P.J. O'Rourke on the GOP's "Least Insane Candidate"

Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar. 

Still, I do NOT want to revisit this topic.

LOL: P.J. O'Rourke and Iowahawk vs. Scottish Independence Vote

The vote on Scottish independence is today, and P.J. O'Rourke casts a characteristically sardonic and hilarious look at the prospect. This is how it starts:

We Irish don’t hate the Scots per se. They’re too much like us Irish, who all hate each other. So we’re just looking for a fine entertainment from across the Irish Sea as Highland Scots have a donnybrook with Lowland Scots, Glaswegians dust up with Edinburghians, and Clan Dewers unsheathes its claymores for battle with Clan Johnny Walker.

Iowahawk, on the hand, doesn't need to bother with writing an actual piece when he can just tweet stuff like this:

I'm worried that Scotland independence could disrupt global supplies of haggis and bagpipes.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 15, 2014

4 Commencement Speeches

It *is* graduation season. Take a look at these addresses to the Class of 2014:

• One
• Two 
• Three
• Four (by P.J. O'Rourke!)

LOL: P.J. O'Rourke "Explains" Russian History

After casting a sardonic, hilariously reductive eye over a thousand years of Russian history, humorist P.J. O'Rourke is confident that Putin, in keeping with that history, will destroy himself sooner or later. 

I do remember a discussion with Alessandra a few years back about Russian history and how Russia had serfs long after everyone else had abandoned serfdom.  This was swiftly followed by her observation that only in Russia would the act of ending serfdom make life even worse for the serfs - er, ex-serfs.

Oh, I can't resist quoting a bit of O'Rourke:

"After his [Ivan the Terrible's] reign, Russia, if you can believe it, got worse. 'The Time of Troubles' featured more drought, more famine, more plague, foreign invasions, massacres, the occupation and sacking of Moscow, and tsars with names like False Dmitry I and False Dmitry II."

Hey, you forgot False Dmitry III!

PJ O'Rourke Imagines Obama in History

"I Came, I Saw, I Skedaddled."  Hey, did PJ take a leaf out of Dignified Rant's book?

P.J. O'Rourke and Pizza Politics

It's P.J., so read!

PJ O'Rourke on Mediocrity

Oh, dear.  Read the whole thing.

Fugly or Fabulous: Guys In Shorts

P.J. O'Rourke has some thoughts.  Nobody wants to look at your pasty legs.  Sorry.  On the other hand, I am on the record as being very much in favor of good suits and the iconic crisp white shirt.  Even if it's all rumpled, it looks fine.  (If it's any consolation, I stopped wearing shorts in public a long time ago myself.  A summer dress, be it cute-pretty or sleek-sophisticated, is just as cool and comfy - and far more charming and age-appropriate.)

Quote of the Day: the Zero Sum Fallacy

Read this as P.J. O'Rourke takes a look at the latest iteration of an old falsehood:

But the Occupiers are wrong about something much more important. They believe in the Zero Sum Fallacy -- the idea that there is a fixed amount of the good things in life. Anything I get, I'm taking from you. If I have too many slices of pizza, you have to eat the Dominos box. The Zero Sum Fallacy is a bad idea -- dangerous to economics, politics, and world peace. It means any time we want good things we have to fight with each other to get them. We don't. We can make more good things. We can make more pizza -- or more tofu, windmills and solar panels, if you like. 

The Zero Sum Fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic history since the Industrial Revolution proves -- be the rich however stinking rich -- we ordinary people can make more of the good things in life. But we have to make them ourselves, with our knowledge, skills and hard work. Government can't give us good things. Government doesn't make things, it just redistributes them. This brings us back to fighting with each other.

Irish Setter Dad: P.J. O'Rourke vs. the Tiger Mom

Oh, P.J.  How I do love you.

"Go Play In Traffic": P.J. O'Rourke on Bike Lanes

P.J. is back with his acerbic wit!

Nerd Journal: Miss Independent Goes to the Polls

It's a tale of 3 sassy, self-sufficient babes who went out today and voted as they bloody well pleased.  I'm talking about my peeps Alessandra and California Dreamer and me. So here are some of our Election Day stories, as we in 3 different states went to vote with a vengeance.  We frustrated folks have been waiting for today, people.  I know I have been.  Sure, I live in a blue state, but that's no reason not to get out there and give the smug leftists a piece of my mind via ballot.  Election Day?  It's really Accountability Day.  Ain't democracy grand?

P.J. O'Rourke on Afghanistan

O'Rourke's newest piece manages to visit Afghanistan and still crack a few jokes along the way.  Actually, his opening is as insightful as it is funny:

If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter.

Holden Caulfield Is a Loser: P.J. O'Rourke 1, J.D. Salinger 0

I had forgotten recently how hilarious O'Rourke can be.  I love O'Rourke and hate most "modern" literature, so this is just too good not to share:

It was a travesty of literary justice that we waited until J. D. Salinger finally hit the delete key at 91 before admitting that Catcher in the Rye stinks. The book’s only virtue is that it captures, with annoying accuracy, the maunderings of a twerp. The book’s only pleasure is in slamming the cover shut—simpler than slamming the door shut on a real Holden Caulfield, if less satisfying.

Meanwhile, don't even get La Parisienne and me started on how much we hate Kerouac.

UPDATE: I just found this.  Awesome.

RELATED POST:  American Literature Smackdown: Flannery O'Connor 1, Harper Lee 0

Nerd News: P.J. O'Rourke Versus Public Schools

Throwdown! O'Rourke is as piquant and humorous as ever. Edupunk-tastic!

RELATED POST: Let's dump the US Department of Education.

UPDATE: To continue this theme of taking potshots at the educational establishment, take a listen to this uproarious prank call by a delightful 8-year-old Irish girl:

Quote of the Day: PJ O'Rourke on God and Santa Claus

Oh, PJ:

I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He's nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

Ha!

A Book to Read: P.J. O'Rourke's "Driving Like Crazy."

Think about P.J. O'Rourke's latest book, Driving Like Crazy, as a hilarious combination of Jeremy Clarkson (sarcastic wit intact), "Top Gear," and Mario Kart Wii -- or at least my description of said game as "completely unhinged vehicular pandemonium" that's also loads of FUN.

As a paean to the internal combustion engine, with arias devoted to various forms of hysterical self-inflicted Carmageddon scenarios and bouts of unrepentant automotive addiction, O'Rourke's book is an opera of gonzo journalism that had me laughing out loud.

I can't recommend a better book to be the last laugh of the summer -- end the season with O'Rourke's inimitable style, now behind the wheel of a car and cheerfully defying all known speed limits and safety protocols.

Here's a little blurb to get you interested:

But pity the poor American car when Congress and the White House get through with it -- a lightweight vehicle with a small carbon footprint, using alternative energy and renewable resources to operate in a sustainable way. When I was a kid we called it a Schwinn.

Quote of the Day: PJ O'Rourke on Politics and Politicians

The inimitable O'Rourke has some fresh observations. Quote:

Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.

Now go see the whole video.

It's from July, and I had forgotten to link to it then. The indispensable Insta-Prof jogged my memory.

Nerd Journal: Taxation Vexation Rant

I am currently doing my taxes. The horror, the horror!

At least P.J. O'Rourke is here to poke fun at this annual paroxysm of government-endorsed financial vampirism:

As April 15 rolls around let us take a moment to recall why we Americans pay taxes: Because some of our country's good-for-nothing bums are too chicken to rob us at gunpoint. That would be members of Congress and the executive branch.

I mean, REALLY. Grad student fellowships get taxed, taxed, taxed. Any sort of measly, paltry income that nerds get in jobs or whatever gets taxed, taxed, taxed. And if you think grad students or lowly young academics don't count as "working poor," then it's because you've never been one. I counted the numbers, and we're paying a QUARTER of our income in state and federal taxes -- and by "we" I mean all the nobodies like me who are just scraping along.

But at least we're supporting ourselves without help from anybody! This is a mark of pride, as it should be. It means we have to watch our pennies carefully and behave responsibly and frugally -- and you'd think this is GOOD thing, right? Too bad the utterly reckless government can't seem to grasp this concept, much less encourage it among the citizenry! But noooooooo, enter bailout-a-palooza, mortgage plans, and more moral hazard and toxic policy than you can wrap your mind around.

So here I am juggling rent and bills and whatever -- some of my colleagues now have babies and little ones -- and trying to save pennies (while also shouldering a mound of school debt), and I'm watching an endless passion for debt, deficit, and spending from the hopelessly clueless government. I just don't know what to do or think. Well, every Tax Day I'm feeling peppery, but this time around, I'm more irate than ever. Not just at having to pay mountains of taxes to a government that I think is wasteful and foolish (if not corrupt), but at the knowledge that WAY TOO MANY high-profile Obamanauts have had problems not paying their own frickin' taxes. And one such egregiously disgraceful tax cheat is heading up the US Treasury, for goodness sake! (If the guy can't even manage his own finances, how's he supposed to manage such a far more complex sytem like the US economy?)

Maybe that's why the leftists don't mind hiking up taxes all the time, why they in fact LOVE doing that. They're not paying any taxes! Hey, do you know what happens if I don't pay MY taxes? No, I don't get invited to head the Treasury. I get the consolation prize of audits and fines and jail and all that fruit basket of happiness.

Oh, I'm not saying that I don't think we should pay no taxes at all. We need to fund infrastructure and the military, for instance. I will happily pay my taxes to support the armed services. But I absolutely am beginning to feel that the hard-working taxpayer is increasingly being regarded by tax-obsessed politicians not as the bedrock of the country and a citizen who should be respected, but as an all-you-can-eat buffet to feed an ever-increasing government. I'm foolish enough to think that the government should work for me, not the other way around. OK, even if -- let's be realistic here -- that won't happen, I'll settle for government leaving me alone as much as possible. But that doesn't look too likely either. Don't even get me started on statist policies.

While I'm looking at the insane ballooning of government, I can't help thinking of Maggie Thatcher's famous quote that the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money. Crush the productive sector of society in order to feed the unproductive, and sooner or later the productive will give up -- or emigrate. (Then I guess we're finally achieve the Holy Grail of leftism, so-called FAIRNESS, when we're all equally poor and miserable. I'm an evil capitalist, and I prefer that "fairness" be turned into a world where everybody gets rich.)

Then there's this, with which I will end this rant and go back to my online tax filing:

Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. ~Thomas Jefferson, 1801 inaugural address

P.J. O'Rourke and Michael Steele on the GOP

O'Rourke and Steele have some home truths to deliver, and I must say that I agree with nearly all of it.

As I told Thalia recently, I'm a libertarian/conservative, which means that these days I'm not really a Republican. (The whole "big government GOP" was a deplorable mess that flies in the face of both true libertarianism and true conservatism. Yes, I include "compassionate conservatism" in this.)

Here is a great quotation from Steele in his call for the party to return to its founding principles:

Our faith in the power and ingenuity of the individual to build a nation through hard work, personal responsibility and self-discipline is our uniting principle. That is the sacred ground upon which our Republican Party was built. For the sake of all Americans, it is the ground we must reclaim.

Preach it!

On the O'Rourke side, his piece is a little long-winded, but he has some points to make. I particularly like his shot at the "social conservatives," a group that's too easily attached to some of the zealots of the "Religious Right." Everybody pay attention to this: "The law cannot be made identical with morality. Scan the list of the Ten Commandments and see how many could be enforced even by Rudy Giuliani."

I give you also a bit from the humorous O'Rourke on taxes, fiscal responsibility, and government spending:

Yes, we got a few tax breaks during the regimes of Reagan and W. But the government is still taking a third of our salary. Is the government doing a third of our job? Is the government doing a third of our dishes? Our laundry? Our vacuuming? When we go to Hooters is the government tending bar making sure that one out of three margaritas is on the house? If our spouse is feeling romantic and we're tired, does the government come over to our house and take care of foreplay? (Actually, during the Clinton administration  .  .  .  )

Anyway, a low tax rate is not--never mind the rhetoric of every conservative politician--a bedrock principle of conservatism. The principle is fiscal responsibility.

Conservatives should never say to voters, "We can lower your taxes." Conservatives should say to voters, "You can raise spending. You, the electorate, can, if you choose, have an infinite number of elaborate and expensive government programs. But we, the government, will have to pay for those programs. We have three ways to pay.

"We can inflate the currency, destroying your ability to plan for the future, wrecking the nation's culture of thrift and common sense, and giving free rein to scallywags to borrow money for worthless scams and pay it back 10 cents on the dollar.

"We can raise taxes. If the taxes are levied across the board, money will be taken from everyone's pocket, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and least advantaged will be harmed the most. If the taxes are levied only on the wealthy, money will be taken from wealthy people's pockets, hampering their capacity to make loans and investments, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and the least advantaged will be harmed the most.

"And we can borrow, building up a massive national debt. This will cause all of the above things to happen plus it will fund Red Chinese nuclear submarines that will be popping up in San Francisco Bay to get some decent Szechwan take-out."