HALF-FULL REPORT 03/20/09

Let’s have cup of coffee and talk.  The HFR Saloon is closed for the week after too much toasting the greatest Irish-American in our history – Ronald Reagan – on St. Patrick’s Day.  So we’ll go next door to the HFR Coffee Shop.

I’m sure you’ve seen the news reports on how President Teleprompter thanked himself due to his teleprompter foulup.  Note, however, while the media of course videoed the gaffe – it is nowhere to be seen, not on YouTube or anywhere else.

Not only has the video of "Obama thanks himself" vanished, but try clicking on any website claiming to have it.  Up will come a security alert trying to gain access to your computer.  This happens not just on US websites, but world-wide.  And it happens with search engines world wide, not just Google.

The video of Zero thanking himself would go instantly viral once posted on the Web.  But not only has its posting been prevented, they will try to damage your computer as well.  Zero can’t stand to be laughed at, and will try to hurt you if you do.

Fortunately, not even he can stifle Gutter Ball gaffes when they are made with Jay Leno.

***
Speaking of gaffes, did Secretary of Homeland Defense Janet Napolitano call the President of the United States a terrorist?

In an interview this week (3/16) with German magazine Der Spiegel, she announced the latest in politically correct sleazy-spinelessness:  that the term ‘terrorism’ will no longer be used; replacing it will be ‘man-made disasters.’

Yes, she is that brainless.  You can hardly wait for her to be asked, "Ah, what about female suicide bombers, Madam Secretary?"

The fascism of PC once again glares out at you.  For now, anyone contributing to "global warming," any emitter of "carbon pollution," and global warming "denier" is a terrorist.

But it is becoming more obvious by the day that the greatest ‘man-made disaster’ on the planet right now is what the President of the United States is doing to the American – and world – economy.  It’s getting so bad so quickly that places like Canada are asking, Is This The End of America?

What more could a terrorist want than that?  So it looks like Ms. Napolitano is right after all – at least regarding her boss.

***
The Drumbeat of Democrat Corruption continued unabated this week.  Fortney Stark is a Democrat Congressman with such a girlie-man name he insists on a pretend tough-guy nickname, "Pete."  He represents a district in California but is claiming residence in Maryland to avoid state taxes.  Media stories abound dripping with ridicule and contempt.

Even more ridicule and contempt is being dumped on Crooked Chris Dodd for inserting the AIG bonus exemption into the Stimulus Bill, denying he did, then admitting he did, then blaming the Zero White House for making him do it.  

It’s gotten so bad for Crooked Chris that Dems in Connecticut are demanding he announce he’ll give up his Senate seat and won’t run in 2010 – for if not, a Republican is sure to beat him. 

The champion recipient of ridicule and contempt this week is, however, Tiny Tim Geithner, the Shrinking Secretary of Treasury.  There are betting pools al over DC on when he will resign.  For as everybody in town knows, when a president – and especially this one – says he has "absolute confidence" in you, those are code words for "start sending out your résumé, schmuck."

Tiny Tim is history.  It all adds to the same kind of "culture of corruption" drumbeat that never ended against the Republicans until it cost them Congress in 2006.  Now the drumbeat is even louder against the Dems – and it’s going to keep pounding until the Dems get pounded flat in 2010.

***
Quite possibly the greatest, most memorable, most truthful, most revelatory political statement of modern times was uttered recently by Ron Carbonneau, president of the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 68.

In response to the IRS announcing it would be laying off 1,400 of his union’s members due to automation replacing their paper-pushing, he gave this reason for why they should not be fired (get ready for this):

"There’s not very many jobs they would qualify for."

At least he’s honest.  What makes his statement so fantastic is it’s the truth for bureaucrats and politicians across the board.  I’ve met a lot of Congresscritters, and I can tell you, yes, there are some bright ones but most are dumb as a stump.  And how about Zero himself?  What job, other than used-car salesman, would he genuinely qualify for?

So keep Mr. Carbonneau’s admission of truth in mind whenever you see a politician open his mouth on television or have to deal with some bureaucrat.  There really aren’t very many jobs in the real world (what they call the "private sector") they would qualify for.

***
Hey, they serve good coffee, here don’t they?  Why don’t we take a break from Washington and look at something cool:  an Israeli invention for airport security called the Mag-Shoe. 

Instead of the infuriating hassle of taking off your shoes, you step into the Mag-Shoe and in a second it green lights you.  Watch the video in the link.  What gets you is not just the inventiveness, it’s the attitude.  No airport in the world has more cause for security than Ben Gurion, yet here are these Israelis who want to make security easier for passengers.  Very cool.

***
Now from very cool to very outrageous:  pornographic political protests in China.

Chicom censorship of the Internet in China is massive.  So anti-communist pranksters created a hokey-looking video about the "grass-mud horse" that defeats the  "river crab" that has invaded its home, the Ma Le Ge Bi desert.  The video is composed of sometimes awful, sometimes cute clips of alpacas (the animal from the Andes) as "grass-mud horses."

How the Chinese know they are grass-mud horses and their triumph over the river crabs in the desert is through the words – characters in Mandarin displayed on the screen – for the song accompanying the video.  It’s a happy nursery school or Sesame Street-type song sung by a children’s chorus.

It looks and sounds like some goofy innocent endearingly cute thing for little kids.

But in Chinese as in English, two words can be pronounced the same but have different meanings – e.g., "bow" and "bough," "doe" and "dough." (Such words are called homophones, and no gags, please.) 

So when a Mandarin speaker reads the characters on the screen, he sees "grass-mud horse," cao ni ma.  But when he hears the word in the song, he realizes that cao ni ma has a homophonic obscenity.  And laughs his head off.

Similarly for "river crab," which has a homophone hexie, meaning "harmonization" – the Chicom code word for obedience to their commands.  The cute little kids’ song is telling the Chicom government to screw itself.

The video has gone completely viral all through China with millions of downloads because the censors saw the words and didn’t get the homophones in the song.  More such videos are popping up.  One, perhaps to gain our attention too, is about a mythical beast called the French-Croatian Squid.

In Mandarin, the characters are pronounced fa ke yu.

French-Croatian Squids:  fighters for freedom in China!

And now – for those of you who want to actually see what we’re talking about:  TTP is a family-friendly site.  So we can’t put the video up, but we’ll link to it.  Be warned, the language is gross.  With that caution, you can watch the latest in anti-Chicom political protest in China:  the Grass-Mud Horse video.

By the way, how about an alliance of French-Croatian Squids for freedom in America?