 p.m. The President tweets that as President, he is allowed to murder anybody he wants to, so he murdered a Senator, and what you gonna do about it?

3:00 After being mobbed by reporters asking about the President's murderous rampage, Sean Spicer hides under a parked car and refuses to come out.

5:30 p.m. New White House Spokesman Sarah Palin shoots the entire press pool from a helicopter.

6:30 p.m. Fox News announces that it is now the only news service for the entire United States. And that America is now great again.

6:41 p.m. President Trump decides over pudding to divorce Melania by nuking New York. Law firm Morgan Lewis sends certified letter asserting this successfully voids their pre-nup. Millions die but pudding reportedly delicious.

7:00 p,m. Sean Hannity airs hard-hitting expose on the debauched girls of Spring Break.

NK's Secret Plan for Conquering U.S. - Revealed!

Our aim at World O' Crap has always been entertainment, not education, and yet -- as humanity seems to teeter on the edge of a precipice -- it is useful to recall that George Bernard Shaw believed great art not only could, but indeed must, be didactic. Which brings me to Red Dawn. Not, not that one, the other one. 

When Sheri and I wrote Better Living Through Bad Movies, we climaxed the whole thing with a chapter on Red Dawn, that 1984 paean to Reagan-era priapism, in which an armada of Russians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans subdue the United States.  The vaunted U.S. military proves useless, undoubtedly due to budget cuts, leaving the task of repulsing the invaders to a rag-tag band of American teenagers. But even they are woefully ill-equipped, and for much of the movie can only respond to Russian artillery fire with nocturnal emissions.

When it came time to release the audiobook version, we added some bonus features, including a review of the 2012 remake of Red Dawn, because it operated from an even more ludicrous premise:  that the United States gets bullied and geo-politically pants'd by North Korea.

I don't know, it seemed hilarious last year. But since satire has now become current events, we better prepare by taking this peek at Kim Jong-un's battle plan.

First, however, a bit of background:

In 2009 MGM remade Red Dawn, replacing Patrick Swayze with Chris Hemsworth, and the defunct Soviet Union with the People’s Republic of China. But the studio had financial problems, and then a change of heart about offending the world’s second largest market for movies, so the picture sat on the shelf for three years. Eventually they used dubbing and digital effects to change the villain, and now instead of China, the United States gets invaded and conquered by…North Korea. Which has an interesting effect on the narrative; I mean Red Dawn has always been a David and Goliath story, but in this version, we’re the guy who gets hit in the head with a rock.

Red Dawn (2012)

Director by Dan Bradley

Written by Carl Ellsworth and Jeremy Passmore, based on the 1984 screenplay by John Milius and Kevin Reynolds

Global tensions are high; the American military is deployed to hot spots all over the world, leaving the homeland undefended; and North Korean is threatening to destroy our entire country. Granted, that feels a bit like getting the hem of your Wranglers gnawed on by a teacup Chihuahua, but as various panicky cable news anchors remind us, North Korea is the fourth largest army in the world, behind the Peoples Liberation Army of China, the U.S. Army, the KISS Army, and Armie Hammer.

We're watching a high school football game in Spokane, where Chris Hemsworth, a marine on leave from Iraq, has come to watch his brother, Josh Peck, lead the Wolverines to defeat. Later, Chris goes to a bar, where he gets hit on by Adrianne Palicki (from – oddly enough – Friday Night Lights) whose idea of a saucy pick-up line is to remind Chris that he used to babysit her, and that he has a dead mom. And while we can’t see his crotch in this shot, Chris’s eyes tell us that with her clumsy attempt at flirtation, Adrianne has just committed an act of premeditated bonercide.

There's a blackout, and everybody goes home. The next day, Chris and Josh awaken to see the sky filled with computer generated North Koreans. They jump in their Dodge truck and run into a bunch of stuff, until they literally run into their Dad, who's a cop. He repeatedly orders them to "get to the cabin!", which I like to think is the movie's subtle way of telling us, "if you have to see a Chris Hemsworth film, why don't you go watch Cabin in the Woods instead?"

You know what? I think the movie’s right. What do you say we turn this crap off right now and head for Redbox. Who's with me?!

No one?  Fine...

You know, sometimes I think you people want me to suffer.

Josh insists they pick up his hot blonde girlfriend, but when they get to her house they find the Korean invaders are rounding up all the cheerleaders. So they drive off in a screaming panic, in the process collecting a convoy of soon-to-be-recognizable actors (that other Josh from Hunger Games), already forgotten legacy-celebrities (Connor Cruise, adopted son of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman), a trigger-happy, argumentative dick named Pete who -- I'm calling it now -- will betray our heroes to the North Koreans before long; plus Adrianne, some male models for cannon fodder, and a pretty Latina named Julie, because even though it's wartime there are still labor laws, and somebody will eventually have to spell Adrianne on the vagina shift.

The next day, Chris and Josh go look at the town while their voices – dubbed in post production when the studio decided they couldn’t make the bad guys Chinese -- assure us the thought of North Korea conquering the west coast is crazy! But so crazy it just might work! Then they go back to the cabin and find that Pete has stolen all their breakfast cereal and betrayed them to the Koreans. Even worse, our designated villain, Captain Cho, has captured Connor Cruise's dad, the mayor, and Chris and Josh's dad, the cop. The mayor takes a bullhorn and tries to lure the boys out of the woods, but Cop Dad, who's playing the Harry Dean Stanton role, points at Cho and commands the boys to "go to war with this piece for shit!"

Cho looks at one of his soldiers with an expression that seems to say, "Did this bitch really just call me a piece of shit?"  The soldier gives him a nod that says "you know it, girlfriend", and Cho pulls his pistol and recreates that famous photo of the Saigon police chief shooting a Vietcong in the head. So I guess it takes being invaded by North Koreans to make North Americans empathize with the North Vietnamese.

The next day, Chris's truck is bogged down in a creek bed. All the characters get out and push, but the wheels just spin uselessly in the mud, which is a pretty good visual metaphor for the plot. Since nobody's going anywhere they decide to kill time with an argument. Hunger Games wants to go home to his parents until Adrianne says, Oh. Hey. I forgot to tell you, they're dead. Chris gives a speech about how they're going to fight and become fleas; and while they may only be larvae now, if they work hard they will soon pupate and become parasites who will make the big dog that is North Korea feel itchy. Which is all well and good, but I kind of liked it in the first film when they cried "Wolverines!", and I'm not sure it'll have the same effect when they thrust their AR-15s skyward and shout "Fleas!"

Ready for a training montage? Wait, there's more: ready for the World's Dullest Training Montage? Okay then, let's join the Fleas as they take shorthand, learn to parallel park, and roll around in leaf mold. After thirty-four seconds of boot camp, they start ambushing Korean soldiers and stealing their lunch money. But Hunger Games pukes while corpse-robbing, so Chris and Josh make him shoot a deer and drink its blood, because when remaking even a stupid movie, filmmakers should try to honor its legacy and its fans by including the stupidest part. But they do update the moment for a modern audience, because this time the sacred act of communion between hunter and prey turns out to be a frat-style prank. I'm surprised they didn't hand him a Sharpie and make him draw a dick on the dead deer's forehead.

The Fleas go on the offensive, bombing the Koreans with explosive skateboards and commandeering sliced turkey from Subway. But Josh can't stop lurking around Cheerleader Concentration Camp to peep on his imprisoned girlfriend. Chris tells him he’s endangering the Fleas, but Josh has an idea for how to end the war, and it’s a plan that does the impossible: it’s vague and incredibly complicated at the same time.

But the Fleas seem to know what they're doing, and what they're doing is failing, because in the middle of it Josh spots his girlfriend and runs off to save her. The one Latino flea doesn’t get any lines but he does get killed, and Chris sustains a wound that requires him to take off his shirt and get stitched up without anesthetic, because he got his Patrick Swayze movies mixed up and thought he was in a remake of ROAD HOUSE.

Girlfriend tells them a Russian spetznaz unit has been brought in to handle the Fleas, because that's what happened in the first movie. Then a North Korean general arrives to shout at Captain Cho, but because the characters were originally Chinese and the dialogue has been dubbed into Korean, everyone is subtitled and still out of sync. It may be the best thing in the movie, and after the General storms out, Cho and his aide exchange fraught looks that seem to say, "Did you understand a word he just said?" "No, I don't even understand what I’m saying."

Three Marines show up, led by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who's pulled the Power Boothe shift, and explains the plot: the North Koreans destroyed our electrical grid and communications with an EMP, which allowed them to conquer the entire West Coast, because our morale plummeted without access to Internet porn and Pokemon Go. But Captain Cho keeps a radio-telephone in a suitcase, and if the Fleas can steal it, they’ll win the war. Which seems stupid, but I assume everyone agreed to the rules before they started, so whatever.

They sneak into the Police Department, steal the radio, and Chris shoots Cho in the face. They go back to the hideout to celebrate, but the Koreans interrupt Miller Time by shooting Chris in the back. Seeing his brother's brains spattered all over the six pack changes Josh, and he immediately turns into the greatest guerrilla general since Ho Chi Minh. He leads the Fleas to safety in a Country Squire station wagon, then goes on a grand tour of occupied America, making speeches and recruiting Scabies, Crotch Crabs, Deer Ticks -- a whole army of patriotic parasites. The End.

So what is this version of Red Dawn trying to tell us? Well, we think it offers an important lesson about bullying. Suppose a classmate was intimidating your child on the playground. You could complain to the school, give your kid a few self-defense pointers, or do what we’d do and show them Red Dawn, which demonstrates that while anyone can be bullied, anyone can also be a bully.

Even America, the world’s richest nation, can be successfully beaten up by one of the world’s poorest. So the moral of the story is, if you see a poor person, punch them hard, then run away. And by teaching this lesson to children, it also teaches us, as adults, that it’s probably a good thing we don’t have children.

Additionally, Red Dawn illustrates the rule that casting a hunky but unknown Australian in your movie won’t help get it released; but if you let him ripen on the shelf for three years, he’ll turn into Thor. Or he’ll get black and squishy like an avocado, in which case you should just put your film in a Cuisinart and make guacamole (serves 6 to 8 persons, bores 10 to 12).

Perhaps the biggest difference between the Red Dawns is that the 1984 film was very concerned about guns, and the temperature of the hands that held them. But that’s a quaint artifact from a less heavily armed period in America’s history, when sweet old granny’s still kept cut-glass dishes full of ribbon candy on their coffee tables instead of bowls of bullets.

In the 2012 Red Dawn, guns are abundant, but patriots freak the hell out because the North Koreans turned off their wifi. And unlike Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, who spent much of their movie hijacking ammo and AK-47s and fighting a guerilla war against the Soviets, Chris and the Fleas lay down their lives to get the one working electronic device that will finally allow them to check in on Grindr.

This reflects an important change not only in social values, but military tactics, and if this trend continues, the next war will dispense with tanks, aircraft, and infantry, and be fought virtually, and by proxy. So start training up those Pokémon now.

For me, though, the main lesson we can take from the Red Dawn remake is that Yes, It Can Happen Here. If Kim Jong-un precedes his invasion by knocking out Twitter, Trump will be effectively muzzled, unable to communicate with his generals, or tweet excuses to his followers about how this whole invasion thing is the Democrats fault, and have you tried the chocolate cake?

So get used to being run by Poppin Fresh with a flattop, America.

(Sure, he may kill you, but if you press his belly, he giggles!)

Shake Your Groove Thing

The debate concludes on a surprisingly congenial note as Trump and Clinton grant an audience member's request and sing a medley of Peaches & Herb.

So It Begins

Remember Joementum? Surging Santorum? Well, get ready for the Cruz Ooze.

A Tale of The Foo As Well The Woo

By Keith

Hi W-O'-Crackers, Happy New Year? Are you laughing? I've been laughing since about 10 pm. EST on Jan 19th. And continue to laugh spontaneously throughout day and evening. At the dry cleaner. At the bank. At the overpriced grocery. Even on the “E” train or while tracking commodities and equities on reuters.com.

You are no doubt asking why and I know you are expecting an answer so here it is: It's been very cold here in NYC. Not as chilly as Chicago or Cleveland but it was a warm winter here so far … Last night I crawled into bed with cat Sydney (aka “Midnight”) and we listened to the boring old Worldservice from BBC. Sydney likes it for the same reasons I do, it's simultaneously informative and soporific.

Behold the first hourly news bulletin. We both heard a blood-curdling shriek and poor Sydney was spooked. I was roused but conscious enough to hear that Sarah Palin officially endorsed Donald Trump for the Iowa Caucus.

After the bulletin was a lengthier newscast whereby we could hear more shrieking, some intelligible and some not so. As a much better scribe commented earlier today …

If I were a Democrat or a comedy-show writer, I would be on the floor right now flopping and hallelujah-ing like a holy roller at an Alabama tent revival.

Henceforth the gaiety: “Tundra Trash” meets “God's Little Cancre.” They become soul-mates. It's a match made if not in heaven at least somewheres between Atlas and D.D. Bean manufacturing. World famous former reality TV host joins force with another world-famous reality TV host and a hush from their Lord's blessings stills the known cosmos.

I've concluded that Mrs. Palin might have been intoxicated when presenting her endorsement, which makes it even more lovely. Well, we're being too kind here, she was flat-out drunk. If she were at Rudy's in Hell's Kitchen in the same state she'd be '86-ed. Thank you, “New York Values.”

Somewhere in the amorphous regions of the unconscious, between “Tastes Great, Less Filling” and perhaps even “Truth or Consequences” lies the essence of this liaison.

(No offense intended to New Mexico residents of “ToC”.)

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee Replacement

Guys, I hate to do this to you, but I'm going to have to pass the hat again. I know it's right after the holidays and we're all tapped out, but this is a NATIONAL EMERGENCY!, and just as the Continental Army perished in the snows of Valley Forge for want of a few weevil-ridden Johnny cakes, so are patriots languishing at a bird sanctuary visitors center because they are no longer able to snap into a Slim Jim. Mark my words, this rebellion shall not fail on my watch!  In fact, I'm looking into franchising the idea of White Guys turning Federal facilities into pop-up, Gitmo-style prisons and house-arresting themselves, because I think it's a tremendous blow for justice! And irony.

Hear me out...

Like the zebra mussel, white guys with guns are a non-native, invasive species that migrated to North America on ships and is proving very difficult to control. Now, I suppose we could always spray them from helicopters like the Mediterranean Fruit Fly, or maybe introduce a predator into their habitat (gun shows, Cracker Barrel), but I can't offhand think of a species which hunts the White Guy, not even the wily Northeastern blue-bellied cop, and I don't think we can afford to wait for natural causes (arterial plaque, toddler-involved shootings) to cull the herd for us.

Nope, we need a bold new idea, and I don't have one, so instead let's combine Mitt Romney's old idea of solving the immigration issue through "self-deportation" with the even older American notion of the reservation -- desolate and remote areas where Native Americans were shipped off to while White Guys with guns established squatter's rights to the rest of the continent. Unfortunately, we can't stage a new Trail of Tears, because it wouldn't be metaphorical this time -- the modern White Man takes his First Amendment right to whine very seriously -- and it would all be captured on smartphones and posted to YouTube, and I'm guessing footage of internal exile would make the government look kind of tyrannical, unless they could think of something fun to do during the exodus, like play "I Spy" or get a round of "Row, Row, Row, Your Boat" going.

So clearly, the answer is Self-Imprisonment: let's not dislodge these Minutemen (as their wives derisively call them), let's lodge them. There must be hundreds of isolated and half-forgotten government buildings these guys and their brethren could crowd into -- corrugated steel sheds where pesticides for the Tri-County Mosquito Abatement District are stored; the gift shop at the old Yucca Flats nuclear testing ground; the shack used by that guy from the state Agriculture Department who takes the annual skunk census in Mingo County, West Virginia (I mean, I assume that's a thing; I'd hate to think Mingo County is just guessing about its skunk population).  Let's face it, guns are dangerous, and White Guys carry guns the way ground squirrels carry plague. But while you can keep a squirrel out of your day care center without Wayne La Pierre taking you to court, White Guys and their death-dicks not only have the run of the country, they can even point sniper rifles at police officers, the way Ammon Bundy's buddies did at his daddy's ranch, and never even risk a ticket, let alone arrest. So really, confining these pasty patriots to a secluded spot in the woods is the closest they're ever going to get to a jail cell. Or at least to a progressive dinner at the Unibomber's cabin.

So let's allow, even encourage these pastytriots to occupy our nation's ranger stations and nuclear waste sites, just so long as their guns remain there with them, under house arrest (and I'm serious here guys: your AR-15s and your AK-47s have to wear those tracking ankle bracelets too).  And like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who managed to write A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich while laboring in one of Stalin's gulags, the Occupiers would be free to write pamphlets and manifestos and exchange ideas (at a fair market rate of exchange) with fellow Constitutionalists who share their belief that the nation's founding document says private citizens can beat up the Federal government and steal its lunch money (incidentally, according to Merriam-Webster, the proper collective noun for such a confab is a blowhoard of blowhards).

So anyway, we should all kick in to buy these latter day Spartans some Fritos or something, before they get peckish and go home.

World's Worst Toys R Us Spokesmodel

Updated below

So among the many jaw-dropping, gorge-raising articles I read today about the necro-decorative fun hunter (trophy, as opposed to subsistence) or "funter", Sabrina Corgatelli, was this Salon piece by Scott Eric Kaufman, which offered a wealth of tone-deaf quotations:

Corgatelli told Today’s Carson Daly that when she posted the image of her and the giraffe — which she captioned, “Such an amazing animal!! I couldn’t be any happier!! My emotion after getting him was a feeling I will never forget!!!” — 

Note: it's possible that Ms. Corgatelli didn't actually mean these astonishingly sociopathic and bone-headed vocalizations, but had a permit to cull the moron herd, and was simply blowing on her hand-carved Duck Dynasty-brand Idjit Call™ in order to bring the game into her crosshairs.

she never anticipated that the photograph would be commented on more than 13,000 times, or that she would become a flash-point in the discussion about the legitimacy of big game hunting. 

Because who could possibly gaze upon this anodyne image: 

...and feel anything but happy!! about this amazing animal!!

“To all the haters, stay tuned, you’re gonna have so much more to be p***ed about,” she wrote in response to some of those comments.

Oh oh...Sounds like she's already booked her next safari to the Most Dangerous Game Dude Ranch!

She was much more measured with Daly, saying that “everybody just thinks we’re cold-hearted killers, and it’s not that. There is a connection with the animal, and just because we hunt them doesn’t mean we don’t have a respect for them.”

You know who else feels a connection to the things they kill? Serial killers. And they also tend to take trophies from their victims, so maybe this giraffe murdering is just a phase she's going through, a chrysalis form as she transitions from John Wayne into John Wayne Gacy.

She added that she was, in effect, doing a public service, because despite being herbivores who mostly congregate in national parks, “giraffes are very dangerous animals” and “they could hurt you seriously very quickly.”

As opposed to a bow hunter, who can also hurt you seriously, but slowly and exquisitely over a two-day period. But Ms. Corgatelli is correct, giraffes can be dangerous. Between college and grad school my sister Katy worked at the Santa Barbara zoo, and her duties included tending to the giraffes. One day, an obnoxious African Crown Crane started hanging out in the exhibit and making vaguely mocking noises at the ungulates. The next day, Katy found the bird's headless body sprawled in the middle of the enclosure; forensic evidence suggested a giraffe had finally got fed up and decapitated it with a single kick, sending the crane's head tumbling into the next exhibit and scoring a badly needed extra point.  So, yes...Giraffes have evolved to become nature's perfect killing machine, assuming you're a douchebag bird.

But there's another part of this story that has received less scrutiny, and typically, it was Sheri who first noticed it, writing on Facebook:

This woman has Utah roots (from Portage, I believe) and she graduated from USU. Her boyfriend is reportedly from Logan. She works an accountant at an Idaho university. How does she afford her big game hunting "hobby"? ... [T]rips to Africa, guides, thousands of dollars in fees, etc.

That's a very good question. Dr. Walter Palmer, the Dentist of Death, paid $55,000 to kill Cecil the lion; do Idaho institutes of higher education really compensate their accountants that well? Because if so, this makes me think, for about the ten thousandth time, that I made a serious misjudgment at that high school Career Day Fair.

Update: And Sheri, as usual, breaks the case:

Well, the answer to the funding mystery is what you all thought: she hunts children and sells their hair to use as stuffing for Build-a-Bears. 

No, actually her new boyfriend is Aaron Nelson, professional lion killer. She goes along on the trophy hunts to add a woman's gentle touch to the slaughter. Here's Aaron's bio from his firm's web page:

"Since 1995 Aaron Neilson has specialized in hunting the African Lion. He has personally taken 11 trophy lions of his own. Not to mention, he has accompanied numerous clients and friends on some of their lion hunts around the African continent. He has personally hunted Lion in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia. Over the past 16 years he has spent over 350 days pursuing lion in Africa, an accomplishment not matched by any other hunting consultant. When trusting your highly expensive, and long-awaited trophy lion hunt to an agent. Look no further than Global Hunting Resources, we have the experience and knowledge to back it up!"

And when the game population is finally exhausted thanks to these assholes, Aaron and his high calibre helpmeet Sabrina can diversify into the business of guiding actual serial killers on safari. Imagine helping Richard Speck to hunt the wily student nurse -- notoriously difficult to track at night because of their noiseless crepe shoes --by teaching him how to build a "nurse blind" out of hospital modesty screens and then hunker down by the watering hole -- or at least the vending machines in the breakroom -- and wait.

Deep in the night shift, their white uniforms and caps are softly luminous in the faint glow from the Bun-O-Matic Coffee Maker light, making it obvious that you're performing a public service, and that nature wants you to take these girls and get their heads, because student nurses are "very dangerous" and "they could hurt you seriously very quickly," especially if they're taking a blood sample and happen to miss the vein four or five times.

If Yoda Had Trained Paul Blart, Mall Cop

As you know, J.J. Abrams is directing the first new Star Wars movie in nine years, heralding a renewed franchise that will not only continue the story of films IV through VI, but follow new and familiar Star Wars characters in a series of spin-offs. Naturally, with both Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi dead, and Luke busy with the Abrams film, a new mentor will have to be found for the next generation of Sith and Jedi.

I give you, D.W. Wilber of Townhall.  According to his bio, "Wilber is a former Intelligence and Counterterrorism Officer, and the owner of Secur-Intel-Solutions" (Our slogan: "We're so secure, we didn't even tell the letter "e" we exist!")  I checked their website, and it's charmingly home-made, with a logo that looks like his kid doodled it while playing World of Warcraft, and a motto that smacks of something Wilber scribbled on his PeeChee during Freshman Latin class. (As of press time, their sitemeter shows 883 visitors, although a couple of those are probably me, since I forgot to bookmark it the first time.)

Mr. Wilber's site would appreciate it if you'd mistake them for a sort of store brand Blackwater, and helps the illusion along with a picture of a riot copied from the Web, and a picture of a white guy in jeans standing in the middle of a road somewhere with some brown guys in camouflage and pointing at something off-camera. I feel more secure already.

But who pops up first in their list of clients?  Malls.  So rest easy, America. Secur-Intel-Solutions may skimp on vowels (probably 'cause they blew their budget on decorative dashes), but they spare no effort to ensure that there is a steely-eyed, cold-blooded killer between those rambunctious 12-year olds and Hotdog On a Stick.

In his spare time, Mr. Wilber would appreciate it if we'd preemptively bomb the restive minority neighborhoods in St. Louis County, Missouri.

Since August 9th when Michael Brown committed a strong arm robbery and was confronted by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, a confrontation which ultimately resulted in Wilson shooting and killing Brown...

Here's your first lesson, Future Mall Cops O' America: Juxtaposing unrelated events to create the illusion of causation; this skill comes in handy when writing up your report about why you tazed that kid who laughed at your "bike rack" when you bent over to tie your shoe, and who may have been the same kid who earlier stole a watermelon Jolly Rancher from Mr. Bulky's, although you didn't know anything about that at the time.  If later challenged, perhaps by an attorney hired by the kid's parents to sue the mall, concede that you did not, in fact, witness the kid committing a crime, or witness a crime at all, or even know one happened, but you felt a disturbance in the Force, as though millions of Plumber's Cracks cried out at once, and were suddenly snickered at.

We now join Obi-Wilber's previous sentence, already in progress.

...Ferguson and the entire St. Louis metropolitan region has been gripped by a constant tug of war between the police trying to restore order and peace and allow the criminal justice system to follow its’ course, and a disparate group bent on continuing the protests and violence. 

'These are not the violent, militarized police you're looking for."  Here's your second lesson, Stalwart Guardians of Baby Gap: the Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded. Which necessarily includes pretty much anyone who reads Townhall for the articles.

New Black Panther activists,

Oh, is that guy in town?

 black Missouri state senators allied with the protestors and rioters,

Remember, Junior G-Men, to always specify the race of bystanders, e.g., "the black witness claimed he saw me shoot an unarmed black teenager," because it subtly highlights their conflict of interest, i.e., they are too melanin-rich to give an unbiased account of events. (A word of caution: this doesn't work as well when using the word "white" -- e.g., "the white Missouri state senator allied with the white prosecutors and the white police chief of the all-white police department who support the white officer who shot the unarmed black teenager." In this case, substitute "brave" or "courageous" for "white" and maybe end the sentence with "who lives in the house that Jack built" just to lighten things up.)

 anarchists who show up anywhere that offers them an opportunity to destroy property,

Boy, I'll say. I worked in an auto dismantling yard in Azusa one summer, and the entire staff? All anarchists. Naturally, I was afraid it might be a closed shop situation, and I'd have to join their anarchists' union, but fortunately they destroy their own governing structures before they can sufficiently mature to organize a framework for collective bargaining.

and white useful idiots who have fallen for the old line of blacks being “oppressed”.

Uh...I didn't check the roll sheet today...None of you guys are black, right?  If you're black, raise your hand.  Huh...Okay, if you're black and feel you've ever been 'oppressed,' raise your hand, keeping in mind that this will count for half your grade..."

 All drawn together for one purpose, to throw out the Constitution of the United States and demand Officer Wilson be arrested, prosecuted, jailed, and executed, regardless of what the evidence shows. 

I see some of you who've watched Schoolhouse Rock are scratching your heads, but the Bill of Officer Wilson's Rights that allow white police officers to shoot 3/5s of a citizen before receiving a written warning is in really fine print at the bottom of the Constitution, and it doesn't show up that great on parchment so you probably just missed it.

Basically a modern day lynch mob. 

Since Republicans concerned about the existence of voting voter fraud have reached back into the Jim Crow toolbox for a remedy, they should have expected that other fads from that era would be swept along on this wave of retro fashions. However, the fact that blacks (and white useful idiots [but not anarchists, because lynch mobs are too hierarchical for them]) are the ones bringing back lynching is unfair, and probably illegal. It's like those cyber-squatters who register corporate domain names before a company can, and then demand payment or they'll turn JoAnnsFabrics.com into an amputee porn hub. For blacks to lead lynch mobs -- however "high-tech" -- is a clearcut case of intellectual property theft.

Or better yet an insurgency determined to force society to acquiesce to their demands, or else.

Given how well the U.S. has historically done against insurgencies, I'm afraid there aren't enough mall cops in America (even in the Mall of America) to save you now, Obi-Wilber.

After all, what does an insurgency do but riot and destroy property, attack the authorities, in this case the police, and threaten to spread their ‘revolution’. As the Ferguson insurgency has done, threatening next time to “burn down the white areas”.

"Next time"? So white people get one free shooting (presumably with their choice of sides) and will only get burned out of their homes if they ask for seconds? Well, it's not much, but it's more of a warning than Rosewood or Tulsa got.

Once Officer Wilson is exonerated of any wrongdoing in the shooting death of Michael Brown (and he will be) the evidence will show Officer Wilson was justified and acted within the law.

Beyond what the evidence will show the State of Missouri also still has a ‘Fleeing Felon’ law on the books, allowing the police to use deadly force to affect the arrest of any felony suspect attempting to flee arrest. 

(Raises hand) Sir? Even the not liberal RealClearPolitics thinks that isn't true, and hasn't been since Tennessee v. Garner in 1985.

Obi-Wilber: (Raises hand, Force chokes me)  I find your lack of faith-based legal reasoning disturbing.

Remember, Michael Brown had just committed a ‘strong-arm robbery’, by Missouri Statute, Robbery 2nd Degree. A felony.

This assumes facts not in evidence; but Officer Wilson is strong in the Force -- the Police Force  anyway, which explains why they're all so desperately covering his ass -- and anyway, we're trying Mr. Brown in the media, so the rules of evidence don't apply.  Say, while we're at it, we might as well clear up our backlog by pinning a few other things on him in order to justify his death:  I have it on good authority he also ate all the Früsen Gladje, secretly switched our coffee with Folgers Crystals, and surreptitiously put the ram in the ramma lamma ding dong.

And he definitely was trying to flee. The Ferguson insurgency has threatened to murder police officers and white people in general to achieve “justice” if Officer Wilson doesn’t receive the “justice” they deem appropriate. If we take them at their word, not only will the City of Ferguson burn, but many of the surrounding communities in St. Louis County will also fall victim to the insurgency.

According to witnesses he was stopped and had his hands up. Still, black people are demanding that a white cop face justice, so they should be treated, not as citizens gathering to petition the government for a redress of grievances, but as an insurgency, and promptly bombed back to the Stone Age. On the bright side, they'll finally be in sync with the Ferguson P.D.'s grasp of civil rights.

One hope for stemming the expected violence is that weather prognosticators in the mid-west are correct in that this winter will be as bad or worse than last winter was in the St. Louis region. Perhaps the Grand Jury will release their findings when there’s a foot of snow on the ground in St. Louis and the temperature is fourteen below zero.

And thus endeth the lesson. So let's review: Protestors objecting to the summary execution of Michael Brown by a cop are the moral equivalent of ISIS. Fortunately, they're mostly Blacks, and Blacks don't like cold weather because they're from Africa, so we should play it safe, file a motion for a change of venue, and hold Officer Wilson's trial on Hoth.

Flex Mooseknuckle Needs Your Help!

Do you remember Douglas MacKinnon? If so, you're probably wishing some hammer-wielding Samaritan would give you that same, ultra-specific neurological damage Guy Pearce suffered from in Memento, but just as a refresher: Doug is a former press secretary to former Senator Bob Dole, "who spent three years working in a Joint Command" (presumably his access to pot also allowed him to score Bob's Viagra):

"Thanks to my Viagra pusher, I'm no longer a spaghetti pusher."

He also writes crappy novels about would-be tough guys who would be tough if only all that justice-seeking and vengeance-wreaking didn't cut into the time they set aside each day for crafting run-on wisecracks and diarrheal quips ("If I were emperor of the earth for one day, one of the first things I would do would be to disband the TSA and turn the entire operation over to the private sector. In the parade of our government being intrusive and out of control, the beyond incompetent TSA is carrying the baton and wearing the shiniest jackboots of the lot.”)

Because of the recent independence referendum in Scotland, secession is all the rage. 

True, the Scots didn't actually secede, but nothing entices people to hop on a bandwagon more than a failed cause, which explains the swelling popularity of racism, heterosexual marriage, and Confederate flag mudflaps.

Both in Europe and even here in the United States. With that subject in mind, the Reuters news agency commissioned a poll and found that one of four Americans would be open to secession. One in four.

Astonishing! I would have bet that the proportion of gibbering morons in this country was at least 50%. 

Former Congressman, Presidential candidate, and Patriot Ron Paul just added to the growing controversy when he said there should be more Secession movements in The United States. 

If you're going to revive the Colonial-era practice of randomly capitalizing nouns, then you really ought to go whole hog and use the elongated "S" too. So what I think you really meant to say was, "Former Congreffman, Prefidential candidate, and Patriot Ron Paul juft added to the growing controverfy when he faid there fhould be more Feceffion movementf in the United Ftatef."

For me, the subject of secession is one that I have researched off and on for years. That said, it is one thing to research it, and quite another to put your name on a book that most will consider controversial at best, with some even considering treasonous. 

Are you considering treasonous? Talk to your doctor, and ask if treasonous is right for you.

Especially considering that I worked in the White House and Pentagon.

Big deal! Chuck Norris worked in the Octagon, and you don't see him seceding.

As I was writing the book, my wife, family members, and a few close friends implored me to at least use a pseudonym instead of my real name. 

Of course, they beg him to use an assumed name whenever they go out in public together, sooo...

But Mr. MacKinnon's family and friends do bring up a good, if self-serving point, so let's pitch in and see if we can help. What pseudonym do you think he should adopt when writing his Jefferson Davis/Alexander Stephens slash fiction?  Needless to say, it must be something terse and manly to go along with his tough guy persona.  I'll get the ball rolling:

Fleck Spurnipple.
Crab Brickmeat.
Hook Pinewhistle.

The floor is open.

I considered the suggestion but quickly cast it aside. Exactly because of the controversial nature of this book, I very well may pay a professional or even personal price for writing it.

Less than we'd pay for reading it, but at least we don't have to go around calling ourselves Ram Spunkhammer.

 I understand that but felt strongly that my real name had to go on the book

Along with that legally required warning from the Surgeon General.

...for two reasons. The first is that precisely because of the precarious situation of our nation and the world, I felt it important to try to begin a dialogue that would resonate with those who cherish traditional values. The second reason is that because of my professional and real-life experience, I felt my name might add some credibility to the effort.

Spuds Mackenzie is right!

So, how does one begin a discussion regarding the highly controversial subject of seceding from the Union? 

Usually by spitting a stream of Red Man juice into an old coffee can you keep under the podium.

Well for me, it began about four years ago at an outdoor café at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. I had gone there to catch-up with a friend recently back from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like me – and tens of millions of other Americans – he was conservative and a strong believer in traditional values. 

That sounds...vaguely familiar. Heyyyy, it looks like Steely Manlance went to the Willard to meet his own fictional creation, Ian Wallace! ("What sets the main character Ian Wallace apart is that he is fanatically conservative and proudly wears his strong belief in Traditional Values on his sleeve.")

Also like me and those tens of millions of Americans, he felt our nation was turning its back on the values he held dear.

Specifically, the value of pi, which has been mucked up by liberals who've added too many decimal places in an effort to be inclusive.

Rock Maninoff.
Flinch Pigiron.
Bic Banana.

Sorry, you were saying?

Our discussion then – and now – centered on the question of what any citizen can do when a growing number of our leaders seem determined to erase our borders, do away with the rule-of-law, expand the nanny state into a theology, bankrupt or punish American companies in the name of fighting climate change, do away with the 2nd Amendment, censor or demonize the history of western civilization and replace it with multiculturalism, give every kid a trophy and turn them into wimps, continue to support the completely unfunded public-employee pensions which are destroying the financial solvency of cities, counties, and states across our nation, add billions every day to our $17 trillion in debt, destroy our health-care system to substitute socialized medicine, vilify fossil fuels, and attack all faith in God with a particular and unhinged bias against the Christian faith.

It's a good thing Wrench McMuffin was talking to one of his own fictional characters, because any real person would have faked an attack of diverticulitis halfway through and wriggled out the Men's Room window.

The more my friend and I talked about the problem, the more we wanted and needed to talk about possible solutions.

Like considering treasonous?

 As we did, over the following months, we expanded our group to include a constitutional law expert, two former military officers, two former diplomats, a minister, another special operator, and experts on banking, energy, farming, and infrastructure.

You guys realize the Fire Marshal isn't going to let you all ride in the A-Team van, and that some of you are probably going to have to carpool to the secession.

We quickly decided that in least in theory, the solution which made the most sense was to draft a blueprint to leave the Union. Hence, The Secessionist States of America. A book which outlines the why, where, how, and when such a new republic based on traditional values could be established.

Sadly, the name "Republic of Gilead" was already taken.

We are fully aware that the three states offered up as the land mass for this Traditional Values espousing nation along with its new name, will be very controversial to some. For that reason and others, the book will either be ignored, censored, or vilified by most on the left and most in the mainstream media.

Yes, if there's one thing our media hates and shuns, it's controversy.

Knowing that, I simply want those who believe the downward spiral of our country is irreversible, to know that an option to preserve their values does exist. That some folks with a great deal of real-world experience felt it was their responsibility to at least explore the possibility of secession.

Despite how useful their real-world experience has been in concocting a fake-world, it doesn't extend to branding, so Dab Crunchbucket and his co-conspirators are still looking for a good slogan to sell their concept. Right now it's between "Treason is the Reason!" and "Secession: Even Without Slaves It Could Work!"

 It was a controversial solution about 240 years ago and it is no less so now.

I hear it occasioned a spot of spirited debate about 153 years ago, too.

Until that also is taken from us, it is still our right as Americans to discuss what many people truly believe to be our last hope.

Heed the words of Grout Turtlewax!

Dill Peltback
Stub Plasticsac
Stone Phillips

We're still working on it...

Happy Birthday Jay! The Return of TBogg! And Special Guest Idiot!

Today is the birthday of Jay B., a trenchant, worldly man about blog who has been enlivening the comments section here and elsewhere around the Internet for many years now.  You may also remember Jay's stint as a blog-sitter for TBogg, in which he did some very fine pinch-hitting, but which becomes an EERIE COINCIDENCE, when we realize that this is not only the anniversary of the day Jay was born, but also the very day TBogg was re-born.  Yes, Wo'C's blogfather is back, and Raw Story has got him, which must mean that Jay and TBogg have some weird mystical connection like Harry Potter and Voldemort, and so long as one of them lives the other can't die, or stay dead, or something like that.  In any case, I guess they'll have to split the birthday cake, and we'll have to endure a ten minute argument over who gets the rose.

So in honor of this Spring-like renewal, I thought I'd scout around for a fresh new wingnut who reminded me a bit less of a sun-baked Coney Island Whitefish.  Enter, Matthew May.

Although Matthew has been writing steadily for American Thinker since 2004, I've somehow never noticed his existence.  Now, this undoubtedly puts me in the majority, but it also means that I've missed the contrarian wisdom of one of the hardest working concern trolls around.

Matt's specialty is mansplaining (or, more precisely, The Mansplaining) to Black America about the Founding Fathers, in articles like Kenneth Gladney: 21st century Crispus Attucks).  In fact, he's such a diehard Minuteman that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he's had his skull surgically tricornered. This week, Matt takes up arms against Obamacare, but unlike the right bloggers who are invoking Braveheart, Matthew draws inspiration from those two freckled patriots in that Life cereal commercial who refuse to try the product, even though -- or especially because -- they've heard it's "supposed to be good for you."

I Will Not Comply 

Like most members of the Congress that passed it and, undoubtedly, the president of the United States who signed it, I have not read the entirety of the ill-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. 

Great, now we can't discuss the bill without spoiler tags.

 Yet there is one aspect concerning that legislation of which I am certain: I will not comply.

Yes, but you didn't read the legislation, so maybe there's a codicil to a rider to an amendment that specifically declares you ineligible to participate in the program, so by refusing to comply you're actually playing right into their hands!

I will not comply because I am a free citizen of the United States, not a subject of its government.  I consider non-compliance with this monstrosity and the tens of thousands of pages of regulations that are to be enforced by an unelected bureaucracy, and that have left a gigantic carbon footprint on our environment and the United States Constitution, a duty.

Yes, turning health insurance into a Rust Belt heavy industry was probably a mistake, and I suspect that even liberals object to Congress mandating that under the Affordable Care Act, mammograms must be administered by steam-powered looms.

Non-compliance is my executive order, and that order reads in part that I do not recognize any government's claim on my action or inaction in the marketplace, nor upon any personal information I am unwilling to divulge.

Matt has declared himself President of the United Basement, a sovereign nation where Federal, State, and Municipal laws do not apply, and where he gets to decide who can use the air hockey table.

I will not submit to a cabal who read George Orwell's 1984 not as a terrifying warning, but as an instruction manual.

Hey, at least they read, Matt.

Refusing to comply with the dictates of an illegitimate law that is selectively enforced, and from which the privileged few are exempted, is not, in the annals of American history, brave or difficult.

Nah, just ask cowardly freeloaders like Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman (pro-tip: you might want to take a shovel to the interview).

We are, however, drawing a line that the forces of repression, socialism, and tyranny must not cross.  Some might even color the line red. 

Some might color it blue or magenta. The important thing is to color inside the line.

 Yet unlike a certain other, this red line is immovable.  I yield nothing on the plane of freedom.  I will not take any small step that is, in actuality, one giant leap backward to the darkness we thought we had vanquished. 

Who is with me?

I dunno, Matt. I know you'd like me to join you, but wouldn't I really best honor the spirit of your movement by not complying with your request? I believe the annals back me up here.

Anyway, a hearty Welcome Back TBogg from the Sweatblogs, while to Jay we proudly present...

...The traditional Sexy Birthday Lizard.

Happy Birthday, S.Z.! I got you Alicia Keys!

Wait. I just checked the receipt, and it looks like I got you Alan Keyes.  Sorry about that.

Anyway, today is the natal anniversary of our beloved Sheri Zollinger, founder of World O' Crap, co-author of Better Living Through Bad Movies, and rescuer of more stray and distressed animals than Marshall Thompson in Daktari.

As longtime readers know, s.z. (as she was originally code-named) is amazingly smart, inexhaustibly funny, and impossibly kind; and the closest thing to a saint one can come to without actually being canonized, martyred, or cast in resin and glued to a dashboard.

Astronaut/Supermodel/Spy (artist's conception).

Now, as it turns out, only one of those three professional appellations is true (I'll let you guess which one), which is also true of RenewAmerica's Alan Keyes:

Ambassador/Senator/President

But Alan has apparently been reading Harry Turtledove's Alternate History novels, and has hatched a plan to make his fantasy resume come true, and corner the Stolen Underpants market at the same time!

'A Bucket Brigade': The most simple, feasible way to take back America!

Step 1:  Find an Alternate Historian who will confirm that if Alan had trounced Barack Obama in the 2004 Illinois Senate race, rather than vice versa, then he, not  Obama, would have become the First Black President of the United States.

Step 2:  Quote David Niven's lament from the end of The Prisoner of Zenda, "Fate doesn't always make the right man king."

Step 3:  Impeach President Obama!  ("Impeachment must be the centerpiece of the 2014 elections — and candidates for both houses must sign a pledge to impeach!")

Step 4:  ???

Step 5:  Become President!

But I kid, Alan.  Actually, he's worked out a much more comprehensive business plan than the Underpants Gnomes:  Once we have a pledge to impeach! in place, Alan will make the following move in this tri-level chess game played with Death for the fate of America Herself:

Boehner must be dumped as Speaker and replaced with the next president of the United States, whoever that may be, chosen by the House — the 'people's chamber'!

Wait, wait, wait -- aren't we getting ahead of ourselves here?  How are we going to impeach the president, when none of the putative scandals on which impeachment would have hinged have turned out to be actual crimes or misdemeanors, high or otherwise?

WND.com is reporting on the activities of people who have been gathering on highway and other overpasses in different parts of the country with signs advocating the impeachment of Barack Obama. 

Of course!  While the impeachment advocates may not prevail in the courts or the Senate, they can still win a stunning legal victory in the overpasses!

So what are we charging President Obama with, anyway?  Well, according to Alan, it's everything from "Their national health policy's violation of the free exercise of religion with respect to the practice of abortion;" to "Their military policy's suppression of militarily innocuous religious practices by military personnel, in violation of the 1st Amendment;" to "Their social policy's enforced acceptance of homosexual marriage, disparaging and denying the God-endowed rights of the natural family, which the Constitution's 9th Amendment plainly forbids."

By demonstrating their strong feelings on this subject, the people gathering at overpasses throughout the nation are taking an important first step toward achieving the result America requires.

And if it takes a bit longer than anticipated, and they're still standing out there in February, and get bored and start bombing passing cars with empty pint bottles of peach brandy, well, as Robespierre said, "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few windshields."

Obama and his minions can and should be impeached and removed from office. The process could begin in short order, within a few weeks of the time the new Congress convenes in 2015. The aim would be to achieve a simple majority of representatives in the U.S. House willing to impeach Obama and his minions, and two-thirds of the Senators in the U.S. Senate willing to remove them.

Then we all go out for a light lunch.  Simple!  Once we get the Overpass People on our side, we can't lose!  (Hm.  "Overpass People" sounds a little on the Gay 70s Disco side...we need a strong, heroic name for this Justice League of patriots who are defending us all by gathering to petition the freeway for a redress of grievances, all while maintaining a minimum vertical clearance of 16 feet.

This is all well and good, but how does it get Alan that presidency he was cheated out of?

Let's say that when the smoke clears after the 2014 election, candidates who have pledged to initiate impeachment in Congress have been elected in sufficient numbers. Let's call them the "bucket brigade" for short.

Sure, why not?  It's less likely to get bleeped than my suggestion.

[T]he first step of the "bucket brigade" would be to elect, as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the person they believe best suited to take over the Office of President of the United States. This could be any qualified person in the U.S., since the Speaker does not have to be a member of the House.

Ahhh, I see where he's going with this -- and I have to admit, it's a brilliant, or brilliantly lazy, scheme!  Not only does Alan not have to run for the Presidency to become President, he doesn't even have to win a crappy little House election.  He merely needs Congress to elevate him to the third highest office in the land by acclamation, then immediately to the highest office, bypassing Joe Biden, who will presumably return from a routine tooth-whitening appointment to be confronted by the perplexing sight of an entirely different black guy in the Oval Office.

So the overpass demonstrators are right to assume that we cannot and should not wait until 2016 to refresh our political life.

The Tree of Liberty is looking a little wilted, so considering opening a vein today, Patriots.

The key to success is to demand that candidates take a solemn oath to impeach and remove those who are conniving to overthrow our Constitution, trample our unalienable rights, and rape us of our national birthright, which is God-acknowledging liberty. Find and swear-in the "bucket brigade."

By the way, don't make the mistake of swearing in an actual bucket brigade; or if you do, at least wait until they've put out the fire before you start demanding they swear oaths and touch your bible.

President-doesn't-need-to-be-elect Keyes's column wraps up with an Afterward from Stephen Stone, President of RenewAmerica, who explains how this time, impeachment will really, really work, and make the entire country, even Democrats, even people who want a Black President, turn their backs on Obama.  And when they do, who will they see standing there...?

You know you want me.

But it's kind of long, and not really Birthday Card quality, so we'll just end with our fondest wish that Sheri has a wonderful day, free of cord-chewing cats and projectile-pooping puppies.

Happy birthday, s.z.!

UPDATE:  Crap!  I almost forgot!

Sexy Birthday Lizard!