The American Spectator

The Continuing Crisis

The Continuing Crisis

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. from the July 2009 - August 2009 issue

And so ends the month of May, the fourth full month of the Obama Dizziness. In a Memorial Day weekend interview on C-SPAN, the 44th president, having burned through $4 trillion, announced laconically: “We are out of money.” Then he vowed to pass into law the most ambitious and expensive health care revision in American history, perhaps to be paid for with Mongolian money. The Chinese are visibly apprehensive about him. Thus goes the mad presidency of Barack H. Obama or Kcarab H. Amabo. It all depends on the way one looks at him, front to back or back to front. He calls himself Barack Obama, but he could just as easily be Kcarab Amabo. Either way, his incoherent policies will end with the same oncoming train wreck. He claims he hails from Chicago, but he could just as easily come from Ogacihc. Where the hell is Ogacihc, you ask? Perhaps it is somewhere in Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. Again, it just depends on the way one looks at it. After four months of this bizarre dervish in the White House he looks like President Amabo from Ogacihc to us at AmSpec, and we shall not be surprised if he trades in his presidential limousine for a magic carpet with governmentmandated airbags.

In May the Amabo government added Chrysler and General Motors to its portfolio of bad investments. Also it reversed itself on candidate Amabo’s promise to release pictures of American military personnel goofing off with prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the government held fast on its plan to close Gitmo, despite having no plausible idea of how to process its disagreeable detainees. On a positive note, President Amabo nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, boasting of her “empathy.” In Guangzhou, China, Mr. Lai Jiansheng, 66, gave the world an insight into empathy. After waiting with motorists and fellow pedestrians for five hours at historic Haizhu bridge while counselors tried to placate a man contemplating suicide, Mr. Lai walked up to the distressed man, shook his hand, and gave him a hearty shove off the bridge. Who doubts our president and his Supreme Court nominee are equally empathetic? At the end of the month, Judge Sotomayor was being called a racist for her 2001 asseveration that “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Well, if she is not a racist, she is at least a supremacist. Maybe she will be favorable to Second Amendment rights and to UFOs.

Britain’s Prince Harry, 24, has again attracted unwanted headlines. According to the UK’s authoritative Sun, the prince was overheard in the Tally-Ho pub confiding to a friend (male) that “It’s been two years since I washed my hair.” The cryptic remark sent the entire kingdom abuzz and brought back memories among the historically minded of Prince Metternich’s witticism occasioned by the 1838 death of Talleyrand. Quipped the prince: “I wonder what he meant by that?” Two years without a proper sham poo? What about a change of linen, or a dry pair of socks? The monarchy is again shaken. Also from the UK comes word that there is still no consensus in the 13th-century village of Lunt over whether to change its historic name to Launt or just face the tiresome task of repainting village signs after sexual deviants in the dark of night change the “Ls” to “Cs,” creating a crude anatomical term that cannot be used in polite company unless one is an illiterate and confused over the past tense of “can’t.”

No such dithering characterizes the citizens of Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, with address on the ancient, albeit unfortunately named, Butt Hole Road. Weary of the jokes that assail them even from deliverymen, they are changing the street’s name to Archer Way. Particularly annoying was the incidence of tourists, many from the United States, who, bending over by the street signs, expose their naked arses while their wives snap pictures. One tourist, who apparently returned frequently, looks suspiciously like Mr. Tucker Carlson, the recently retired television personality.

In what even Islamic scholars consider a peculiar way to celebrate a marriage, gunmen in southeastern Turkey killed 45 people at a wedding in the village of Bilge (pronounced fee lay in local Turkish). Authorities arrested eight people suspected of being the assailants, none of whom was best man. Four months after President George W. Bush departed the White House scot-free, the Bush Derangement Syn drome persists. In the hamlet of Westerly, Rhode Island, state Rep. Rod Driver, a Democrat, has dared the retired president to submit to waterboarding and promised that if Mr. Bush takes up the dare Rep. Driver will donate $100 to charity, his life’s savings. Mr. Bush did not reply, possibly because he was preparing for a debate late in the month with his predecessor the Boy President. Held in Toronto, Canada, the debate envisaged a wide range of topics, not including the potential uses of White House personnel or tobacco products. The government of China expressed concern for the stability of the dollar and understandably so, with the China Daily editorializing its alarm over “Washington’s mushrooming deficit, generated by massive government borrowing…” Meanwhile, our National Institutes of Health has begun a five-year, $2.6 million program in China’s Guangxi province to teach local prostitutes the essentials of safe sex, namely light on the booze, heavy on the condoms, and no credit cards—cash on the barrel, so to speak.

There may yet be a safe, energy-efficient alternative to the federal government’s plan to replace the standard light bulb with the controversial compact fluorescent lamp (CFL). In Japan scientists engaged in genetic research at the Central Institute for Experimental Animals have developed luminous monkeys that emit light in all directions, day or night. Quite by chance the monkeys have prehensile tails so they can be hung from ceilings or wall hooks, though homeowners will have to feed the creatures and attend to their droppings. Also, there could develop issues with animal rights groups who place animals higher in their hierarchy of manias than energy- efficient lighting. Finally, concern is growing over the safety of Miss Britney Spears as May was the second month in a row with absolutely no promising news stories on the young artiste: no automobile accidents, no drug overdoses, nothing. For that matter there has been no good news on Miss Paris Hilton either, not even a shoplifting charge.

Perhaps this is because our celebrity press has been distracted by President Amabo. After all, in the battle for headlines politicians seem to have a leg up, so to speak. In Australia a councillor on the Logan city council, fearful that at 5’1” she was too short to “be taken seriously,” flew to Russia, where she had her legs broken in four places and stretched three inches over a nine-month period. Her name is Miss Hajnal Ban, and someday she could be prime minister of Australia.

Finally, congratulations to officials in China’s enlightened province of Hubei. In a historic break with the West’s anti-tobacco madness, these officials are encouraging government bureaucrats to smoke cigarettes to boost the economy. The cigarettes are locally manufactured and heavily taxed. This may sound odd, but it is certainly more sensible than the Western governments’ policy of taxing tobacco to pay for government services while insisting that smokers break their tobacco habit. The Crisis goes on.

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