Carry That Weight

“This is Bob.  Bob had bitch tits.”

—Ed Norton Jr. as The Narrator in Fight Club 

I’m going to step away from the political today.  OK, well mostly.

Those of you who are regular readers of this space know that I don’t make it a habit of agreeing with Michelle Obama.  And unlike her I’m not going to suggest that what I’m going to talk about today is something that needs a government solution.  But she’s right about one thing:

We’re fat.  

Really.  Freaking.  Fat.

I spent last week on vacation with the family in San Antonio, watching sea lion and killer whale shows at Sea World, riding roller coasters ‘till we puked at Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and slip-slidin’ away at the Aquatica waterpark.  And while we had a really good time, I have to tell you the consistent and lasting impression I had was that, on the whole, we are shockingly, colossally, carnival-side-show overweight.  Over those four days, I saw more cottage cheese thighs (and calves, and waists, and arms . . . ), man-boobs, belly rolls, triple chins, underarm flaps, and solar eclipse-inducing asses than I’ve ever seen in my life.

It was, well, gross.

What was really startling, however, was how consistent and across-the-board this observation went.  Yes, there were the occasional gym rats.  But my very unscientific guess was that seven in ten were visibly overweight.  Of those seven, five were what anyone would call downright fat.  Three were objectively and catastrophically obese.  At any given time, from where I was standing I could count at least a dozen people who could have passed for Jabba the Hut without prosthetics.  Mr. Creosote had nothing on this crowd, Brother.  Even among the three in ten I would call reasonably healthy, most—myself included—were carting around an ample spare tire around the midsection.

While you statistics majors may challenge whether I had a representative cross-section and a sufficient sample size (I will say in this regard we waded through tens of thousands of people), this was no isolated snapshot.  It was the same every day, whether walking around downtown, touring the Alamo, or at any one of three different parks.  And the phenomenon knew no demographic boundaries.  I saw it in the old and the young.  Black, white, Asian, and Hispanic.  Male and female.  I mean, it was across the board. 

Saddest—and most inexcuseable—was how consistently I saw it in children.  I saw one young man sitting on a bench who might have been eleven years old, plus or minus.  He had his shirt off, because he’d been in the pool.  Sitting there, slump-shouldered, he had by my count five separate folds in his flesh above the belt: one near his armpits above his breasts, his breasts themselves, and then three different belly folds.  This was not an abberational observation.  It was typical of what I saw.  Kid after kid looked like the love child of the Bibendum (look it up) and Aunt Jemima.

We didn’t used to be like this.  Look at photos from the Civil War and World War I—you almost never see fat people, and never the seriously obese.  The average adult male fighting for the U.S. in World War II was 5’8”, and weighed 155 lbs.  I saw plenty of children last week who were pushing that weight.  We’re not getting soft—we’re flat mushy.

What happened to us?

The short answer is we consume too much and move too little, but that doesn’t really tell the full story.  The conveniences and abundance of our modern America have separated most of us from what it actually takes to produce food.  Our grocery store shelves are packed with pre-fabricated processed foods—just add water and nuke it, and you’re good to go; never mind what's in it or where it came from.  Our streets are lined with fat-laden fast food chains.  Our TVs bombard us with programming like the Travel Channel’s Man vs. Food, in which the obese host travels from town to town gorging himself on ridiculously portioned—frankly downright shamefully wasteful—foods like 50 pound hamburgers.  There’s never a thought given to what it took to generate that burger, how many multiples of people that could have fed, or the cost of the waste if it gets thrown out.  That it would have even occurred to anyone to make that thing in the first place, much less create a TV show out of watching some fat guy try to eat it, speaks volumes about where we are now.

This is dangerous.  God bless our men and women in uniform, but the AVF won’t be nearly enough to defend us if it really came down to a serious war of conquest against us.  If we had to resort to a mass callup to defend ourselves, and if what I saw last week was any indication of the pool from which we’ll have to draw to do it, we’re in trouble.  I don’t care how much whoop-ass you think is in that can you’re going to open on those Chinamen, Jethro; if you can’t catch them, it’s not gonna matter much.

You think we have a problem with our healthcare system?  Well, don’t look at the insurance companies, and don’t talk to me about coverage for pre-existing conditions or illegal aliens.  How much are we spending, and how many resources are we unnecessarily tying up or downright wasting because of the basic lack of conditioning of huge swaths of our population in this country?  I submit this is a good place to start.

Look, I don’t expect everyone to be shredded like a Navy SEAL.  And I don’t believe in strict numbers like the Body Mass Index that try to dictate a weight for a given height.  I’m less concerned about the number on the scale than about what that number’s made of.  But here are some clues, based on my observations last week, that can tell you if the weight you’re carrying—and, more importantly, what that weight is comprised of—is too much for your individual body:

1.        If you can hide your finger underneath the flesh on your torso (women’s breasts excepted), you’re too fat.  And guys, don’t tell me those are your pecs.  The Rock has pecs.  You don’t.  His pecs don’t have a fold underneath.  Yours do.  Those aren’t pecs, they’re breasts.

2.         If your nipples or navel face the ground, you’re too fat.  I’ll cut some slack to those who are a little older—gravity does take its toll over time.  But for most of us, those things that we started life with facing forward should still more or less point that direction.

3.        If you need a brassiere to support the flesh on your ribs below your armpits, you’re too fat.  That’s just gross.

4.         If your navel is substantially further from your spine than your nipples are, you’re too fat.  We’re not supposed to be shaped like pears.

5.       If your arms at your sides point anywhere other than down, you’re too fat.  Self-explanatory.

6.        If you have to go sideways through any opening designed for normal adults to pass through going forward, you’re too fat.

7.        Guys, if you have to lift anything out of the way other than the seat in order to pee, you’re too fat.

8.         Ladies, one roll for your breasts is fine.  Two is too many.  Three is, well . . . you get the idea.

9.         You should have a chin, not a neck attached to your lip.

10.       You should have only one chin.

Let’s all put down the Haagen-Dazs and the TV remote, and try to move around a little more than we have been.

Before it’s too late.

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EDITOR'S NOTE:  Changes in the demands on my time may reduce the frequency in posts over the coming weeks, but I will continue to post as time permits and the news cycle feeds my muse.

Memorial Day

“See, I had this theory once.  I believed in the politics of Saturday night.  I rated all governments and countries by how good or bad their Saturday nights were.  And I knew that Moscow and Peking had to be a stone drag at that time of the week.  So I was flying for a cause.  I was fighting to defend chicken barbecues, and weenie roasts, and Ray Charles songs, and drinking Southern Comfort ‘till you passed out behind the bar.”

—Mel Gibson as Gene Ryack in Air America

This is Memorial Day weekend.  There will be baseball games, backyard cookouts, and fireworks displays.  Somewhere in the Heartland we’ll burn thousands of gallons of gasoline and release untold volumes of greenhouse gases in an effort to see who can make 800 left turns in the shortest amount of time without crashing.  Then down South we’ll do it again, only with twice as many turns and cars that aren’t nearly as sexy.  We’ll fish, play golf, get sunburned, eat way too much processed meat, and drink vast amounts of beer.

Yes, we’ll have a grand old time of it.

I don’t begrudge anyone a three-day weekend, and I’m all for just about any excuse to drink beer.  But amidst all the revelry, we tend to lose sight of what Memorial Day is.

Memorial Day has its roots in the aftermath of the Civil War; its 625,000 dead accounted for over 90% of all American war dead to that point in our history.  As a way of coping with the enormity of that loss, various cities around the country began holding annual observances to remember their local war dead.  While the Southerner in me would like to denounce the practice as a Yankee abomination, the truth is that these observances were widespread in both the North and the South, and honored both Union and Confederate dead.  These various local traditions gradually consolidated into a single observance on May 30, a date chosen precisely because it did not coincide with the anniversary of any major battle, and thus could be separated from any kind of victor’s celebration and thus its core purpose preserved.  And over time the day has expanded from a Civil War remembrance to a time to commemorate all  of our war dead.

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, included Memorial Day in the Uniform Holiday Act of 1968, officially moving Memorial Day from May 30 to the last Monday in May, thus creating the three-day weekend now familiar to us all.  But in so doing, the day—I won’t call it a “holiday,” because it isn’t holy or religious, and strictly speaking it isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a celebration—came unmoored from its original intent.  Hence, our present day lack of focus.

Memorial Day is the day on which we honor the sacrifice of those who gave it all for the cause of freedom and the defense of this country.  According to MilitaryFactory.com, approximately 1,319,475 men and women—a little over 5,500 every single year since 1776—have paid that price over the course of our history.  You may disagree all you want with the policymakers who sent them into battle, but you should not let that disagreement distract you from remembering and honoring them—they paid the bill for you to have that right to disagree.

By all means, tap that keg and pass the burgers.  But let’s remember why we’re here this weekend, and make sure your kids know why, too.  I’ll let President Reagan close with some excerpts from his remarks at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day, 1984:

Mr. President, General, the distinguished guests here with us today, my fellow citizens:

In America’s cities and towns today, flags will be placed on graves in cemeteries; public officials will speak of the sacrifice and the valor of those whose memory we honor.

In 1863, when he dedicated a small cemetery in Pennsylvania marking a terrible collision between the armies of North and South, Abraham Lincoln noted the swift obscurity of such speeches.  Well, we know now that Lincoln was wrong about that particular occasion.  His remarks commemorating those who gave their ‘last full measure of devotion’ were long remembered.  But since that moment at Gettysburg, few other such addresses have become part of our national heritage—not because of the inadequacy of the speakers, but because of the inadequacy of words.

I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country.  Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

*  *  *

It’s not just strength or courage that we need, but understanding and a measure of wisdom as well.  We must understand enough about our world to see the value of our alliances.  We must be wise enough about ourselves to listen to our allies, to work with them, to build and strengthen the bonds between us.

Our understanding must also extend to potential adversaries.  We must strive to speak of them not belligerently, but firmly and frankly.  And that’s why we must never fail to note, as frequently as necessary, the wide gulf between our codes of morality.  And that’s why we must never hesitate to acknowledge the irrefutable difference between our view of man as master of the state and their view of man as servant of the state.  Nor must we ever underestimate the seriousness of their aspirations to global expansion.  The risk is the very freedom that has been so dearly won.

*  *  *

Winston Churchill said of those he knew in World War II they seemed to be the only young men who could laugh and fight at the same time.  A great general in that war called them our secret weapon, ‘just the best darn kids in the world.’  Each died for a cause he considered more important than his own life.  Well, they didn’t volunteer to die; they volunteered to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be: the values which make up what we call ‘civilization.’ And how they must have wished, in all the ugliness that war brings, that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience.

As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation.  And let us also pledge to do our utmost to carry out what must have been their wish: that no other generation of young men will ever have to share their experiences and repeat their sacrifice.

Thank you, Mr. President.  

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EDITOR'S NOTE:  Thanks again for those of you who have been keeping up, and especially those of you who return comments (even those who disagree).  I will be out on vacation next week, and posts may be few and far between until I return.

Hazardous Duty

“You talk about vengeance?  Is vengeance going to bring your son back to you, or my boy to me?  I forego the vengeance of my son.  But I have selfish reasons.  My youngest son was forced to leave this country because of this Solozzo business.  All right.  And I have to make arrangements to bring him back safely, cleared of all these false charges.  But I am a superstitious man.  And if some unlucky accident should befall him, if he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell, or if he is struck by a bolt of lightning, then I am going to blame some of the people in this room.  And then I do not forgive.”

—Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather

I was aware when I began Chasing Jefferson nearly a year ago that I was taking a risk by speaking out.  I was reminded of that yesterday in a piece Michelle Malkin ran about the persistent personal attacks and persecution levied by some of the more fanatical on the Left against conservative bloggers who dare tell the truth.  She has called for a show of solidarity from the blogosphere on the Right, and while I have another piece planned for tomorrow so I can’t make her call for Friday, I’ll pre-emptively do that today with this link to her piece.

These are some of the bigger writers on the Right, so they draw more attention.  But it could happen to any of us, because this is how the Left operates: silence opposition by any means necessary.  We see that with the push to reinstitute the "fairness doctrine" to get Rush, Hannity, and Levin knocked off the air.  We see that with the bullying schoolteacher in North Carolina threatening her student with jail time for criticizing Obama.  And we see it with the personal attacks against conservative bloggers.  They count on intimidation to shut us up.  

I don’t have any sponsors, and I don’t run ads.  I don’t make a nickel off of this space.  But the Internet is open to all, and there is no telling when something I post here might attract the ire of the wrong person at the wrong time.  I am not afraid of that, and I fully intend to keep on doing what I do as my small part to try to inform, educate, and pull on the oars to try to save what’s left of this Republic.

I may not do this forever, but I won’t close this site without saying something.  If this site disappears or permanently ceases activity without some word from me, ask questions, because that alone will tell you something's not right.

Speak up and speak out.  Only if we're silent can they win.

  

Bain v. Empty Set

“Nice try, kid, but I think you just brought a knife . . . to a gunfight.”

—Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Continuing what is clearly going to be his “us vs. the evil rich people” campaign theme, Obama last week ran ads criticizing Governor Romney’s past work as the CEO of Bain Capital as that of a vampire.  Just another installment of Romney as the out-of-touch 1%-er, a rich bastard who has made millions by looting it from the little people.  But don’t worry, Obama isn’t engaging in class warfare.  He’s the Great Uniter, don’t you know?

I don’t want to debunk the ad here.  The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent piece detailing its errors, notably that the steel company at the center of it didn't go bankrupt until two years after Romney left Bain, that it was already heading down the drain when Bain bought it, and that it would have gone out of business eight years earlier but for Bain’s investment in it.  I want instead to make the larger point that if this is the arena in which Obama chooses to engage, there’s ground to be gained.  In short, if he wants to play the Bain game, I think Romney should take him up on it.

Let’s start by acknowledging some truths about Romney and Bain.

Mitt Romney is wealthy.  I get it.  No real secret there.  So are/were Bill Clinton (law, real estate—Whitewater, anyone?), both Bushes (business, inheritance), Ronald Reagan (acting, endorsements), Jimmy Carter (inheritance, commercial farming, real estate), Gerald Ford (real estate, books, corporate board service), Richard Nixon (law, real estate), LBJ (real estate, media), John Kennedy (family trust funded by bootlegging), etc.; it takes a lot of money and rich friends these days to run for President.  Romney has made millions running successful businesses like Bain Capital, and this should be a good narrative for him to showcase his management skills and understanding of markets.

Bain Capital was and is a venture capital enterprise, not a pirate ship.  It provides operating funds for startups and other businesses in exchange for a stake in the profits.  Put a different way, it collects money to invest in other enterprises that employ people to create products and provide services.  Yes, in some instances Bain’s investments failed; that’s the nature of business investing, as Obama has reminded us about Solyndra.  At least Bain was risking private money voluntarily contributed for that specific purpose, and managed by businesspeople who actually knew what they were doing (but that’s another post).  Yes, in some instances Bain bought businesses and shut them down to sell the assets.  Any economist this side of Paul Krugman will tell you that when a business’ assets are worth more than the value of the going concern—i.e., the capital is being employed towards a purpose society does not value—the more efficient use of that capital is to pull it out of the failing venture so it can be reallocated to something society values more.  Over time, everyone benefits.

But the point here is that Bain Capital and Mitt Romney didn’t make money by stealing it from others.  They employed people.  They provided capital so that other businesses could operate and employ still more people to provide goods and services still more people wanted to buy.  That’s how the economy works.  Bain Capital made profits by participating as a productive cog in the economy, to the benefit of its shareholders, the businesses in which it invested and their employees, and the consumers of those businesses’ goods and services.  That’s how Mitt Romney made his money; it’s a success story in how the American free market system operates, and it’s one Romney should welcome the opportunity to tell.

But there’s a flip side to that story if Obama wants to cross swords on this ground, and it’s one that also works to Romney’s advantage if he’ll take it.  In fact, if he does it right it should be no contest.

Barack Obama is also wealthy.  Maybe he’s not in the same Forbes rank with Romney (or John Kerry, or Nancy Pelosi . . .), but he’s pretty flush.  Current estimates put his net worth upwards of $10 million.  I don’t have $10 million.  Do you?  Chances are overwhelming that you don’t.  That makes Obama also a member of this evil 1% economic super-elite he likes to demonize when he’s not hanging out in their parlors, skiing at their resorts, or tapping their wallets for campaign donations.  So how did he make his millions?

He wrote a book (OK, in fairness, he actually wrote two books).

About himself.

That’s it.  He didn’t employ anybody.  He didn’t provide a good or a service.  He didn’t supply capital fuel to the engines of commerce so that someone else could employ people to provide a good or service.  He didn’t otherwise do anything productive.  Obama’s sole economic contribution through which he has generated his considerable wealth was to tell the world he existed.  He did nothing more than engage in an audacious act of narcissism, and some people—for reasons that will forever pass understanding—bought it.  It is no wonder that his Presidency has been all about “look at me”; it is in fact all he knows how to do, because it’s all he’s ever done. 

I don’t care that Obama’s gotten wealthy.  If he can get people to buy an autobiography of a 30 year old with no significant accomplishments to his credit, more power to him.  But if he wants to hold up Bain Capital as a campaign issue, it seems to me it’s the perfect platform to highlight just how shallow and empty Obama is.  Consider the contrast on this issue alone.  With Romney and Bain Capital, we see a candidate who has had to manage people, marshal resources, generate results, and be accountable.  In other words, he’s actually had to do something in real life.  Obama, on the other hand, has done nothing but grab attention, claim credit for the work of others, and deflect blame and responsibility.  Present.

Oh, yeah, and operate Microsoft Word.

You want to talk about Bain Capital and real world experience, Mr. President?

Bring it.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Distractions

“Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy.”

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

This one’s for all the birthers, anti-gay marriage zealots, and neo-Nazi conspiracy theorists out there:

Stop it.

For the last two weeks there has been much hand-wringing over the whole gay marriage thing.  In fairness, that was more fueled by the Left falling all over itself with joy over Obama’s coming out, er, announcement of his support than it has been from the Right, but I see last Friday even Charles Krauthammer was still perpetuating the narrative.  Meanwhile, Breitbart, RedState, and Drudge are all aflutter over new evidence of Obama and his surrogates spending decades claiming he was actually born in Kenya, and although he claimed he was only pointing out that Obama has lied in the past when it was to his advantage to be thought of as an exotic foreigner, Hannity spent all afternoon Friday on the subject.  It’s also been brought to my attention that there are stories making the rounds on the internet about Obama preparing a Nazi-style Reichstag fire event—supposedly involving a staged assassination attempt that will be blamed on white supremacists and instigate widespread black rioting—that will enable him to institute martial law and postpone the election.

Gay marriage.  Kenya.  Reichstag.  Let’s take a deep breath and get ahold of ourselves. 

Look, I don’t like Obama any more than you do, and we can all agree that getting him out of office is jobs 1, 2, and 3.  But even if you’re right that he’s a gay-loving Kenyan neo-Nazi, this isn’t helping.

In baseball pitchers with a 0 ball, 2 strike count often throw a pitch or two in the dirt.  The idea is he loses nothing by doing so, and he may be able to entice the batter to offer at a pitch he can’t hit, thus gaining a cheap out when the hitter either misses it completely, or taps it weakly to a defender.  In other words, the pitcher is trying to advance his position while avoiding the risk of a direct confrontation in the substantive field of play.

We see the same tactic any number of places.  Magicians use “misdirection” to get you to look at an irrelevant show move and thus miss the key move in the sleight of hand.  Boxers “feint” to get you to defend a false attack in one area, thus exposing yourself to the real one in another.  Mystery writers use “red herring” clues to hide the real ones.  In every instance the idea is the same: to get you to miss what’s important by focusing your attention on what isn’t.  As with the pitch in the dirt, they're trying to sucker you into going somewhere other than where you should.

That’s what we let Obama do if we go after these issues.  If you’re talking about his birth certificate, or the Reichstag, or gays, he’s got you right where he wants you.  Not that he’s up 0-2 on us, but his home field advantage is in irrelevant non-issues like birth certificates, marriage licenses, and conspiracy theories.  In that way, he avoids substantive scrutiny of his actual record in office.

But here's what I want you to understand:  even if you’re right about all these things about Obama, we’re not going to get him out of office on these issues.  We're just not.  

Anyone for whom gay marriage is a deciding issue—whether for it or agin it—is already committed to one camp or the other.  If Obama is planning a Reichstag event, there’s no real way to stop it, and once it happens, the groundwork has already been laid to expose it for the BS that it is.  I agree he shows dictator-like tendencies, but it isn’t necessary to equate him with the greatest mass-murderer (or second, depending on how you come down on Stalin's numbers) in history in order to make the point.  And it doesn’t matter whether Obama was born in Kenya—I don’t buy that anyway—because even if you’re right you’re never going to convince enough people of that for it to make a difference.  Independent voters in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—the people who will actually decide the election—don’t believe Obama was born in Kenya, and they don’t care. 

We’re not going to gain any traction by focusing on these things.  What we are doing is distracting from the real issues that matter and can actually turn the election:

1.  It’s the economy, Stupid.  Even the gerrymandered “official” unemployment rate remains above 8%, and the reality is that 22.5 million Americans—14.5%—are out of work, underemployed, or have simply given up.  Net job creation during the Obama administration has been zero.  More than half of all college graduates can’t find work.  Every breath we spend howling at the Kenyan moon is one we could have used to repeat this message.

2.  It’s the deficit/debt, Stupid.  Candidate Barack Obama chastised President Bush for being “irresponsible’ and “unpatriotic” to have accumulated $4 trillion in debt during his eight years in office.  Obama exceeded that figure in less than three.  Our total debt is north of $15.5 trillion—more than 100% of GDP—and climbing with no end in sight.  And even still he met over the weekend with European leaders to urge them to forego austerity in favor of continuing to join him in an unending orgy of governments spending money they do not have.  Yet Obama’s last two proposed budgets were so out of control that they failed to garner a single vote in either house.  That’s right, Obama’s last two budget proposals have failed in Congress by a combined 196-0 vote.  Even Democrats get this.  Surely it will resonate with Independents better than gay marriage.

3.  It’s national security, Stupid.  Obama can disingenuously claim personal credit for killing Osama bin Laden all he wants.  Everyone but the most die-hard of his sycophants sees through that.  The plain fact is his combination of naivete, anti-American apologism, and global conglomerate worldview is decidedly undermining our security.  His open-mic gaffe with outgoing Russian President Medvedev spoke volumes, as he all but promised to cave in on Russian demands concerning our European missile defense systems.  What else has he promised off-mic to give away in a second term that we just don’t know about yet?  Meanwhile, knowing it will see nothing more than empty finger-wagging from our spineless and impotent commander-in-chief, Iran has plodded doggedly ahead with its nuclear program.  We are likely 18 months or less away from a serious military crisis in the Middle East that could have been avoided with a more decisive peace-through-strength policy; this is far more realistic and dangerous than the prospect of a Reichstag event to cancel elections for the first time in our 223 year history.

4.  It’s the Constitution, Stupid.  If Obama is, as he claims, a former constitutional law professor, he has a funny way of showing it.  His administration is about to lose in the Supreme Court in its challenge to Arizona’s border defense law, and apparently lose big.  All indicators are that he’s likely to lose on the constitutionality of Obamacare, his signature achievement.  The administration lost in trying to enforce the Clean Water Act to stop private landowners from building a home on their own land.  The administration lost twice in federal court on its self-declared moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP Macondo fire.  And his personal record disregard for the boundaries set by the Constitution on the powers of his office is lengthy and well-documented.  This is a bigger deal and an easier sale than birth certificates and conspiracies.

These are the issues—not gays, or Kenya, or Nazi flashbacks—that will make a difference with the voters who will actually decide the election.  Not only is focusing on irrelevancies distracting from the real game-changing matters, it also gives Obama the necessary ammunition to cast the election dynamic as a choice between rational moderate adults on the one hand, and extreme, racist, bigoted, fanatical nutjobs on the other.  If Independents in swing states see this as the choice they face, they’ll vote Obama every day of the week and twice on Sunday (which, coincidentally, is how often Obama’s supporters will vote for him, too).  We have to resist the temptation to take that bait, and keep this election narrative focused on the substantive issues that not only matter, but that will make a difference.

Hall-of-Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry, famous for his use of the illegal spitball (actually his lube of choice was K-Y, but who wants to throw a "K-Y ball"?), says he got a lot more mileage out of people worrying about him throwing spitballs than he ever did out of actually throwing them. 

Let’s try to keep our eye on the ball, people.

You Spent What?

“It’s only m-m-m-money.”

—Bill Murray as Frank X. Cross in Scrooged

This is your federal government at work.

Recent news events have revealed the massive GSA—ironically, that’s the Government Services Administration, the agency charged with, among other things, overseeing federal spending to avoid waste and fraud—boondoggles in Vegas ($823,000 for 300 employees to attend a conference) and Hawaii (five employees stayed a week on the taxpayer dime for a one-hour groundbreaking ceremony).  Yesterday we learned that the District has been funding such critical projects as a study into erectile dysfunction, and whether people tell the truth in surveys about their sex habits.

And you thought Kinsey was dead.

These GSA binges and federally-funded prurient academic exercises are not isolated incidents.  They are indicators of a culture of entitlement that is endemic in the District.  The politicians and bureaucrats that make up the Beast have long come to view the federal taxpayer as an unlimited sugar daddy into whose pocket they may dip at their pleasure either for personal indulgences or for Scooby Snacks to dole out to their cronies.  Even the few half-decent that are left are forced to try to get as many federally-funded goodies as they can, simply to recapture for their constituents what they can of money that’s going to be spent somewhere no matter what.

But some of this is just inexplicably stupid.

Consider Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) annual  "Wastebook," which chronicles some of the more egregious examples every year.  These are not necessarily the biggest-ticket items (although some are HUGE), but some of the more bizarre.  I’ve excerpted some of the 100 items from this year’s list below out of just three agencies (numbers in parentheses correspond to the spot on Coburn’s list).

Pakistan and Other Inexplicable Foreign Aid--USAID

Many of us wonder why, at a time when we borrow some 40 cents or more of every dollar we spend, we give hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign countries.  It’s not exactly buying us a lot of friends.  But look at some of the foolishness on which it’s spent:

The Mango Man (2)—The US Agency for International Development spent $30 million in 2011 to aid Pakistani mango farmers.  This stems from a four year $90 million program begun in 2009 to boost hiring and sales in five product areas.  By 2011, USAID had abandoned four: leather, livestock, textiles, and dates.  Instead it focused on the fifth product, mangoes, with a goal of boosting sales 20% by providing farmers with equipment to clean, freeze, and store the fruit.  But the one farmer who actually received the equipment couldn’t operate it due to defects, and now many farmers who undertook loans based on the promise of increased productivity are now facing default.  Thanks for the help.

Sesame Street (13)—USAID contributed $10 million to remake Sesame Street in Pakistan.  Like Elmo is going to stop some kid from joining Al Qaeda.

“Green” Pumps (35)—USAID spent $12 million in 2011 ($23 million over 3 years) in a failed effort to upgrade irrigation pumps with newer more energy efficient models, again in Pakistan.  The original plan was to replace 11,000 pumps, but current estimates are that only 1500 will be replaced by the end of the program.  Shockingly, despite a nearly 90% reduction in the program’s output, there will be no change in the final bill to the taxpayer.

Casualty Buyoffs (90)—USAID paid $15 million in 2011 ($52 million since 2007) to assist families of civilians killed in Afghanistan.  But inspectors have reported that the program is not on target to achieve its main goal, is failing to reach the most eligible recipients, and involves huge amounts of food that is rotting before it can be distributed.  Again, thanks for the help.

Drugs, Diversions, and Perversions--NIH

One of my favorite categories is that collection of expenditures devoted to the trivial and sometimes twisted study of sundry pastimes and behaviors.  Not only are all of these of dubious utility and almost certainly outside the proper bounds set under the Constitution, but many you just have to wonder who comes up with this?

Boob Tube (17)—The National Institutes of Health gave a $702,558 grant in 2011 ($1.3 million to date) for researchers at Penn State University to study the effect of TV on rural Vietnamese families.  These are people so remote and so poor that the researchers not only had to provide the TV sets, but gasoline generators to power them (so much for reducing carbon emissions).  In such locales one wonders what programming they can pick up; maybe they can get Bill Maher on HBO via satellite.

Birds ‘n Bees (23)—NIH gave another grant of $175,587 in 2011 ($356,933 to date) to the University of Kentucky to stuck the effect of cocaine on the sex habits of Japanese quail.  Really?  Query how they’re conducting this study with federal money, given that possession of the cocaine presumably needed to do it is a federal crime.

Smoking Hookahs (63)—NIH gave a $55,382 grant to Virginia Commonwealth University to study hookah smoking among Jordanian students.  Don’t we all sleep better knowing our government is on top of this?

Monkey See, Monkey Poo (91)—In my personal favorite, NIH contributed $592,527 for researchers in Atlanta to study the communications skills of chimpanzees who throw their feces.  Yep, what survey of wasteful government spending would be complete without an entry on your federal tax dollars being given to someone who wants to study shit-throwing monkeys? (Yes, I know they’re technically apes)

I ask again:  who comes up with this stuff?

Miscellaneous Stupidity--NSF

Then there’s the just plain silliness coming out of the National “Science” Foundation:

Dance The Night Away (66)— The National Science Foundation NSF spent $300,000 to create an interpretive dance presentation on the origins of matter.  I’m not even making that up.

Improving Government (80)—NSF gave a $425,642 grant for a study with the rather presumptuous goal of informing local politicians in India how to improve their own local elected officials.  How is this a National Science Foundation function?  [As an aside, Senator Coburn further points out that India, the world’s fifth-largest (and one of the fastest-growing) economy and a major sovereign holder of our debt, receives over $120 million in US aid annually.]

Thor’s Blankets (94)—NSF spent $338,998 as part of a multi-year grant to study the impact on Icelandic commerce of women’s work in textiles from 874 A.D. to 1800 A.D.  Who (outside of Iceland, if even there) gives a crap about ancient Icelandic commerce?  And again, how on earth is that a function of the National Science Foundation, much less the United States federal government?

Yes, folks, this is the District at work, and it shows you just how totally out of control it is.  True, there are much bigger-ticket items like the unconstitutional and totally dysfunctional Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs.  But you have to look at some of these line items and ask whether there’s anyone left on either side of the aisle minding the store?  Is there anything the District won’t fund?

I don’t care what your political persuasion is, if there isn’t at least one thing on this list that really, really pisses you off, then I can’t help you.

‘Nuff Said

  “Picture speaks a thousand words, doesn’t it?”

—Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison in JFK

I think I'll just let this speak for itself (h/t to Brutus for sending me the link), other than to say these people vote; what happens when they outnumber us?

Comment away.

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Editor's Note:  Happy Mothers Day to Pet, Mom, Linda, Jenny, Mary Lou, Mary, and all the other Moms out there.