Saturday, December 10, 2011

OMG! The U.S.S. Minnow is Captained by the Professor! WTF?

It’s not easy being the smartest man ever elected to the office of the presidency. The expectations are so high:

feeling blueSqueezing through the pocket door: hey! maybe we should open it further?

And we all know how high expectations can come back to bite you:

STEVE KROFT: Do you think that you might have the unemployment rate down to 8 percent by the time the election rolls around?


PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think it's possible. But…I'm not in the job of prognosticating on the economy. I'm in the job of putting in place the tools that allow the economy to thrive and Americans to succeed. Sometimes when I'm talking to my team, I- describe us…as…I'm the captain and they're the crew on a ship, going through really bad storms. And no matter how well we're steering the ship, if the boat's rocking back and forth and people are getting sick and…they're being buffeted by the winds and the rain and…at a certain point-- if you're asking, "Are you enjoying the ride right now?" Folks are going to say, "No." And are they going to say, "Do you think the captain's good—doing a good job?" People are going say, "You know what? A good captain would have had us in some smooth waters and sunny skies, at this point." And I don't control the weather. What I can control are the policies we're putting in place to make a difference in people's lives.

Goodness. We need to hold a refresher course on the proper construction of metaphors. This unfortunate allegory – of a ship being tossed around in an unabating storm – brings to mind nothing if not images of sunken ships and, well, you know…the whole meme about the deck chair rearrangement.

titanic_deckchairsHow about we stop rearranging the furniture and get back to prognosticating on the economy?

And while we’re at it, this isn’t helpful either:

Reversing structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two decades, that was going to take time. It was going to take more than a year. It was going to take more than two years. It was going to take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.

In political circles, blaming your predecessor(s) beyond year 2 of your term is considered unseemly at best and bush league at worst.

You two clowns really screwed my chances for reelection.

And “Probably takes more than one president” !?! I don’t really think we want to go there, do we?

0041a-logo-366x366

OMG! That’s just going to give people ideas.

obama_must_go_long

The Democrats: re-energizing the Republican Party since 1976:

jimmy and O

I know I’m not a paid political strategist, like everyone else around here, butt if I was I might advise Big Guy to revisit that Keystone Pipeline deal like pronto. Seriously, what’s the worst that could happen (possibly a question everyone around here might want to start asking themselves before acting)? In this case, it’s not so bad: the environmentalists might not vote for you, butt does anyone actually think they’ll vote against you?

So let’s just say “we need to get back to work for the American people,”  and for a change actually do it. WTF.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Dreidle-Dee and Dreidle-Dumb

Since one or both of the Wons will be vacationing on the Big Island when Hanukkah officially begins, the Wons threw a big party for 550 of their best Jewish friends last night – some of whom helped get Big Guy elected in 2008 and all of whom are expected to help get him elected again. So the mood was festive. Dr. Jill  and Joey Biden were also hosts of this year’s Festival of Light celebration.

mo best buy blueDouble-date: the Wons and the Toos

And never one to let a good excuse for a party go to waste, America’s last best hope for Israel lit all of the candles on the menorah to officially launch the Festival of Lights, which officially starts on December 20th this year.

 

bomo blue

Lady M glows in her Hanukkah friendly electric blue frock, complemented with other blue accessories

 

And wow! Check out Dr. Jill! Wearing a short black choir robe with sparkle collar, she’d be hot if she weren’t 60! Imagine still being able to go above-the-knee, stockingless and long platinum tressed at that age! It simply defies nature!

jills beaded collarButt then, defying nature is what we specialize in

It was a little awkward for the party planners this year, as the festival of lights won’t begin for another 12 days. They didn’t know how to handle the lighting of the menorah candles – so, in keeping with the party spirit, they opted to go for it with all of them for good measure. It has nothing to do with ignorance of the traditions of Hanukkah, and everything to do with expediency, festivity and a nod to the environmentalists (reducing our carbon footprint).

9645192-reading-under-candlelightAfter all, if studying by candlelight was good enough for Lincoln it’s good enough for us.

For her Hanukkah accessories, Lady M chose multiple strands of her favorite blue-black pearls by Erickson Beamon, a costume jewelry designer favored not just by Lady M butt also other celebrities of taste such as Lady Gaga, Daphne Guinness, and Beyonce:

Daphne and Donatello on the emp no clothesHa ha! Fooled you didn’t I? That’s not Lady Gaga on the left, butt socialite Daphne Guinness with Donatella Versace. Don’t you just love fashionistas?

I personally voted to go with the Kennedy Center Swarovski chandeliers and leave the swag at home. Butt what do I know about appropriate? I only worked in the First Ladies section of the Smithsonian and have no formal training in fashionista accessorizing.

kennedy center chandeliers  bomo blu2

Cobalt blue two ways: can you tell which outfit is using our super secret stealth containment system that has now fallen into the hands of the Iranians? And what a waste: they keep all of their women under wraps and away from the prying eyes of the West anyway. Although maybe the Chinese can use it for something.

Anyway, I guess the fact that we threw a party celebrating a Jewish holiday has re-earned our bona fides with the Jewish voting (and donating) block. Especially since BO reiterated his on-again, off-again unwavering support for Israel, noting: “our unshakeable support and commitment to the security of the nation of Israel.”

 

Second only to our unshakeable support and commitment to the security of our own country:

 

 

 

             mexican_flag_american_flag_upsidedown20111005_FastFurious

 

Borders, language and culture: “We are on correct path comrades.” (H/T, as always, Vereteno)

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Janet on Just One Minute, Thanks!

 

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Pardon Me Waiter, There’s a Fly in My Soup

I was watching CNN the other night and saw a disturbing business report by the former Ms.CNBC Street Sweetie, Erin Burnett. She was wondering why no one was eating at the Olive Garden anymore. It seems they’ve posted sales losses for three months in a row now; the latest, November, a whopping 5.7% loss.

Another case of a restaurant becoming so crowded that nobody goes there anymore?

Wall Street seems genuinely perplexed over this apparent fall from grace, so allow me, with the resources available at MOTUS Central, to see if I can’t help us get to the bottom of this mystery.
 
Clue # 1, from the Street Sweeties report:

Restaurant stocks have benefited from solid consumer spending so far this year, and analysts stressed Darden’s woes were company specific, as other consumer discretionary stocks escaped unharmed.

So, since other restaurants are doing OK, what’s different about Darden’s Olive Garden?

For our next clue, we need to reach back into the way-back machine:

obama-325Lady M announces the Olive Garden Partnership for a Healthier America Initiative, September 15, 2011

Clue # 2,  “Putting the Quo Back in ‘Quid Pro Quo’” in which Lady M orders announces that the Olive Garden has taken milkshakes and  French fries off the children’s menu, and agreed to a 10% reduction in salt and fat on the rest of their menu:

Darden Restaurants, the world's largest full-service restaurant company, whose brands include Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse and Bahama Breeze, today announced the most comprehensive health and wellness commitment in the restaurant industry to date. Darden has committed to reduce its calorie and sodium footprints and to provide greater choice and variety on its children's menus.

At her Pay-to-Play seminar yesterday Lady M deftly demonstrated the “quo” part of quid pro quo. If you think the Darden restaurant chain just came up with the idea on their own to offer their customers something they hadn’t asked for, don’t want and undoubtedly won’t like, in order to “reduce its calorie and sodium footprintswell, think again.

olive garden mo
“How do you kids like the low salt plastic noodles with low-sodium tomato sauce?”

Darden restaurants, you may recall, received one of those coveted Obamacare waivers from the administration. In return, all they had to do was support Lady M’s Healthy Eating Initiative by providing some healthy low calorie, low sodium menu offerings. Lady M made the official, historic announcement at a local Olive Garden in September.

Let’s see: September, October, November – why, that’s…3 months. The exact same time frame as Olive Garden’s sales slump! Coincidence? I report, you deride.

So what have we learned today, boys and girls?

  1. Everyone has the right to sell their soul
  2. The value may not be what you think it is
  3. Past performance is no guarantee of future results
  4. All results are final

devil_and_businessman

Or, as analyst Rachel Rothman so succinctly noted:

“When concepts lose their resonance with customers it doesn’t come back quickly,”

450x298-alg_trash_obama

Now, onto a more festive topic: there has been a New York Times update on  Mikki Taylor’s new blockbuster, Lady M’s Big Book of Stylin’:

Subtitled, “Every woman’s guide to managing her style like a first lady,” the book is not so much a how-to guide as it is an inspirational look book filled with perky little prescriptions that Ms. Taylor calls “Mikki-isms.” A typical pointer: “Your hair should be so fly that it looks as though you have a pro on speed dial.”

Get out! On speed dial? Ours is a live-in.

Butt seriously, what is “fly” as it refers to hair?

Is it like this?

Or is “fly” more like this: mo walmart

or this? sd91      …possibly this? mo shadow hat

or this, this and this:

       mo mao Php6MqVFXGiIZKAQXdu1lX_thumb_thumb_t MICHELLE-OBAMA

Or maybe it’s something simpler - more like these:

 monh3 mo boodle20091105_mobama_091104amo red ouch 011510-obama-hair-400x400

Butt after examining all of the available options, I’m pretty sure that what Mikki  means by “fly” hair is this:

 

hairspray please

Oh yeah…definitely super-fly.

obama-fly-on-face

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, Thanks!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Fairness Under Barack: America Recovers

Man, oh man, did TOTUS deliver Big Guy read a rip snorter in Osawatomie, Kansas yesterday or what? Ok, there was that little brain fart at the very beginning:

In all fairness, when you are campaigning touching Indians (H/T: Dennis Miller) reaching out to ordinary Americans as much as BO, it’s hard to remember which of the 60 states you are actually in, Dorothy.

Yes, I said 60 states. I know, the R-words have been lying about Big Guy thinking that there are 57 states since 2008. Butt if you listen carefully and count, he says he’s “been in” 57 states with one left to go, AND he wasn’t allowed to go to Alaska (Sarahcuda) or Hawaii(not till Winter Holiday). According to my totally up-to-date mathemagical pack, that’s 57+1+2= 60! So, enough with the 57 states nonsense. Another myth busted, by facts.

Butt speaking of fairness, and TOTUS/Big Guy did - more than once every 4 minutes - in last night’s 55 minute drone big read, you know what our newerer (H/T Meghan McCain) strategy to WTF 2012 is going to be: fairness. Slogans to follow.

Here’s the 30 second summary of Big Guy’s 55 minute speech: The American Dream is dead, thanks to greedy capitalists. Thank Gaia we still have Government to make things fair by taxing the rich and spreading the wealth around.

bait-and-switch-640H/T Washington Times

Now we finally understand why Big Guy has been so supportive of the Occupy crowd: they just want to dismantle capitalism and make everything fairerer too. Because after all, it’s not fair that some people have a bigger piece of that very limited American pie than others. I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to Big Guy to just bake more pies.

20080123-pies

Heck, he enjoyed 6 different pies himself on Thanksgiving. I wonder why he doesn’t just have chef start baking some more pies so that everyone who contributes something to the feast can enjoy a slice too?

Anyway, back to our theme-of-the-week: fair play, fair share, fair shot – (can he say that? Didn’t somebody get in trouble over that kind of speech?)

“Fair” has become the moral equivalency of, well, moral. Political correctness has been transferred to the government Department of Ethics and now in order to qualify for your moral credentials in the government’s eyes (not to mention your grants) you must be fair. Watch for the roll-out of our new Federally mandated program and department: the Federal Department of Affirmative Fairness.Could someone explain that one to Gaia? And the rest of the animal kingdom? Butt I guess if anyone can define “fair” it would be the Government. It may take several thousand pages, and if it’s not fair the first time, we can always redo it.

 Federal Tax Code:72,536 pages and counting

So anyhoo, our new fairness doctrine will be administered by the government, just like all the other important aspects of your life like light bulb usage and toilet flush volumes.

After all, we’ve already demonstrated that government officials have a better affinity for running things than the private sector. Everything from Homeland Security (where they came up with the idea of fighting terrorism with Snow Cone machines) to car companies (where they created a car that runs 35 miles before exploding) to bankrupt mortgage banks (where they sent everyone to a conference to learn how to give away even more money). In Fannie and Freddies defense however, they spent all that money to “hold crucial meetings with hundreds of customers to discuss ways to address the housing crisis.[ed. that they created in the first place]” 

Someone should really tell those guys about the internet (H/T: Algore). I understand you can even hold meetings online now! Extraordinary. Too bad though that, like ATMs, it put so many people out of work.

So don’t worry America. Big Guy’s got your back. and the sloganeers are busy developing messages to remind you of that every day. So far, though, all they’ve got is “Fairness Under  Barack: America Recovers” butt since they’re now required to run all of their slogans through the acronym generator, they’ve been sent back to the drawing board.

low-bidder-june-challenge-construction-fubar-demotivational-poster-1275567653

Don’t worry Stanley, it’s been launched

Linked By: Clarice Feldman on PJ Tatler, and motherbelt on News Busters, Thanks

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Our Wooly-Bully President Says: Throttle Down on This.

Self-made billionaire Leon Cooperman wrote Big Guy a letter the other day asking “Is all this class warfare really necessary?”

In case you missed Mr. Cooperman’s letter:

Dear Mr. President,

It is with a great sense of disappointment that I write this. Like many others, I hoped that your election would bring a salutary change of direction to the country, despite what more than a few feared was an overly aggressive social agenda. And I cannot credibly blame you for the economic mess that you inherited, even if the policy response on your watch has been profligate and largely ineffectual. (You did not, after all, invent TARP.) I understand that when surrounded by cries of “the end of the world as we know it is nigh”, even the strongest of minds may have a tendency to shoot first and aim later in a well-intended effort to stave off the predicted apocalypse.

But what I can justifiably hold you accountable for is you and your minions’ role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as “class warfare”. Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance. What does matter is that the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them. It is a gulf that is at once counterproductive and freighted with dangerous historical precedents. And it is an approach to governing that owes more to desperate demagoguery than your Administration should feel comfortable with. …

But what I do find objectionable is the highly politicized idiom in which this debate is being conducted. Now, I am not naive. I understand that in today’s America, this is how the business of governing typically gets done – a situation that, given the gravity of our problems, is as deplorable as it is seemingly ineluctable. But as President first and foremost and leader of your party second, you should endeavor to rise above the partisan fray and raise the level of discourse to one that is both more civil and more conciliatory, that seeks collaboration over confrontation. That is what “leading by example” means to most people.

Capitalism is not the source of our problems, as an economy or as a society, and capitalists are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be. As a group, we employ many millions of taxpaying people, pay their salaries, provide them with healthcare coverage, start new companies, found new industries, create new products, fill store shelves at Christmas, and keep the wheels of commerce and progress (and indeed of government, by generating the income whose taxation funds it) moving. To frame the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and-dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment. It is also a naked, political pander to some of the basest human emotions – a strategy, as history teaches, that never ends well for anyone but totalitarians and anarchists.

With due respect, Mr. President, it’s time for you to throttle-down the partisan rhetoric and appeal to people’s better instincts, not their worst. …

Sincerely,

Leon G. Cooperman

Boy, way to harsh Big Guy’s mellow.

bo-fingerThrottle-down on this!

Butt apparently the answer to Mr. Coopperman’s specific question is yes, class warfare is necessary. Big Guy will be delivering the long version of his response in a speech today in Osawatomie,Kansas.

He’ll be channeling Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 “New Nationalism” speech. Teddy was president and still planning to run again when he told the country:

"The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now."

ObamaTeddyRooseveltOur wooley-bully President

I see how that works for Big Guy’s message to the OWIES, and I guess he still figures he should pick up at least a few working class white votes, butt I’m not sure the major league donors are going to do handstands and deep pocket bends over it – other than George Soros. When you’re already richer than God, all you want to do is run the world. 

BTW: I know both Big Guy and his minions in the MSM have compared BO to nearly every great President from Lincoln to Reagan, butt here’s a little insider secret: Teddy is his real role model – he successfully adopted one of his masterful techniques of manipulation:

Roosevelt made the White House the center of news every day, providing interviews and photo opportunities. After noticing the White House reporters huddled outside in the rain one day, he gave them their own room inside, effectively inventing the presidential press briefing.[54] The grateful press, with unprecedented access to the White House, rewarded Roosevelt with ample coverage.[54]

Did I mention that Teddy decided not to run for the presidency again in 1912? Just another historical footnote. I hope I’m not boring you.

Anyway, Lady M didn’t appreciate the tone of Mr. Cooperman’s letter very much either. Now that she’s finally proud of her country, she doesn’t want to be lectured to by some old white capitalist.

So here’s some advice for the Coop-man: if you happen to look out your front window some day and see this…

Isabel Toledo Michelle Obama 2

don’t answer the door. Oh, and might want to Occupy a Tax Lawyer. You know, to make sure all the “I”s are dotted and “T”s crossed on, lets say, your last 30 years of tax filings.

So if you’ll forgive me, I’ve got to run now. Lady M and I have a date to do a little cyber-shopping this morning.

You know – to spread the wealth around.