Financial Advice

When blood is running in the streets, buy.

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Barack

Barack Obama can deliver a speech, and so far has managed to avoid scaring white folks.

Notice, however, that his well-delivered message is bringing people together, unity. Personally, I'm agin' it. I don't want unity with Al Sharpton, Gloria Steinem, Charlie Schumer, or Henry Waxman. I prefer them out of power and I want their ideas discredited. The First Amendment says we don't have to be united, and can thumb our noses at those whose ideas we consider wicked or stupid. My thumb constantly itches for action.

Under Barack, however, we will have youthfulness, and unity. About something or other.

One people, one nation, one Barack. As some comedian or other used to say, "Who needs it?"

Entertaining But Disheartening

I have not been blogging about the Presidential campaign. To some extent, personal considerations are to blame. But fundamentally, it's because the affair is so disheartening. The prospect of being governed by any of the major candidates is pretty dismal.

As a political junkie whose addiction started at age 8, I nevertheless find the campaign amusing, especially on the GOP side, where for the first time I can remember the free-for-all just won't end with the usual anointing of the winner.

Now the coiffed, well-spoken, and programmed Mitt Romney has risen from the dead and won a primary, and on to South Carolina (by way of Las Vegas), and the once inevitable Hillary has won a paper victory but with numbers among black voters that presage a train wreck for her in South Carolina. These results are interesting as far as the nuts and bolts of campaigning are concerned, but hardly promising for the Republic. Romney is to national leadership what Velveeta is to cheese.

Consider. The auto industry is in a shambles and once-prosperous Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. McCain told the truth--the jobs aren't coming back. This would be true even if the American automakers managed a design and engineering revolution. Romney, the "conservative," denies the obvious and promises corporate welfare to do the impossible--bring the jobs back--and wins.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are locked in a contentless identity campaign. Mindless feminists vote for the heiress-by-marriage, who is terminally dull and has no qualifications for the job except for having put up and covered for her husband's cocksmanship. On the other hand, Obama, the candidate of the Starbucks Dems, is finally managing to get the black vote on solely racial grounds. Neither has anything new to say, but God help us, one of them is likely to be our next President. At least Obama can deliver a speech.

The Demise of Civilization As We Knew It

This is from Brooks Brothers.

Could be retro creativity. Or the eschaton. Take your pick.

(I know, I haven't been posting, and then I come up with this. Shows you how excited I am about Annapolis, W in Jerusalem, Hill and Barack Hussein, Huck and Mitt Headroom).

Prognosis

The poet Louis MacNeice is not so well known as his buddy Auden, which is a shame. A propos of New Years' Day, here is MacNeice's "Prognosis":

Goodbye, Winter,
The days are getting longer,
The tea-leaf in the teacup
Is herald of a stranger.

Will he bring me business
Or will he bring me gladness
Or will he come for cure
Of his own sickness?

With a pedlar's burden
Walking up the garden
Will he come to beg
Or will he come to bargain?

Will he come to pester,
To cringe or to bluster,
A promise in his palm
Or a gun in his holster?

Will his name be John
Or will his name be Jonah
Crying to repent
On the Island of Iona?

Will his name be Jason
Looking for a seaman
Or a mad crusader
Without rhyme or reason?

What will be his message--
War or work or marriage?
News as new as dawn
Or an old adage?

Will he give a champion
Answer to my question
Or will his words be dark
And his ways evasion?

Will his name be Love
And all his talk be crazy?
Or will his name be Death
And his message easy?

Talk amongst yourselves.