Category Archives: Harvest Moon

Your Daily Hot Air

He’s a Furriner

How weird, weird, weird is it that some of those same Birthers and fellow trash can sniffers who turned purple when a brown man was elected Prez — because, after all, BHO couldn’t possibly be a real American — are now pretty cool with Ted Cruz?

That is, with the Tex. Sen. potentially being the CEO of the US Inc. Cruz, who certainly is not shooting down rumors that he’s f’nta run for the Oval O. come 2016, was born in — drum roll, please — Canada.

Cruz

Hoser

Which, last I checked, is not part of the United States. Although, being predominantly white, maybe it is at that.

Donald Trump and some doorknob polisher named Lord Christopher Monckton, both of whom transformed themselves into dicks (in the 1940s, savvy-dame-snafu sense of slang as diminutive for detective, ironically) to hunt down proof of Barack Obama’s real place of birth in Kenya or Abortiastan, are big, big, big on a Great White North Presidency. Emphasis on the word…, aw, you know.

h/t to Wonkette for pointing this all out. Ironically, I had no idea Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz wasn’t born in this holy land. Then again, I studiously avoid reading anything at all about the gun-loving, gay-marriage-hating North American moose.

I get the sense that constitutional experts think Cruz being born north of the 49th Parallel should be no impediment to his presidential ambitions. Apparently, as long as his Mom was a US citizen and had lived in the Greatest Nation This Earth Has Ever Seen for 10 years prior to his emergence, he’s cool to be the Boss.

Bullwinkle J. Moose

Eligible

Which, fascinatingly enough, should have shut all those Birthers the hell up even if Barack Obama was born in the Kremlin or Mau-Mau-ia. His Mom, after all, was a Kansan, which I know for a fact is in Murrica.

Ah, none of it matters anyhow; Hillary Clinton is a lock to be the next White House target of Right Wingnut Nation.

Anybody care to risk a C-note on that proposition?

Harvest Moon

Speaking of Canadians.

The Pencil Today:

HotAirLogoFinal Saturday

THE QUOTE

“We build a fire in a powder magazine, then double the fire department to put it out. We inflame wild beasts with the smell of blood, and then innocently wonder at the wave of brutal appetite that sweeps the land as a consequence.” — Mark Twain

Twain

BANG, YOU’RE DEAD

I was as enraged as anyone after learning of yesterday’s madness in Connecticut.

I took to Facebook and ranted:

From Facebook

— and —

From Facebook

America, with its psycho-sexual fixation on guns, is indeed deranged.

That said, a sociologist and criminologist from Northeastern University named Jack Levin appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday afternoon to put yesterday’s horror in perspective.

“The truth is,” Levin said, “there’s still about 20 mass killings every year in this country, and that has been true for decades.”

In other words, things aren’t getting worse.

Which is scant consolation to the parents who lost kids in Sandy Hook.

Wait, there’s more. Funnyman Aaron Freeman points out this fascinating set of statistics:

◗ US population, 1990: 248,709.873 — 23,440 homicides.

◗ US population, 2011: 311,591,917 — 14,612 homicides

Chicago Police Homicide

“We are,” Freeman writes, “moving in the right direction.”

PEOPLE ONLY ACT WHEN FACED WITH CRISIS?

Politico Ray Hanania points out this example of how mightily weird our species is:

One guy tries to use a shoe bomb on an airplane — Now every air travel passenger must remove her or his shoes before reaching the gate.

◗ Some 31 lunatics have committed school shootings since Columbine — No changes have been instituted.

Airport Security

Whew! I Feel Safer Now.

ACTION!

Yesterday morning, Kevin Sears, the Toastmaster General of Bloomington, and I mused on the inevitable movie about Jerry Sanduski, Joe Paterno, and the Penn State scandal. Here’s what we agreed upon:

Gary Busey will play Sanduski

Al Pacino will play Paterno

Casting

That’s all you need to know.

THE LAST MEN IN THE MOON

Precisely 40 years ago today, Gene Cernan, Harrison “Jack” Schmidt, and Ron Evans departed lunar orbit and began their quarter-million mile trip back to Earth.

Cernan and Schmidt were the last human beings to walk on the moon.

NASA Photo

Jack Schmidt On The Moon

Their mission, Apollo 17, originally was planned to be the third-to-last lunar trip but budget cutbacks forced NASA to cancel Apollos 18 and 19.

The two astronauts in the Lunar Module that descended to the moon’s surface from the Command Module spent a little more than three days on the Earth’s natural satellite. Their craft landed in the Taurus-Littrow lunar valley. The two walked on the moon for a total of 23 hours.

Schmidt was a geologist who’d go on to serve as United States Senator from New Mexico. Cernan was a Navy jet pilot before joining NASA. Both men are still alive and are approaching the age of 80.

NASA Photo

Cernan & Schmidt On The Trip Back To Earth

Before he left the moon, Cernan carved the initials of his daughter on a lunar boulder.

HARVEST MOON

One of the prettiest songs I’ve ever heard.

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