Responding to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s invitation to California businesses to move to Texas, where they can find “low taxes, predictable regulations, [a] fair legal system and [a] skilled workforce,” Jerry Brown sneered:

“Everybody with half a brain is coming to California.”

which does basically explain the political situation out there.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

David Petraeus wore regularly a lot more awards than Dwight Eisenhower did many years ago.

Marines have long remarked humorously on the proliferation of awards, badges, and decorations worn by members of the US Army. General Petraeus’s resignation as CIA Director recently even provoked comment from left-wing commentators, like Andrew Sullivan, on the questionable taste of contemporary doggie custom.

The Marines, of course, are a lot better qualified to criticize in areas of this kind than are foreign poofter journalists who make professional careers of Dolchstoß-ing those who protect them from big bad sand monkeys who would do them harm.

I was reminded of the criticism of General Petraeus’s uniform’s collection of shiny hardware by a photo of even more heavily be-medalled Chinese officers that has been floating around on Facebook. The original was sufficiently profuse with badges that it provoked some wag to use Photoshop to multiply them, and even to extend the medals to some Chinamen’s trousers. (see below)

The legitimate, original photo of Chinese officers.

Photoshopped parody. There are medals even on the sleeves and trousers.

It is a common form of modesty on the part of students and alumni of certain Ivy League universities, to intentionally try to avoid the inevitable reaction to dropping a big name in response to the question, “Where did (do) you go to school?” and to reply, slightly evasively, New Haven (or Boston). Sophisticated interlocutors recognize the response at once, and everybody else is really better off not knowing.

But the burden of grandeur apparently weighs heavily on the narrow shoulders of some attendees of a certain school in Cambridge.

Harvard is consequently offering today counseling on how to cope with being so special.

Home from Harvard for the Holidays: Revisiting Relationships with Family and Friends

Wednesday, December 5, 1:00-2:30pm
5 Linden Street
How do I talk about Harvard at home? Will my friends and family think I’ve changed? Will I still fit in? This workshop provides an opportunity to describe and explore your experiences and questions as you anticipate going home. To register, email slshin@bsc.harvard.edu or cshindler@bsc.harvard.edu.

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Acculturated found the therapeutic approach to the Harvard identity pretty funny.

Is Harvard acknowledging that its students, upon being admitted into the hallowed crimson kingdom, become so socially inept that they require workshop assistance to socialize with their non-Harvard friends and family? Or is this event a tacit endorsement of the assumption, which embarrasses Harvard students and alumni so, that they really are better than and different from the rest of us? Either way, the elitism that underlies this event is just hilarious, given its stilted effort to be empathic to what the University probably considers the unanointed hoi polloi.

The best line came from the fellow on Facebook who quipped: “At least, they didn’t give the European Union the prize for Economics!”

Attention, bitter clingers leading out-of-it lives in fly-over states, It’s not too late! Vogue editrix-in-chief Anna Wintour is descending from Olympus to offer you a (very, very small) chance to rub elbows with her and other prominent fashionistas at an Obama Campaign fundraising dinner being held at Sarah Jessica Parker’s Manhattan manse. All you have to do is donate $15 (or more) to the 2012 Obama Re-election Campaign.

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Alas! The economy is so bad that you probably don’t have $15 to spare. You probably don’t read Vogue. And many of you hopeless hillbillies out there may not even have heard of Anna Wintour.

This trailer for the 2006 film “The Devil Wears Prada,” in which Meryl Streep plays a slightly fictionalized version of La Wintour, will serve as a quick introduction.

Hat tip to David Burge.

Even leftist Glenn Greenwald, in Salon, was appalled at documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim‘s canine adoration of Barack Obama.

A clause added to the Defense Authorization spending bill repealing Section 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in order to decriminalize homosexual relations has provoked considerable controversy.

It turned out that Section 125 stated that any servicemember who “engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same sex or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy.” Offenders would face court-martial for any violations.

Legalizing homosexual relations thus seemed to imply that bestiality would have to be legalized as well, and organizations from the Family Research Council to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals exploded in indignation.

The Pentagon tried assuring Congress that bestiality would remain unlawful because it is impossible to conceive of a circumstance in which such an act “would not be conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline or service-discrediting.” Though they obviously overlooked the fact that plenty of people would be happy to argue that homosexual acts are bound to be just as prejudicial to good order and discipline, and discrediting to the service in the eyes of many Americans.

The Republican-controlled House has yet to endorse the Senate bill, and negotiators are discussing the differences in each house’s version of the Defense bill.

The Hill

Military.com

James Carville

Democrat party strategist James Carville is upset, and is offering some characteristically unvarnished Carvellian advice to the Obama political team. (CNN:)

People often ask me what advice I would give the White House about various things. Today I was mulling over election results from New York and Nevada while thinking about that very question. What should the White House do now? One word came to mind: Panic.

We are far past sending out talking points. Do not attempt to dumb it down. We cannot stand any more explanations. Have you talked to any Democratic senators lately? I have. It’s pretty damn clear they are not happy campers.

This is what I would say to President Barack Obama: The time has come to demand a plan of action that requires a complete change from the direction you are headed.

I don’t know how else to break this down. Simply put:

.. Fire somebody. No — fire a lot of people. This may be news to you but this is not going well. For precedent, see Russian Army 64th division at Stalingrad. There were enough deaths at Stalingrad to make the entire tea party collectively orgasm.

Mr. President, your hinge of fate must turn.

Mr. Carville must have actually been referring to Vasily Chuikov‘s 64th Army (subsequently redesignated the 7th Guards Army) which played a key role in the Battle of Stalingrad and which developed the tactic of fighting the Germans from as physically close a position as possible, “hugging the enemy,” as a means of neutralizing German advantages in firepower and combined arms tactics.

It is unclear whether Carville is advocating some innovative democrat political strategy be developed to neutralize Republican advantages resulting from the failure of President Obama’s economic policies and public dislike of Obamacare, or whether Mr. Carville is really simply trying to compare Barack Obama’s unhappy political prospects to the German disaster at Stalingrad, mistakenly referring to one of the best-known Soviet military formations instead of Army Group B, the actual loser.

The substance of Carville’s advice to Obama is to go on a PR offensive, firing scapegoats from within the Administration, create additional scapegoats to sacrifice by indicting businessmen supposedly responsible for the real estate bubble, and fight harder by repeating the democrat left’s talking points louder and more insistently.

The correct comparison would really be that of James Carville and the progressive left (that is so passionately demanding that somebody else keep fighting) with Hitler, and of Barack Obama (who has found himself in a hopeless position after faithfully following their orders) with General Paulus.

Russian soldiers at Stalingrad

Sample:

link

Hat tip to Emmy Chang.

I’m a Republican because democrats are idiots.

Hat tip to Joe Egan.

Newt Gingrich has been backpedaling and apologizing furiously for his attacks on Paul Ryan’s budget reform proposal on the Meet the Press last Sunday.

What Gingrich’s true and actual positions on the Ryan proposals, Medicare, and Obamacare might actually be these days remains unclear. It seems that Gingrich is basically where one would expect him to be, and on Sunday was only bloviating, and philosophizing, and attempting to differentiate his own more nuanced, sophisticated, and organic approach to budgetary reform from less prudent and more inflamatory approaches.

Gingrich apologized to Paul Ryan and has been making a genuine effort to sound more like a Republican (and to stay a viable candidate).

The latest amusing effort to keep the Gingrich candidacy afloat was this salvo by his press secretary Rick Tyler, attempting to blame the Sunday debacle on a media conspiracy.

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.”

I was down on Gingrich, too, so I guess my invitations to the Georgetown cocktail parties must be in the mail.

Quinn Hillyer filed the best response at the American Spectator.

Methinks if there is any billowing smoke, it is the funny stuff the Gingriches must be smoking if they think he has emerged looking like anything except a shabby, self-important hack with enough egg on his face to feed omelets to the whole nation of Lichtenstein.

Hat tip to Jim Geraghty’s (emailed) Morning Jolt.

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UPDATE, 5/20:

Jon illustrated the entire “Gingrich Emerging” rant here.

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UPDATE, later 5/20:

John Lithgow reads the glorious press release for Stephen Colbert.

Back in September of 2008, when the US stock market crashed and a number of very major US banks and corporations were becoming insolvent, I quoted and linked a particular humor post from BBSpot, which read:

Nigerian philanthropic billionaire Esenam Ayele said that he would make $80 billion dollars available to US banks from his accounts in Nigeria. All he needed to transfer the funds was a trusted associate at the bank.

It couldn’t come at a better time for Wall Street as the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and government bailout of AIG has left markets tumbling with no bottom in site. The guaranteed funds should bring some stability back to financial institutions.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said Ayele could be trusted. “I know he’s had problems in the past with people believing him, but I assured the folks over at Washington Mutual that he was for real.”

Ayele, who has returned to wealth with the rise in oil prices, said from his palace in Lagos, “I just need someone to fax me a copy of the transfer codes on some bank stationery, and I’ll get the money right over.”

He added that his widowed sister also had more funds she could transfer out of the country which she inherited from Prince Ugube of Tanzania. “She just as helpful as I am, but she’s unable to come to the United States because of a visa issue. If somebody could just send her a cashier’s check for $1000, she’ll be able to clear everything up and transfer the funds.”

Well, this post was more than two years ago, but it finally attracted a response. I received this real email the day before yesterday:

Read your post from above website. I hope to contact this guy, i am in a business of developing my community which will also help youths and children education, i need some expansion to improve the business. Please do you have the contact of this guy? Kindly send me please.

–Mrs Adewunmi Funmi