Circle the wagons

The Indians are coming!

Senator Pocahontas has scouts in Iowa, you know, the place where we decide who you can vote for. They're beating her tom-tom at the state fair despite -- we'll use her white-eye name here -- Liz Warren's solemn statement that she is not running for president.

Her Massachusetts dog soldiers aren't buying that. Maybe we, also, should be leery of her solemn statements because she once solemnly avowed Cherokee ancestry. She billed  herself as a native American on the Harvard faculty list. That allowed Harvard to  pimp itself out as a diversity bastion.

When it became obvious in her 2012 campaign that she is about as Injun as Martin Luther, she skedaddled back and forth and sideways until she finally came up with a dandy Kumbayah evasion:

Warren said she listed herself as a minority because she wanted to connect with “people for whom native American is part of their heritage and part of their hearts.” 

And she did it for at least 10 years.

About the only question regarding her forked tongue is: "Poky, did you lie about it at first -- when you applied to Harvard -- in order to score heap big affirmative-action hiring points?"

She said no.  Ted Kennedy said he "dived repeatedly" in a heroic effort to rescue Mary Jo.

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A small political datum lies here. Someone is willing to bet a little time and money that Hillary won't run. Hillary will, according to all present signs, but if she doesn't >big war whoop<.

Zippo side bar (or) Nautical Considerations (2)

Let me tell how it was in the Old Navy, Son.

We all smoked. A few limpies carried Ronsons to illustrate their elevation above the common herd. Most of us, though, real sailors, carried Zippos. And we didn't pay the exorbitant ten or fifteen cents for lighter fluid at the Ship's Store.

Instead we had an irregular series of Zippo parties. We borrowed a Planters Peanuts can half full of gasoline from a friendly snipe. They kept it on hand for the Handy Billy.

We slipped the works from the case and dunked them for a few seconds. Perfect fill and we were good for a week or more of wind-proof (hah)  flame to set our Luckies and Camels alight.

It was all part of military wisdom, midnight requisitioning, the art of cumshaw.

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Glossary:

Cumshaw: An unauthorized transfer of United States Navy assets from one use to another. The penalties for getting caught ranged from an ostensibly disapproving grin to thirty or forty years in Portsmouth Naval Prison.

Handy Billy: A portable water pump for clearing flooded spaces. An exceptionally talented snipe could often make it run and pump.

Midnight Requisition:  See cumshaw.

Military wisdom: Something of an oxymoron but, at a deeper level, a necessary survival tool.

Snipe: A man in the engineering department, such as an EM.

Hey Ms. Yellin...

I gotchur "2 per cent" inflation hangin' cuz I still still use a dangerous incendiary in a Zippo.

Observe the one on the right first, a gift late last year. The receipt was in the bag, about four bucks,  plus tax.

Now look left,  please, for a couple of pertinent points. The 57-cent price is an obvious hint that something has changed. I find it more compelling that the Ronsonol folks once had enough confidence in price stability to paint the price on the can itself.

!

Leftie has a bar code, dating it no older than the early '80s. It is probably newer.

You can pick your own year, do a little arithmetic, and calculate the depth of the Federal Reserve Board long-standing lie that "inflation is tame."

(The easy way is an adaptation of the  rule of 72;  price divided by  annual price increase equals the number of years necessary for the price to double.  At 2 per cent annual currency devaluation, a few ounces of fluid at 57 cents would, after 36 years, cost $1.14. )

Even easier to digest: The 7 per cent sales tax on the new plastic-pack Ronsonol was about 28 cents. So the tax alone, now,  would have bought a half can of the product then. (The anal who wish to quibble over the odd penny and the 4 or 5 per cent c. 1984  tax on 57 cents are free to do so and will be enthusiastically ignored. Likewise the the additional half-ounce in the new packaging.)

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Fer cryin' out loud, Jim, how the heck did this tickle your muse on such a  fine Sunday morning?

Glad you asked.

I've spent a couple of days massaging fiberglass to make permanent a "temporary" (read "slapdash and ugly and not too effective") repair on the leaky Texson camper  roof. This sort of thing requires acetone. So I rooted around in the place where I store volatile chemicals. No  acetone.

But I found the Ronsonol can, nearly empty, and noticed the price.  All else followed because I am lately most interested  in the scope and depth of lies by politicians and public-tit economists.

Despite everything, however, I am incredibly pleased with myself because among the flammables and explosives I found a long-forgotten sealed gallon of Holiday gas stove fuel and noticed its label claim to be a "naphthalene product."

So is lighter fluid, so I dunked the Zippo in it. Worked fine.  I topped off both Ronsonol cans.

Somewhere in the majestic vastness of American law this simply must be a criminal act, at least an OSHA or hazmat offense. So I apologize for an illegal act of personal inflation amelioration.

Please don't put no choke hold on me, Officer Dan.

Oh that funny, funny White House

Background: The feds are covering their asses for, shall we say, a medieval approach to CIA police work when the shit hit the fan after 9/11.

Say what you like about Barack Obama, but hit-and-run writers looking for a gag line will miss that man. As in this Associated Press scoop about CIA brutality after the 911 debacle.

"...the document, which was circulating this week among White House officials and which the White House accidentally emailed to an Associated Press reporter... "

 No one -- not Mark Twain,  nor Will Rogers, nor P.J. O'Rourke  -- could improve on that, so I'll be  damned if I'll try.