You and the Government Shutdown

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

You and the Government Shutdown

In our nation’s capital, a number of veterans have torn down barricades that were blocking several war memorials, and taken them (the barricades, not the war memorials) away to dump in front of Tsarkoe Seloe…um, the White House.  That’s the stuff!  Our little rural county is not important enough to have any federal memorials to barricade, hence no protests, but maybe someone could go tip over a traffic cone in front of a convenience store.

The government shutdown is so bad that young military recruits aim their weapons at the targets and shout “Bang!”  When range drill is over they must collect, count, and turn in all vowels and consonants discharged in the exercise.

As a cost-saving measure, flags over government buildings will feature only four stripes and fifteen stars.

The Lincoln Memorial is closed, but visitors to Washington may stand reverently before a cardboard cutout of President Millard Fillmore.

Navy tankers are unable to fuel warships at sea, and are sending them song sheets for “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

For the duration of the crisis Canada has offered to lend their good neighbor to the south their four submarines, just as soon as any of them can be made to float.

In sympathy with our government’s funding crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to laugh at our President and Congress only three times a week instead of five.

Recently I referred to Speaker Boehner and the House of Representatives as a lot of harmless Merovingians.  The other night the ghost of King Childeric III appeared to me in a dream and demanded that I stop insulting harmless Merovingians.

The Veterans’ Administration, in the spirit of shared sacrifice, has agreed to ignore veterans at a slower rate.

In large cities, minimum-wage private sector workers are setting up soup kitchens for IRS employees, who are asked not to double-park their government-issued SUVs out front.

Until the budget crisis is resolved, the five full-time White House chefs will be reduced to seven.

In the last presidential election only about half of all Republicans bothered to vote; the other half stayed home to listen to Rush Limbaugh, war hero and family counselor.  Republicans are now so outraged at the shutdown that in the next election they will avoid voting in even greater numbers.

Transportation Security Agents at the nation’s airports have warned our government that if their pay is delayed they are going to start being nice to travelers. 

But keep calm, America, the chaos can’t last much longer – the Speaker of the House has threatened to wear his flowered golfing shorts and cry if the President doesn’t accept the Speaker’s abject surrender.

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Rush Limbaugh and Helen Thomas Got Married?

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Paintballs and the White House Press Corps

Because Israel is a tiny country that can be overflown by hostile aircraft in seconds, it has in its short history developed a citizen-soldier army that, despite its small size and its heavy dependence on reservists, is one of the most flexible, effective, and professional militaries in history.

The ever-changing basement governments in what some are pleased to call Palestine (a Roman designation) are careless with their own citizens’ lives but have lots of money to spend in firing thousands of rockets onto Israel.

Just as President Lincoln did to the Confederacy, President Roosevelt to the Axis, and President Kennedy to Cuba, the Israelis have set an ongoing blockade of hostile areas. Their reasoning is that if the neighbors are shooting at you all the time, you do the best you can to see that they can’t easily get more bullets.

So when some peace (cough) activists, no doubt wearing Che Guevera tees, sent several ships to break the blockade, Israel announced that the ships would be boarded and searched, and that non-military goods would be sent on to Gaza.

Alas, some genius decided that, in order to avoid offending anyone, the Israeli commandos would go into action with paintball guns. Oh, some wore pistols, but were all but forbidden to use them. In the event, the peace-loving peace activists, when they stopped laughing, peacefully beat the snot out of the Israeli paintball commandos with peaceful iron bars, even seizing some of the pistols. Finally, someone on the Israeli side made a decision that the lads could fight back, and nine deaths resulted. These deaths could possibly have been avoided if the commandos had been permitted to board fully armed and in a Gunny Ermey mode.

As Czech, Polish, French, Belgian, Dutch, English, and Norwegian diplomats of the last century could attest, trying to make peace with evil gets your country peacefully destroyed and your citizens peacefully killed or peacefully enslaved.

Paintball guns don’t say Churchill; they say Chamberlain.

Imagine how the world might be now if during World War II the allies had employed paintball guns against the Axis powers.

Whatever some Israeli desk-commander was thinking, he wasn’t thinking of his young soldiers. He may have been thinking of trying to save the lives of Israel’s enemies by a show of weakness, but that didn’t work either.

Looking past the paintballs, our own nation has for the past few years been drifting into European-style anti-Semitism unworthy of any civilized man or woman. The dean of the White House press corps, for decades petted and indulged despite her coarseness and vulgarity, this week spat out her wishes that all Israelis would return “home” to Germany and Poland. This journalist’s historical ignorance is commensurate with her malevolence.

You’d think that the White House press corps’ lead reporter’s near-death experience from a house falling on her back in 1939 would have helped her focus on the basic concepts of right and wrong.

We haven’t heard from Helen Thomas or Rush Limbaugh this weekend, and Mr. Limbaugh is rumored to have gotten married. Do you think…? Imagine them exiting the office of a justice of the peace under the arched paintball guns of an honor guard of the Fox Network faithful.


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Rush Limbaugh is a Democrat

Mack Hall

Last week Jack Lawrence of the American Civil Liberties Union invited y’r ‘umble scrivener to participate in a debate on, well, civil liberties at Lamar’s fine new John Gray Auditorium across the street from Vincent Beck Stadium in Beaumont.

I was deputed to help represent the Republican point-of-view, which might not sit well with real Republicans, along with a sharp young Lamar undergraduate and real Republican, Andrew Greenberg.

The Democrat panelists were Dr. Bruce Drury and Stuart Wright, and the ACLU panelists (Democrats and ACLU – aren’t those pretty much synonymous?) were Jack Lawrence and Judy Whose-Last-Name-I-Didn’t-Get.

The topics were terrorism, torture, and privacy, and we debated before a packed house, said packing consisting mostly of air space since the American people stayed away by the thousands.

The evening was quite a merry one, with no screaming, yelling, or ear-biting, but perhaps that’s because no one among us was in favor of terrorism, torture, or violations of privacy. My proposal that our general disapproval of the death penalty might be modified with regard to internet service providers was met with approval by the assembly.

After the meeting broke up with handshakes all ‘round, a few of us stayed to continue talking late into the night. This was the sort of informal occasion when the ACLU, and, indeed, most people are at their best, since no one is trying to score points off anyone else.

During this time I was at last able to present my thesis – there was no logical opening for it earlier – that Rush Limbaugh is in fact a Democrat, based on his threat to move to a foreign country, Costa Rica, if Congress didn’t do things his way (http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/197198.asp).

Another argument that Rush Limbaugh is a Democrat is that he is an education expert who in many states cannot legally visit a grade-school campus because of his drug issues with illegally doctor-shopping for OxyContin and for his possession of Viagra without a prescription.

Rush Limbaugh is a college dropout who bills himself as the Doctor of Democracy. There’s nothing shameful about busting out of college; some of us have accomplished this academic indistinction many times (ahem!), but you just don’t call yourself a doctor unless you’ve earned it.

Rush Limbaugh is a union-basher who, by his own admission on the radio, belongs to a union. His union is good; all others are bad.

Rush Limbaugh is an all-too-common American because he is a political junky who never even registered to vote until he was 35 (http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2009/03/06/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-rush-limbaugh.html).

A counter-argument can be made that Rush Limbaugh is a true inner-circle Republican because he is a military hawk and drawing-room generalissimo who responded to his draft notice with a note from his own doctor stating that he suffered the agonies of a pilonidal cyst (translation: butt-pimple), which the U.S. Army took at face (so to speak) value, and so bothered his leisure no further.

But let’s be fair: Rush Limbaugh is not Nancy Pelosi or John Edwards, he hasn’t been married as many times as Larry King, he is generous in numerous charities, and he does have a birth certificate.

Editor’s note: Next week Mack will be writing from an undisclosed location.

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Rush Limbaugh's Bedroom and Other Meditations

Mack Hall


With the arrival of spring, or as springy as this part of the world ever uncoils, folks go outside and do outside stuff – fertilize the lawn with that bag of crumbly stuff leftover from an autumn sale, talk to the apple blossoms, comment on the bits of green poking up tentatively through November’s sere leaves, and sometimes simply sit on the steps and marvel at another new year. At such times one’s mind, unleashed from the ‘net and the radio and the telly, begins to, well, think:

Evolution is Really Real in Canada

Canada’s current national anthem, which Americans got to hear over and over during the Olympics, may soon suffer another change. Once upon a time it was “God Save the Queen / King / Labour Electorate Along the London-Birmingham Axis,” and then multiple versions of “O Canada.” The original was written by a woman and afterwards modified several times by men. Just now there is a line about Thy Sons or something, which someone says should be Thy Persons or something, and folks in Canada are arguing about it. Perhaps Canadians won’t mind a Yank weighing on some word changes:

“O Canada, What Are the Words to Our National Anthem This year? Eh.”
“O Canada, We’re Not the USA. Eh.”
“O Canada, Built on Hockey and Tim Horton’s. Eh.”
“O Canada, We’ve Got More Olympic Gold Medals Than the USA and Russia Put Together So There. Eh.”

Ooooh – I hope I’m not beaten to death with made-in-China Anne of Green Gables dolls the next time I visit Prince Edward Island.

The Death Penalty

These two headlines were one above the other in a recent web news site: “Mother Dumped Newborn in Trash, Went to Party” and “Judge Declares Death Penalty Unconstitutional.”

Swinging Singapore

Tom Taschinger of the Beaumont Enterprise, upon which The Times of London models itself, reports that Singapore still bans chewing gum. Tom finds this harsh, but, hey, it’s not as bad as some geriatric hippie in a hula shirt playing a guitar in church because, like, 1968 was so, like, y’know, happenin’.”

Spring Break – Saints Gone Wild

An Irish tourist board recently promoted ten ways to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day without going to a pub. Not one of the ten suggestions included attending Mass that day. The English tried for hundreds of years to suppress Ireland’s ancient faith; left alone the Irish destroyed it themselves.

Kiss me – I’m not Irish.

Spring Break – Body Scanners Gone Wild

Jeremy Clarkson of The Times of London writes: “We now think it’s normal to take off our clothes at an airport.”

Spring Break – Amish Girls Gone Mild

How did Amish caps become an almost requisite accessory on the covers of romance novels? Lucinda no longer swoons passionately in the arms of the Byronic pirate / Indian / outlaw; she sits demurely on a wagon seat next to some fellow named Aminadab while sporting a white beanie with strings hanging down.

One can anticipate a Hallmark movie: Amish Spring Break – Girls Scrub Floors While Fully Dressed.

Lock-and-Load Voting

Iraq voted for parliamentary seats last week, and the Religion of Peace wasn’t having it. Through bombings and shootings they murdered more people than show up to vote in some county elections in the USA. Alas that more Americans complain about the governance of the country than actually do something about it.

Where’s a Sky Marshal When You Need One?

Last week an air-traffic controller at JFK, nee’ Idyllwild, allowed his young son to radio instructions to pilots.

This is probably not permitted in advanced nations.

Rush Limbaugh’s Bedroom

Rush Limbaugh is apparently selling his New York penthouse. A purported photograph of his bedroom shows a foo-foo space possibly modeled on Cleopatra’s boudoir in the Elizabeth Taylor film, but subtly influenced by Elvis Presley’s jungle room and the poetry section of the Austin Barnes and Nobles. And the low-prole ceiling paintings and Florida beach motel murals are to die. Not to die for. To die.

It just doesn’t look very, um, Republican.

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I Pledge to...

Mack Hall

Sycophants in an Echo Chamber

A flock of the fashionable, like guinea-hens yakking in middle of the road, recently made public pledges to be the President’s servants in all things dim and dutiful. Naturally they made a MeMeMeTubeMyFace video, and appear to have employed an echo chamber ("I pledge…I pledge…I pledge…"), though perhaps that is merely an effect of vain repetition.

As a response to those craven obedientiaries I propose somewhat more meaningful pledges:

I pledge…pledge…pledge (ya like that echo effect?) to be no man’s servant and no man’s master.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to use real bulbs until Dear Leader’s Light Bulb Czar’s Special Incandescent Action Unit catches me and prosecutes me into oblivion.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to buy the biggest car I can afford and to make frequent and unnecessary trips.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to buy coffee without a Fair Trade label.

I pledge…pledge…pledge always to love America and to remain unsophisticated and non-Euro.

I pledge…pledge…pledge not to pay much attention to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. The best of folks suffer flaws, but I see no reason why any responsible, self-disciplined American should sacrifice a minute of God’s precious gift of life to a couple of impenitent, dysfunctional, draft-dodging, chemically-dependent, wholly self-centered, shrieking nutters. They seem so European.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to turn the thermostat in my house to where I want it, not to where The Thermostat Czar wants it.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to eat chunks of dead animals more often. Vegetarianism is for Manichaeans.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to employ chemical pesticides and fertilizers on my yard and garden.

I pledge…pledge…pledge never to drink coffee brewed from the excreta of cats. I love ya, Al, but not that much.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to repudiate and resist the edicts of any of Dear Leader’s thirty-three or so extra-Constitutional czars. We don’t need no stinking czars.

I pledge…pledge…pledge that when the grocery store asks me "Paper? Or plastic?" I will ask for both so that I won’t miss a chance to overheat the planet and stress the whales and polar bears.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to do my best to avoid companies who advertise that they are environmentally friendly. If they want me to pay them money for a product or service they’d darned well better be Mackly friendly.

Unlike the rich and slovenly, I pledge…pledge…pledge to dress in clothes that don’t look as if they have been stolen from a Salvation Army donation bin.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to vote, vote, vote. Always.