I am of a mind regarding Jimmy Carter to believe they weren’t wise, best an ex-president avoid the political and, as much as I mock it, act in the George HW Bush — Bill Clinton affair of International Goodwill.  But I can spot the attack on him for saying that Bush’s administration of “I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history” from a mile away, which is that it was only a decade and a half ago when a Republican might say the same and the Democrat wouldn’t much respond.

I am of a greater mind, though, to say of White House spokesman Tony Fratto (who?)‘s response of “I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments”, how interesting it is that at the last Republican Presidential debate the ratio of references to Ronald Reagan to references to George W Bush by the candidates is something to the effect of 20:1.  Reagan’s Ghost, of course, being the front-runner for Republican nomination and George W Bush being… well, the Republican candidates wish he were irrelevant.

MOSCOW, Ida. Police stormed an Idaho church where a shooter hid after killing a police officer in a courthouse ambush, finding the body of the likely gunman and another man Sunday.

The shooting began late Saturday and also wounded a second officer and a civilian, said David Duke, Moscow’s assistant police chief.

David Duke?

That’s an unfortunate name.

I have two thoughts here.  One: there aren’t a lot of people named Adolf these days, or for the last handful of generations.  Two: Probably the nadir of Dukes who were named by the parents David are in high school right about now.  I think he may have been in the public conciousness well enough that it’s not terribly common for David Dukes to exist about ten years hence-forth — any Dukes readying to name their child David might do a bit of research, happen to see David Duke on Donahue or something, and decide against it.  But before that… the skys the limit: nothing wrong with naming your child David Duke.  Like naming your child Edward Duke, or whatever.

The first non-Nazi named Adolf which google picks up is Adolf Frederick Johann Butenandt.  On this list of famed Adolfs, the last one passed away in 1996.  Hitler and Eichmann predominate, though not as completely as one would assume.
For some reason all the David Dukes that I pick up through google news are cops.  Go figure!  But, I guess, how else would you be reported into the news — which is at times simply a crime blotter?  In 30 years, no police chief will be commenting on a tragedy with the name “David Duke”.

Y’know…

The man who created that there “Girls Gone Wild” franchise, recently shuttled through the Judicial process for, I don’t know, unwittingly including 16 and 17 year olds in his exhibition tapes…

Or something like that…

Ugh.

Okay. Imagine you have a 13 year old son. You have two choices. Either he has a stash of pornography or a stash of Girls Gone Wild videos. Which would you prefer, which is to ask, which sends the worst message to your 13 year old son? It’s a tricky question in that you have to think for a moment and realize that the ladies in the porn were likely paid, and at any rate are engaged in — you’d suppose– satisfying sex (at least the script says so), and the “Girls Gone Wild” were given… a t-shirt, maybe, to flash their breasts, because… the message for the lad is… girls are exhibitionists and by all rights, are societally obligated to act accordingly.

Never mind.

Something popped into my mind sometime ago when looking at some comic strips at The Comics Curmudgeon. It might have been somewhere else, as a search for “Gone Wild” on this site brings up slim pickings. It is the ubiquity of a punchline of “[Blank] Gone Wild”. Hardy har. Blank… Gone Wild.

Thinking about it I have a simple request. Can we put that one that line to rest? I think we can more or less reach a consensus on the sleaziness and bad faith of the “Girls Gone Wild” series — a guilty pleasure at best (not that there’s anything wrong with guilty pleasures, but run with that accordingly), and pegging it into a gag simply solidifies it into a sort of pop culture iconography which it doesn’t really deserve.

For the sake of my duties of “echo chamber”, I have to say that the most important news item of this week was James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Judicary Committee.

You know what I’m talking about.

You know what I’m talking about.

There is a troubling sense I have always had when dealing with politics, and that comes through how easily it is to dismiss something out of hand by partisan prediliction.  I have heard the whole Justice Department scandal dismissed as “a tempest in a teapot” so often, and if I am to pass it off as such charitably I can still slug on ahead to…

Comey’s testimony.

Which I have heard described as “straight out of the Sopranos”.

Actually in the end the Bush Administration got around the refusal of John Ashcroft and the Justice Department to sign off on warrantless wiretapping by simply plunging ahead anyway.  It is the Bush Administration style.  Too bad they couldn’t get a camatose Ashcroft to do so, which was, I guess, the Plan A to the Plan B.

There is this on-off switch that seemed to be turned off two years ago where one moment the issue of Immigration was not a Central national issue, and then it was.  I don’t quite know how that happens.  I think at the end of the day the publics’ opinion on the matter is sufficiently muddled and contradictory that it will simply remain an unresolvable matter.
Now we have an Immigration Bill that is set to pass through the Senate on its way to meet more determined opposition in the House — which is where the Trancredos of the world reside.  The bill is a necessarily contradictory item, likely to be unenforced in most parts, and thus likely to be meaningless.  So, we want the illegal immigrants to come out of the woodwork to register for a “Z Visa” so that they may pay a $2000 fine (isn’t any money illegal immigrants earn generally sent down to their families down south?  Can you spare $2000?)  and for the honor of being sent on a “path to citizenship” that doesn’t really exist.   Immigration gladly takes in engineers and the like — your migrant worker is getting short swift, and the rules have it that these new quasi-legal immigrants are going to be judged by skill set and not family situation, which means that the impetus to step forward is… what, exactly?
Really?  This is what Ted Kennedy is exchanging back-slaps with George W Bush for having crafted?  Whatever.  Congratulation politicians!

The beat goes on, and on.  I doubt anything can be accomplished until the countries of Mexico, and those to the south of Mexico, become more Democratic and less governed by a sort of feudal aristocracy.  Anything beyond making those nations more permenable residencies is an almost pointless exercise.  That includes the liberal and Union-related opposition to “Illegal Employees” of driving down wages through increased illegal immigrants.

Am I the only one who finds this Equal commercial absurd?

A woman asks a man for something for her tea.  The man gives the woman Equal.  Some synthasized music plays in the background.  The woman asks what this is.  The man says it’s the zen-effect of the Equal.  The woman asks “Can I lie down?”  The man says, in a sudden voice of seduction, “Be my guest.”  The man says something, I don’t remember, but it begins with “If you’d like–“.  The woman replies orgasmically, “ooo.”
I don’t get it.  Did the man slip the woman a date-rape drug?  Equal is a sweet sugar substitute.  Why is this advertisement taking off from a bad porn script?