I Can't Wait Any Longer for the Clowns to Come to Town.

Joining us today for this first fictional preview of the 2016 Traveling Clown Circus here on the campus of Liberty University, presented by Fox News and sponsored by Mountain Dew are, in alphabetical order, Michele Bachmann, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Allen West. Hopefully the other ten candidates will be able to join us next week under the big circus tent being set up at Oral Roberts University. I'm your Master of Ceremonies and Ringmaster, Mike Huckabee. Please stand for the Invocation, Pledge of Allegiance, and Star Spangled Banner...

 [fifteen minutes later, with the crowd in a frenzy of patriotic tears] 

Huckabee: The first question goes to Michele Bachmann.
Cruz: And I really thought we had agreed to have only one token woman this year. This is going to get confusing to some of our viewers with two of them.
 Bachmann: Wait your turn! I thought there was only going to be one token Latino or Hispanic or Mexican here too, but we've got you and Rubio. Talk about confusing.
Huckabee: Didn't we agree in our pre-fight briefing that there would be no bashing of ladies or Mexiamericans this year? That's the only reason we lost those two key voting blocks in 2012.
Palin: That and nominating a lamestream Massachusetts moderate who had some very serious RINOplasty issues. I hope you see there how my air quotes while I was saying RINO mean that Romney was a Republican In Name Only.
Huckabee: Thank you for that clever clarification, but still we've got to pretend to be PC here, so no name calling about the wetbacks and members of the weaker sex. Only Dumb-o-crats and San Francisco Liberals can be  freely abused without consequences on this stage. Governor Palin, the first question goes to you... 
Bachmann: Wha..?
Huckabee: What have you done to combat universal healthcare Governor Palin?
Palin: First of all, while I want to thank the good folks at Mountain Dew for providing these pitchers of Dew -- real sugary Dew, not the diet stuff -- I just wish they had given us glasses larger than 16 ounces to pour it into... [raucous applause and laughter and an audible 'Fuck Bloomberg' followed by scattered rebel yells] ... That's good Dew. But seriously, I did more than anyone to stop Obamacare. Do you remember who warned you all about the Death Panels that were gonna kill your grandmas? Me.
Cruz: But I was the Tea Party champion who single-handedly shut down the government in 2013 to stop Obamacare!
Palin: And did you stop it?
Rubio: And has the province of Calgary released your birth certificate yet?
Cruz: Did you get your family's Cuban story rewritten yet?

[Loudly crosstalking candidates become unintelligible under a lengthy chorus of boos, or it could be that some sizable proportion of them are screaming 'Cruuuuuuuz'.] 

Huckabee [for the umpteenth time]: Order please. Please wait for your questions, you'll all get a turn.
Bachmann: Even me?
Huckabee: The next question goes to Rand Paul. What have you done to make sure the uninsured stay that way?
Paul: It's not enough to make sure that we take insurance away from all the victims of Obamacare, but we need to reexamine those earlier Socialist intrusions on our liberty, Medicare and Medicaid. This is about freedom and liberty to die like Americans, penniless and uninsured, if that's what we choose. Without Big Brother Nanny State telling us we need to go to the doctor.
Palin: Isn't your Daddy a doctor? [Governor Palin leans close in to her microphone to take another long audible sip on her soda straw, earning more laughter and applause]
Paul: Not only is he a doctor, but I'm a doctor too. We can do well enough with people who care enough to EARN the money to seek our services. And you can stop pretending you're the only one who cares about Americans getting enough junk food. Who was there to defend trans fats and America's donuts against the freedom-hating bureaucrats of the FDA back in 2013? I was.
Christie: Look at me. Look at me!
Huckabee: We're looking.
Christie: Look at me. Don't I look like someone who would fight harder than anyone for the freedom to eat donuts and drink large corn-syrup-enhanced American beverages?
Huckabee: You know, I was an overweight governor who learned to eat better.
Christie: I'm not gonna frickin mess with the chemistry that got me here.
Huckabee: Allen West, do you have anything to add to this discussion?
West: Is that a question?
Huckabee: I'm not really in control here right now, so say anything you want.
West: After we evict and convict the 80 Communist Party members of the Democrat Congress, then we need to deal with Iran with a few tactical nukes.
Huckabee: Anything else?
West: We're not executing enough prisoners fast enough...

[Interrupted by cheers]

West: If we run out of murderers, rapists, kidnappers, pirates, and traitors, maybe we can impose capital punishment for liberals and atheists or people who burn the Gadsden flag, or...

[foot-stomping, applause, whistles and a few pistol shots into the ceiling tiles fill the next ten minutes]

Huckabee: Because of tonight's spirited discussion and lively audience participation, we don't have time for more questions or closing statements...
Bachmann: Dafuq?!
Huckabee: We barely have enough time left for the closing prayers and the group singing of Lee Greenwood's 'I'm Proud to Be an American' featuring my extended bass solo.
Bachmann: I fought for junk food too!!
Huckabee: Cut her mike please.
Bachmann: ...where would traditional EasyBake ovens get their juice without my Light Bulb Freedom of Choice bill??
Crowd: INCANDESCENTS FOREVER!
Huckabee: Are we done here? Let Us Pray.

The quote of the day comes from Cold War Czechoslovakia

"... People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten." 
-- Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting 
(trans. M.H. Heim, p.22 of 1981 Penguin paperback)

The Quote of the Day from Martin Amis

Okay, it has nothing to do with politics, but of all the sentences that I read this morning this is the sentence (and a half) that popped out at me in my internet skimming and grazing.

"Keith was now well launched on the bullet train of the fifties where the minutes often dragged but the years tumbled over one another and disappeared. And the mirror was trying to tell him something."

--Martin Amis, The Pregnant Widow
(as quoted in The Guardian)

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I boarded that bullet train myself a few years ago, but I think it has more to do with the fact that Martin Amis has written some of the most perfect sentences in the English language in the last thirty years and I look forward to every one that comes from his pen, even at times when his political opinions may not be in line with mine.
The mystery is when I am going to get a chance to read this book. The Guardian article this morning says "next month", but Amazon.co.uk has no price listed for the book yet and has two listings, one with a pub date of September 2008 and one with a pub date of February 4, 2010. The Amazon.com(.usa) site lists a pub date of May 11 and doesn't even have a cover image posted (I'm sure that it won't be the UK image you see to the left). I guess I'll be adding to my personal carbon footprint by having this book shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in February.

2009 is Going to Be a Great Year

So, by this August your 13-inch rabbit-eared television will be dead, your total 401K retirement account balance will be less than your average monthly grocery bill, your house will be worth less than your 15-year-old Jetta, and the Chinese will have bought the brand names "Chevrolet" and "Cadillac" for 200 euros each, but on August 4, 2009 we will also be given the opportunity to shell out a mere $27.95 for a relatively short (416-page) new novel by Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice.
Here's the tag line from the Penguin catalog:

" Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog "

The first descriptions and excerpts in the catalog sound like a cross between Vineland and The Crying of Lot 49 with a dash of Raymond Chandler's style, but I'm sure that Tom will have some surprises in store for us that are brand new.