TOBY PETZOLD

You want in on the ground floor of the next big way to help fat people lose weight? Come up with a way to neutralize their olfactory nerves. I don’t know how it would work —whether it be a surgical or pharmaceutical method— but so much of the pleasure in eating is related to smell and taste that such a measure would surely depress the desire to eat anything more than what sustenance requires.

Of course, the other thing that would be depressed by such a method of weight control would be the person’s spirits. It is extremely discouraging to be unable to smell or taste one’s food and drink. But a doctor could also prescribe happy pills to keep the poor bastard going, so maybe it would work. It’s no less crazy than stomach stapling or lap band surgery.

Oh, well. I don’t guess it would ever really work, anyway. For one thing, it’s dangerous to eat something you can’t smell or taste. Hell, it’s dangerous in general to not be able to depend on those senses. Someone could serve you up some enchiladas con caca and you’d never know the difference until it was too late.

As for me, I’ve got about two or three percent of my smell back —and I really have to work for even that. I find myself daydreaming about what my first smell will be. Will it be pleasant? Yes. Yes, it will.

I did not participate in the Moment That Was last night because I was being a baby about the whole thing. But, I hasten to add, a preternaturally indifferent baby. Not one for crying and carrying on, but a placid one already resigned to the outcome despite, you know, the Hope.

After it became clear that Pennsylvania had declined to hop on board the Straight Talk Express v.2.0, I lost the ascot, had a nightcap, and remembered some passions.

I should probably be ashamed of myself for turning my back on such a dawn of a new age —especially considering how much love I have for History and for my own exceptionalistic country— but I will get over it. After all, I know what happened. So do you.

The world keeps turning, the Republic will live, and Charity conquers all.

at the same time it’s going into the toilet:

NEW YORK, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Moody’s Investors Service said on Thursday it may cut its ratings on New York Times Co[.] into junk territory, citing concerns about continuing revenue declines and risks associated with refinancing its debt.

The New York Times posted a quarterly loss from continuing operations on Thursday and said advertising revenue at its news media group dropped 16 percent for the quarter. […]

Newspaper advertising market conditions are likely to remain challenging in 2009 and continuing revenue declines will make it difficult for the company to bring its credit metrics in line with its investment grade rating, Moody’s said in a statement.

Yeah, but come on! The Grey Lady? She’s too big to fail.

But, what a glorious day that would be.

Remember a few years ago when Bush the Younger told us that we need to do something about Social Security and meant it —especially for younger people? Well, the usual Democratic hacks screamed bloody murder and insisted that nothing is wrong with Social Security and that it doesn’t need fixing.

So the effort failed. A major underpinning of American working (and retiring) life was declared untouchable and we all forgot about it.

But now we are watching enormous banks, insurers, and mortgage underwriters fail as they have not since the early 1930s, if even then. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Well, as nauseating liberal frauds like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd told us, those giants were too big to fail. That’s because they were the guarantors of greater home ownership amongst the various minority groups and the economic underclass. Thus, in the name of politics, the American Taxpayer was put on the hook for many hundreds of billions of dollars —and now he is hanging thereby.

You think you won’t see more destruction of other untouchable giants?

In the end, all a person can really count on is his home and some pittance to pay the basics. My castle cannot be breached. If some new form of government is imposed upon me and this society in the months and years to come next, I will fight for what I have, but I will not depend on seeing anything at the end of my wage-earning life close to what I put into the Social Security system. It is all haywire and broken promises from here on in. Waste not, want not. Worship frugality and integrity and honesty. And eat at home.

I just found myself watching a couple minutes of Anderson Cooper on CNN —and he’s simply appalling. Are he and his fellow Obama fluffers even capable of shame at this point? To routinely do everything one can to minimize Obama’s liabilities while simultaneously questioning anything to do with Sarah Palin or her boss is simply advocacy. Do you understand what that word means, hippies? It means that Cooper and Campbell Brown and the meretricious David Gergen and all the other wretched whores on Ted Turner’s old TV station are paid spokespeople for the Obama campaign. They speak out on his behalf while trying to tear down the Republicans. What’s the great scandal tonight? Palin’s and her daughters’ travel expenses? Their wardrobe and make-up budgets? Jesus Christ! Where’s a story about Obama’s support for infanticide? How about a story on his corrupt land deal with Rezko? What does Obama think of Biden’s warnings that we will be deliberately tested by our enemies because of Obama’s inexperience? How many different ways does the Unqualified Liar have of lying about his alliance with and sympathy for the notorious founder of ther Weather Underground, Bill Ayers? He’s lying about that —but nobody cares because the people who occupy the cable news-space are his fucking followers!

If John McCain wins this thing, the era of Big Media is done. That’s a definite KIA. Big Media may be done even if Obama wins because only then will the American public begin to see how many different lies these sorry bastards told us for the sake of their ideological messiah.

No more of your dishonorable nonsense, CNN. You’re done in my household.

I mean, like, holy shit, Joe (emphases mine):

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday [19 October 2008]. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

Ha, ha! What?! Is this why Biden’s no longer available for “availabilities”? Because his foot is in a constant struggle to get into and out of his big mouth? What on Earth is this man trying to suggest? That Obama’s inexperience itself will invite intrigue against us? And that, no matter what his responses are, the nauseating liberal morans will be expected to keep their regrets to themselves?

“Gird your loins,” Biden told the crowd. “We’re gonna win with your help, God willing, we’re gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy.“

Watch your wallets, my friends. Clean and Jerk are about to steal your sorry, bourgeois asses blind. No? What “systemic problems” is Biden referring to, do you suppose? Insufficient taxation of the dirty business-owning class? That pesky antipathy working people have against giving their money to chain-smoking daytime TV-watchers who are working on baby number whatever? 

You think wealth is the only thing that’s getting spread around here? The Great Society was so great that you just knew it had to have a sequel, so drop some trou and think of [England].

If John McCain would simply describe Barack Obama as a socialist, wouldn’t that almost compel a public discussion of what that word means? I don’t think some people know what’s involved. “Spreading the wealth around” may sound like a great idea to a teenager who’s working for minimum-wage, but to the 40 year-old businessperson who hired this kid to stock the shelves, it’s worrisome to consider that taxes and employee-related costs are going up. As they say, poor people never gave anybody a job —unless you count jobs created by the social necessity of cleaning up after these same people’s mistakes. At that sort of job creation, the social, intellectual, and economic underclasses excel.

The Obamatons are becoming ever more explicit in their grand schemes for the post-Republican, post-American paradise of Obama’s socialist state. They are beginning to bully and cheat in broad daylight. They are, like the terrorists they sympathize and associate with, becoming emboldened. And to what end? To disincentivize work? To undermine the bases of competition and self-worth? To suppress political dissent for the sake of the “common good”? Well, there’s one for you and nineteen for me. Think that’s fanciful? Did you ever think you would see the economic events of the past six weeks? Neither did I.

CNN’s insistence on using these instant-reaction focus groups with the little joysticks or dials or whatever is just crap. If that’s how we are to judge our candidates —like Pavolvian dogs responding to a hundred little bells— then the Republic falls.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs was on FNC just now hiding behind the New York Times’ skirts on the question of whether Obama and Bill Ayers knew each other. What the hell, dude? You’re his spokesman! You have to rely on what some party hack reporters at Pinchy’s puto says? That means that Obama has instructed you to answer the question by referencing a newspaper. That’s about as weaselly as it gets. Seriously. That’s pathetic. Couldn’t he have told you —oh. Now I get it. Obama’s a liar.

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Among the many bizarre and inexplicable things Joe Biden said in last night’s debate, I nominate his brief history of modern Lebanon as the shiningest example:

When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

Has Biden gone mad? I ask this sincerely. Does he have some sort of organic brain disorder that would compel him to make such demonstrably untrue claims? Unbelievable. Read Michael J. Totten’s incredulous response:

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.

Moreover, I have never once heard anything about Obama calling for NATO intervention in Lebanon. When did such a thing happen? When the Second Lebanon War broke out in the summer of 2006, was Obama really calling for NATO to keep the peace in Lebanon? Call me crazy, but I think that’s utter nonsense.

Needless to say, Big Media is far too busy fellating Obamachrist to question Biden’s hallucinatory account. Equally needless to add, although I must, is that such claims, had they been made by Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, would have drawn derisive howls from such miserable fluffers as David Gergen and Anderson Cooper and the other Leftist craphounds at CNN. Did the anti-American reporter Michael Ware manage to raise an eyebrow at the news that we evicted Hizballah from Lebanon? Doubt it.

In a just world, Biden’s remarks would be regarded as even weirder than Gerald Ford’s claim in his 1976 debate with Carter that there was no Soviet domination of Poland.

But this isn’t a just world.