Hey! Which way is there, and are we almost there yet?

A jealous rage has gripped me ever since the more dependable truck took up residence at Camp J.  Most of my peers own vehicles equipped with magic boxes they call GPS. I had none. Action was required.

It is one of the large, heavy old Airguides with many good features. The only bad one  is the difficulty of mounting without drilling ugly holes in the more dependable dash board. That is temporarily solved with gaffer's tape. The primary delights are: (1) Absence of a shrill old crone yelling at me to turn right or left or park the SOB and go back to driver's ed. (2) Knowledge that the satellite where the magical Turn-Left-NOW! witch lives will likely fall from the sky before Gentle Gaea changes her magnetic corset.

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It is possible to go too far in adapting perfectly good retrotechnology to land-borne vessels. But it would be fun to try.

Yes, THAT Kelvin.

For precise navigation, of course, a speed input is necessary.

Still, I am willing to concede that the bitch in the electronic box arranges for my buddies to get lost with far greater precision than is possible for me. For instance, there was this time in Sioux Falls when my pal followed her directions to the digital letter en route to a big loophole festival. We ended near a sheep pen, in a Superfund site I think, not too far from the state prison. There were no guns to loophole in the immediate area, but we knew within  three yards just where we were. Lost. At.

Obama lite sidebar; the Candy is Dandy guy

The snippit  in the previous post is from Nash's "Kindly Unhitch That Star, Buddy." It's funny in a laid-back 19 30s/40s sort of way. Like a lot of other Nash stuff, it extends some Mencken ideas in rhyme and meter so atrocious you will at least giggle.

In a sense, Nash the poet (or scribbler of doggeral to academic anals who don't like him) parodies poetry.

Obama lite

Yes, that's a confusing headline. Obviously it refers to someone other than Obama who, himself, has set a liteness record which ought to send all competitors scurrying.

I speak here of  "lite "only in the mental and moral senses. The president's ambition is heavy beyond belief. That is, he wishes to continue being president. Outsized ambition is depressingly common. As the great sociologist Ogden Nash reported, everybody wants to be a wow.

...all the little process-servers hope to  

    grow up into great big bailiffim and sheriffim.

One lite competitor who won't scurry is Mitt Romney, subject of a short and cogent item in the Washington Examiner.


Writer Douglas MacKinnon offers samples of Romney policiy differing from Obama policy in ways detectable only by advanced science using the most sensitive instruments. If at all.

And then he wonders:

Are you kidding me?  Is anyone in the GOP paying attention to what is going on here?  Is the Republican establishment so desperate to hold on to its power that it will continually look the other way as a chameleon-like candidate not only dreams up the ideas used by far-left Obama White House, but praises one of the people most reviled by the conservative movement?


The short answers to "Are you kidding me?" and "Is anyone in the GOP establishment paying attention...?"  are "no" and  "no."  They are also the long answers.
.

Silence Citizen!

1 -- -- I probably wouldn't  like this woman. For one thing, I'm suspicious of people who write  dramatic "diaries" obviously meant for publication. Nevertheless:

2. -- I would hate existing in a nation where people like Amy do not exist or where, worse,  the thugs of The Power have succeeded  in cowing them into obedient silence and cheerful submission.

3. -- Assuming Amy reported accurately in her personal journal, she was detained, harassed, mistreated, and arrested ("disorderly conduct") for the crime of reciting The Fourth Amendment as the TSA in Albuquerque prepared  to backhand her groin.

Tam and Popehat (H/T to each) write cogent takes on the outrage. But one more angle, if you please:

By the time the following dialogue took place, airport cops had handcuffed the woman (before arresting her and without Mirandizing her) and taken her driving license and other possessions. Officer Friendly and his fellows were just going by the book.

Amy: "I wasn't under arrest. You had no right to take anything from me. What if you(r) book doesn't follow the Constitution, the highest law in the land?"

Cop:  "It's not that big a deal.* It's for everyone's safety. We don't want to take the risk. You don't have to fly you know. You give up your rights when you fly."** 

 A quick review: This woman did not refuse to submit to a privates-probe by  the on-duty federal groper. She did not propose to physically resist any part of intimate search by a stranger. All she did was recite the Constitutional basis for her opinion that -- while she might have to be felt up -- she damned sure didn't have to approve of it.


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* -- If the cop really believed that, we're in even more trouble than we thought because he didn't come up with the Constitutional analysis on his own. He was regurgitating settled policy as handed down by the Inner Party.  When O'Brien is authorized to distinguish between trivial rights and important ones,  the Constitution becomes a quaint relic of the world before Oceania.  


** -- So, as we walk along the street, we are citizens. But a mysterious occurrence takes over when we are aloft, making us, instead, subjects. Not by law, but by decree. See Inner Party, supra.