The Poor Man Institute

Things you don’t want to hear from hurricane forecasting experts:

It’s time to get familiar with the names Hanna, Josephine, Ike, and Kyle, because the tropical Atlantic is about to put on a rare burst of very high activity in the coming weeks.

The good news, such as it is, is that it’s now somewhat less likely that Gustav will hit New Orleans.

Meanwhile, this puzzled me:

The price of U.S. crude oil has jumped about 2%, and the price of U.S. natural gas has increased 11% in the past two days, in anticipation that Gustav might rip through the oil and gas production areas of the Gulf of Mexico. About 25% of U.S. crude oil and 15% of its natural gas are produced in the Gulf of Mexico. As seen in Figure 2, the oil production areas are concentrated along the Louisiana and Texas coast. If Gustav makes a landfall on the right side of its cone of uncertainty, in Alabama or the Florida Panhandle, the oil and gas infrastructure might not be significantly affected. However, most of the cone of uncertainty lies in the major oil and gas producing areas, and I give an increased 70% chance that Gustav will significantly hurt oil and gas production in the Gulf.

But no, no, it must be speculators. John McCain said offshore drilling is hurricane proof.

The Ambien Cookbook is the smash hit collection of recipes for fans of the totally safe, side-effect free sleep aid Ambien! With its combination of delicious taste sensations and easy-to-comprehend, bold-face type, it’s proven to be the perfect companion for those late night raids on the kitchen you’ll never remember in the morning. On the occasion of its release in paperback, the authors contacted noted Ambien enthusiast — and former POW — Senator John McCain to write an introduction to the guide he’s called “Arrghh ur uh… where… kill you” and “Eh? What the… where am I? Get your goddamn hands off of me you ChiCom stooge.”

We here at the Poor Man Institute were lucky enough to catch up with the Senator at one of his seven to fourteen properties to discuss why he thought his participation in this book was so important, and what Ambien means to him. This was no easy feat, with his busy schedule, but the Senator was gracious enough to take our call at 4AM Monday morning.

TPMI: good morning, Senator McCain? Are you there?

John McCain: Hurrrrr.

TMPI: Senator McCain? This is the Poor Man Institute… you had agreed to talk to us about the Ambien cookbook?

John McCain: Ambiiieen… good lay… da nang pussy house. Went there… once or twice.. FIRE! FIRE! RUNWAY THREE PLANE ON FIRE!

TMPI: I see. So, in your introduction, you talk fondly of the warm memories making these recipes inspire in you. Could you talk a little about that?

John McCain: Memo.. mem… send him a memo. Keating! Keating has the money. Duck and roll, coach. This is the big one. Hit the button before they know we’re yellow. Drop thh.h….. zz [clattering noises, barking]

TPMI: Senator McCain, are you okay?

John McCain: What? Carol? You fucking cunt bitch I’ll cut you. Don’t listen to the reds. No, no, can’t see… those are… STINGERS! INCOMING! Bllluuhhh. Want a… can’t get those. Can’t get those here. Whiskey sour, sure.. WHO IS THIS? WHO ARE YOU?

TMPI: Uh, this is the Poor Man Institute, Senator. We’re talking about the Ambien Cookbook?

John McCain: It’s that goddamn Kruschev, gents. Got his pecker in Mao’s backside. Those gooks are just puppets. Get that little jew Joey on the phone. That’s one hell of a pilot. And get me some missiles… I… INCOMING! [ more clattering; sound of a window breaking; gunshots. line goes dead ]

TPMI: S.. Senator?

END OF INTERVIEW

We again wish to thank Senator McCain for talking to us, and wish him the best in his current Presidential bid.

So the crazy, angry, out-of-touch guy with possible PTSD, known anger management issues, possible creeping dementia, and a painfully obvious inability to process things on anything but an instinctual, surface level — that is to say, the man that would like to be in charge of the trillions of dollars worth of death-dealing merchandise the US has, in our great, benevolent wisdom, arranged to point towards every other corner of the Earth — the dude’s taking Ambien? The drug that made mild-mannered REM sideman Peter Buck fly into a rage towards flight attendants before accidentally wedging himself between two seats? The drug notorious for putting its users into “fugue” states where they don’t remember a fucking thing? Where they do crazy shit like eating everything in the house or swearing incomprehensibly at loved ones?

Forget Bush and his Jack Daniels, that shit is terrifying. I’ve seen more than my share of people who took Ambien and either didn’t go to sleep when they should’ve or were woken up (which, incidentally, is almost impossible — good thing the fucking President doesn’t have to be up in the middle of the night) and they are crazy. Like, zombies. For real. The only way Sky Captain Andy Rooney Buck Turgidson Death, Destroyer Of Worlds could make himself any scarier at this point (at least if avoiding a world plunged into horrific turmoil isn’t your bag) would be if he tried to wrest control of his plane from the pilots and crash it. Which, I give it a week, and more power to him.

Watching the Cornholes watch the convention.

The emerging wingnut consensus appears to be that Obama will be defeated by tying him to Some Old Hippie Nobody’s Ever Heard Of. It is obviously a strategy near and dear to their hearts, since an alien coming to Earth six years ago and attempting to learn about American politics by reading broadly in right-wing blogs would have come to the inescapable conclusion that the President was named “Ward Churchill”. Now, Mr. Churchill is not President, but is rather …. some sort of community college professor. I don’t really know. Thanks to the magic of Google, of course, I could easily find out, but I’m taking the principled stand here that certain things are so transcendently trivial that one should work diligently to avoid cluttering one’s beautiful mind with them.  It’s just basic mental housekeeping.  For consider: if I were to read even a single line from Ward Churchill’s biography, the pointless trial of memories and associations that this would create would make it that much harder to quickly recall other, more important pieces of knowledge, such as that amusing anecdote that John Boorman shared during the Director’s Commentary to “Zardoz”, or CPR.  Similarly, despite the fact that Some Old Hippie I’ve Never Of has a pretty short, easily-memorable name, I’m refusing to remember what it is, and I’m just going to call him “Some Old Hippie Nobody’s Ever Heard Of” – “SOHNEHO”, for short.

Anyway, Jonah gets the party started right, taking time out of his busy schedule of shoving fistfuls of frosting into his face to compare Barack Obama/SOHINHO to segregationist Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond.  An exact analogy, except in that Strom Thurmond was a Senator for many decades, and SOHINHO was some big hippie, and also except for everything else, and also STFU.  However, I assume this means Jonah Goldberg will now commence flacking for Barack Obama in a political magazine with a 50+ year history of supporting Black Supremicist terrorism.  Or whatever SOHNEHO did – throw tie-dye dye in people’s faces or write a really radical art movement manifesto or whatever.  Like anyone gives a shit.

Later, Rich Lowry channels some McCain campaign flack complaining that Obama is unfairly linking McCain to the ad linking unfairly linking Obama to SOHNEHO, and presumably tresspassing on his lawn.  This appears to be an eventuality that the McCain campaign was not prepared for – that having your sockpuppets drag up obscure shit from the Sixties makes you sound like a old fool who is obsessed with the fucking Sixties, and everybody starts looking for an assisted living home for you, preferably some place too far away to allow for regular visits.  This complaint of non-involvement is also slightly undercut by the flack in question endorsing every charge in the ad they certainly had nothing to do with, but never mind.  The McCain campaign plans to hit back, hard, with an ad linking Obama to Randee of the Redwoods and the dudes from the Freedom Rock commercial.

Finally, Mark Hemmingway learns that Obama is bring legal and extra-legal measures to bear against the SOHNEHO ad, sputters:

So let me get this straight — the job of the Justice Department is not to go after unrepentant domestic terrorists such as [SOHNEHO], but rather to police campaign ads about [SOHNEHO].

Well, Mark, the job of the Justice Department is not to “go after” people, unless these people have violated these things called “laws”.  There are currently laws about libel and campaign financing and so on, and there are currently no laws against being an old hippie or being somebody nobody’s ever heard of, and so here we are.  These would be the sorts of things that the Department would be expected to work on, Mark, although your and McCain’s boyfriend Bush has mostly had them “go after” people who register black people to vote.  So I wouldn’t worry too much about this being addressed in timely manner, although I would hope and expect that a likely Obama victory would be followed by a significant uptick in IRS/SEC/FBI interests in these folks, and probably many others in your social circle.  I’m investing in Jiffy Pop.

What the hey, play this over and over, too:

Play this ad, over and over and over, until November 4th. Election over.

Angry. Out-of-touch. Defeatist. McCain: More Dollars Than Sense.

From now on, nobody who thinks it’s Sebelius gets to call him (or her) self against-the-grain. She’s been the prohibitive favorite among your non-idiot type of blogger for months now. There’s no down side, unless you’re crazy an idiot disingenuous the One True PUMA. Just you wait.

… hah!  Fooled you!

I think the McCain campaign has finally hit its stride. Briefly wrong-footed when the candidate couldn’t remember how many homes he owned (a calculation which apparently involves Bessel functions and hypercomplex geometries), the campaign hits back … HARD!

The McCain campaign was in full damage-control mode as the housing story took off today. [Campaign flack Brian] Rogers tried to play down the story, saying that reports of the many McCain houses were overstated.

“The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff. It’s not as if he lives in ten houses. That’s just not the case,” Rogers said. “The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use.”

Mr. Rodgers is actually too soft on Obama here. John McCain does not have the elitist power of omnipresence, nor does he subscribe to the fashionable but morally nihilist doctrine of astral projection, so he actually could use only ONE house AT ANY GIVEN TIME. (The other three houses are for the use of his good friends P, O, and W.) One house at a time, just like the rest of us. A missed opportunity, there, perhaps, but Rodgers lands a crushing blow with his next attack:

“In terms of who’s an elitist, I think people have made a judgment that John McCain is not an arugula-eating, pointy headed professor-type based on his life story.”

“I may be rich,” says the candidate through his manicured media manservant, “but at least I’m stupid.” Vintage bonus points for referencing “arugula”, which I assume was the “organic sun-dried tomato pesto” of whenever John McCain lost interest in the world around him. I think this is a winning message for 2008. Indeed, I think the campaign ad writes itself …

[McCain, in military dress, in front of a huge American flag, a la Patton. The scene flickers, and suddenly the flag is an enormous dollar bill, and the candidate is dressed as Rich Uncle Pennybags. Wu-Tang Clan's classic C.R.E.A.M. begins to pump.]

Voiceover: Elitist liberals complain that John McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns.

[A Monopoly board. Houses, hotels, and Monopoly money and Chance cards ("?") spill onto it in slow motion.]

Voiceover: Who can keep track? They don’t teach fancy slide-rule calculus in POW camps. John McCain may not know how many mansions he has, but he knows how many books he has.

[An empty bookshelf, covered with cobwebs. McCain walks by, holding a familiar black book.]

McCain: I can count up to The Bible.

Voiceover: Can America afford to have a President who reads and knows whether Czechoslovakia is a real country and who’s a Sunni and who’s a Shiite when crazy terrorists want to kill us? John McCain: He’s Got More Money Than Brains.

Paid for by McCain/Hilton ’08 and the 2005 bankruptcy bill. “C.R.E.A.M.” by Wu-Tang Clan feat. 4-Closure.

Hey, it worked the last two times!

I’ll be damned. Does this explain every single thing about McCain and the media, or what?

Max Bergmann had the excellent insight that perhaps the key to understanding John McCain’s hysteria-based foreign policy is that it reflects the mindset of a television pundit. And this, after all, is really what McCain has been. He’s not interested in the nitty-gritty of domestic policy that Senators actually have influence over. And he’s hasn’t been serving in the executive branch, where the national security policies that are his passion actually get made. Instead, he spends a ton of time going on television and talking.

Why do the media idiots love him? Because he’s one of them.
Why do they give him a pass on his totally fraudulent references to elitism? Because they do that shit all the time.
Why do they love his insanity-based foreign policy? Because he says all the absurd, superficially strong-sounding stuff that makes good TV.
They love him like Chris Matthews loved Tim Russert. They love him like David Brooks loves Tom Friedman loves Richard Cohen loves Fred Hiatt. They love him like the Slate editorial board loves any idiot with a contrary position. They would go to bat for him because it’s tribal, because they get him, on a fundamental level. He’s good TV people. He’s one of them.

That’s why he gets a pass on everything; instead of looking at the facts, the media bigs look within themselves, pondering, introspectively, would I do such a terrible thing? Would I be such a terrible person? No way! So John McCain wouldn’t, either. I know him.