Meaning it's time for Dave Barry to look back on, and make fun of, the last year.  A sample:

September: …

In domestic news, President Obama returns from his Martha’s Vineyard getaway refreshed and ready to tackle the job he was elected by the American people to do: seek reelection. Focusing on unemployment, the president delivers a nationally televised address laying out his plan for creating jobs, which consists of traveling around the nation tirelessly delivering job-creation addresses until it’s time for another presidential getaway.

I predict that the best thing about 2012 will be that it won't be 2011.  If you've forgotten why that's good news, Dave Barry has a few reminders why.

Iowa Occupiers disrupt Ron Paul's campaign headquarters, along with other Democratic and Republican campaign sites:

Occupy the Caucuses spokeswoman Danielle Ryun, who was among those arrested at the state Democratic Party headquarters, said the goal is not to be arrested. But since campaign officials won't listen to them, protesters are willing to be arrested to get their message across, she said.

"It would be great if we could show up, issue our concerns and have the candidates acknowledge us and change their platform," she said.

Let's see what parts of the Ron Paul platform needed work to make them acceptable to the Occupy movement:

1. Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank – oops, already on the platform
2. End federal payouts to banks - oops, already on the platform
3. End federal payouts to large corporations that aren't banks - oops, already on the platform
4. End foreign aid to Israel (and for that matter every other country) - oops, already on the platform
5. End the war in Afghanistan - oops, already on the platform
6. Withdraw American troops from Kuwait, South Korea, and Germany - oops, already on the platform
7. Abolish the Transportation Security Administration, along with a number of other federal departments and agencies - oops, already on the platform
8. End the War on Terror - oops, already on the platform
9. End the War on Drugs - oops, already on the platform
10. Establish a National Drum Circle on top of Mount Rushmore – not on the Ron Paul platform

That the occupiers would demonstrate against Paul, who so perfectly embodies their professed principles, shows them to be liars, idiots, or attention whores.

Or perhaps some combination of the above.

Could that be the predecessor to Weyland-Yutani, the evil corporation to end all evil corporations?

Either way, it's Ridley Scott with a heaping dose of gothic horror and science fiction. Until Guillermo Del Toro gets to make "At The Mountains Of Madness", this will do nicely.

Dear Iowa Democrat, have I got a proposition for you:

As you probably know, Ron Paul is currently leading the polls for the Republican caucus in your fair state.  Now we at Popehat are not especial fans of Ron Paul.  We've written more about the many flaws of Paul more than those of any other politician.  But I at least am compelled to criticize Paul because he's about as close to what I want from an elected representative as anything I'm likely to get in this life: consistently against government, and consistently for individual freedom.  I'm compelled to criticize Paul because I think he can do better.

In the next two weeks, the Republican establishment is going to join the fuckers at Wonkette, and for that matter Rush Limbaugh and NPR, in portraying Paul as some weird hybrid of Klansman and Trotskyite, for the ostensible reason that he said something pretty awful twenty years ago (but nothing worse than I've said in private conversation myself).

Did I mention that one of the things I like about Ron Paul is that he says awful things?  That and the blimp.

But the awful (and it was awful, and Paul should be ashamed and address it rather than pulling off the mike) thing Paul said isn't nearly as awful as what well-spoken politicians, who'd never say awful things, do to this country every day behind closed doors: selling out the middle class to Goldman Sachs, General Electric, the Service Employees International Union, and the prison-industrial complex.

It's also awful, I'll add, to say that the Emperor has no clothes, or that there is a man behind that curtain, and that we should pay attention to him.

So anyway, you're a Democrat.  I was once a Democrat, but I've gotten over it.  Now I'm an Independent, because I can't register as a Libertarian in North Carolina.  You love your government, and I fear it.

But I can vote in an election that matters to you.

Here's the deal: If you'll re-register as a Republican next week, and vote for Ron Paul in the Iowa caucus, I promise that I'll drag my ass out of the office on May 8, and vote against North Carolina's proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage.  The Republican race will be decided by then, and I'll have no other reason to vote unless I care who wins the non-partisan primary for my county's Water and Sewer Commissioner.  I promise that I'll schedule no trials, depositions, or other work that would prevent me from voting against that amendment on May 8, if you'll brave the cold and vote for Paul at the Iowa caucus.

Mind you, North Carolina is a weird state.  We're the only southern state that hasn't amended its constitution on same sex marriage yet,  we were the last southern state to sign on to the federal constitution, and we had more deaths on both sides of the Civil War than any other southern state. We're weird, we're independent, and my vote may count.

You probably imagine Paul as your dream Republican candidate, the candidate Obama's most likely to beat so he can continue ruining this country for another four years anyway…

So you have nothing to lose.

I've been reading the Great American Novel for the second time.  Now most Great American Novels are accessible to bright teens, or youngsters in their 20s, but I'm convinced that the True And Original Great American Novel, Moby Dick, requires a bit of seasoning on the part of its reader for full appreciation.  At the age of 43, I've been in Ishmael's shoes bouncing between jobs.  I've learned not to judge strange people by first impressions, for therein may lurk a Queequeg.  I've suffered the loss of a number of friends and relatives, and I've felt capital-H Hatred approaching that of Ahab for the white whale.

But I still don't understand how, in the English language, "blast" became a euphemism for "damn", a reference that struck me on my second reading.  Moby Dick, as do many others written before the 1960s, contains a wealth of "blasted" people, "blasted" ships, "blasted" storms, and "blasted" whales.

Oddly enough the blasted whales are not damned.  Herman Melville served aboard a New England whaler, and knew his trade. "Blasted" had a technical meaning with respect to whales:

Presently, the vapors in advance slid aside; and there in the distance lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed French colors from his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the whale alongside must be what the fishermen call a blasted whale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an unappropriated corpse. It may well be conceived, what an unsavory odor such a mass must exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when the living are incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded by some, that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it. Yet are there those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that the oil obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and by no means of the nature of attar-of-rose.

Moby Dick, Ch. 91, The Pequod Meets the Rose Bud.  A "blasted" whale is one that died of natural causes, floating on the buoyancy of gas produced by decay.  Such a whale was to be picked apart by lesser whalers, the buzzards of the sea.  One imagines that such a whale's gas might be flammable, hence "blasted".

But this in no way explains how "blast" became an omnipresent euphemism for "damn".  "Damn" was, in a quainter era, a very foul word, meaning actual damnation to Hell among people who believed in Hell as a literal place.  But why were the Damned "blasted"?

The euphemism was frequently, and may still be today, used in comic books.  But one can hear it in relatively recent movies such as Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and Star Wars.  According to the Partridge Dictionary of Slang, it's a frequent euphemism, also standing in for "bloody", another now quaint term which once had a foul meaning, referring to the blood of Christ.  The earliest reference I can find, according to Webster's, is in the 16th century, but no origin or etymology is provided.

And so I give you a puzzle of linguistic archaeology: How did "blast" become a euphemism for "damn", why did it remain current for so long, and where else in relatively contemporary pop culture can it be found?

Which enumerated power of Congress allows the federal government to prosecute a Texas state court judge accused of beating his daughter with a belt?

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Bonus question:  Does Article II, Section 4 apply to the United States attorney investigating this case?  If so, please give your answer in the form of an essay, in comments.

Update: see comments.

Proving that every dollar you send to the federal government is a fucking joke, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Gang Intelligence Center devotes four pages of its annual report to the gang known as…

Juggalos.

It's been a productive month from a work standpoint, but blogging has suffered.  Here are some of the things that I meant to write about, but couldn't in October 2011:

1) My dog Tanner ran off at the beginning of the month, and was on the loose for 48 hours in a busy downtown area of a mid-sized city.  Tanner is a lovable, goofy spaz.  How he didn't wind up as roadkill I still don't know.  I was going to write about the idiocy of strangers (the lady who caught him, called us to let us know that (I was 200 miles away and driving home), then left a large, athletic dog in a yard with a 30 inch fence he easily jumped), the kindness of strangers (another lady caught him and walked him a mile to our house), the power of social networking on the local level (he was returned to us because a Facebook post I wrote was widely circulated by friends and friends of friends), and the weird attachment some of us feel for other species.

This is Tanner:

2) I'm attending a zombie walk tomorrow, with Tanner.  The photo above shows his zombie costume last Halloween.

3) The photo I didn't get to take, because it would have been dangerous to do so in traffic: a large truck with the logo AMERICAN SAFETY being hauled from a wreck by an even larger truck.  Whoever hit the AMERICAN SAFETY truck scored a bull's eye, directly over the words AMERICAN SAFETY.

4) The photo I did get to take:

Feel free to caption it.

5) The wife passed out and broke her nose last Friday.  I have a nice photo, which I won't post, and a lot of choice thoughts about hospital protocol, which I've already written about. Why do doctors say "syncopal episode" to people who've had concussions when they mean "fainting"? Are they trying to justify their fancy eddications, or just to piss off the guy in the room who does know what "syncopal episode" means, because he didn't suffer a concussion from falling on concrete?

Is there anything you meant to write about this month, but couldn't get around to?  If so, feel free to write a digest version in the comments.

Muammar Kaddafy is dead, along with all of the variant spellings of his name.  Huzzah!

It's a wonderful moment, a triumph of the human spirit, when a tyrant meets a disgraceful end.  When Qaddafi was pulled out of a sewage pipe by his own people and shot through the head, it was Christmas in October, with Santa Claus giving all of the world's good boys and girls a pony, a stable, a stablehand, and an annuity sufficient to pay for the pony's upkeep for twenty years.  We can all agree on that.

Why couldn't we agree on that five years ago?

(Note: If you're squeamish, get off this train now. Why not read about about the delightful Marian Call?)

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Children.

The EU toy safety directive, agreed and implemented by Government, states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke.

As a practical matter this means that children aren't going to be allowed access to balloons at all.  European balloons must be sold only to trained, licensed mimes.

No balloon for you, kid! Those things things are dangerous! You could accidentally inhale one, and require a tracheotomy. Then you'd be a mute! Just like me.

Also banned are those fwippy things that children blow into and then they roll out like a, you know.  Those things are banned for children under 14 because they can poke out eyes.  As a practical matter, this means they're banned period.  Europeans above the age of fourteen have better things to do with their time: things like alcohol, heroin, sodomy, wrist-slitting, writing regulations, and pogroms.

It would be interesting to know how many European children have died or been seriously maimed by unlicensed balloons, or lost eyes from rogue fwippy things roll out like a, you know.  The Union doesn't say.  A few years ago we engaged in a scientific study of a similar threat, based on efforts by American nannies to place warning labels on hot dogs.

We concluded that your child's odds of choking to death on a hot dog are, at a maximum, one in 181,230.  And possibly much lower.

Thanks to the nannies of the European Union, the odds that a given child will grow up to be a coddled, emotionally stunted dweeb are getting higher every day.

Sarah Deming, of Oakland County Michigan, did not enjoy Ryan Gosling's new movie, Drive.  Led on by a trailer that promised a light-hearted romp similar to the works of Vin Diesel, Deming instead got a film which "contained extreme, gratuitous, dehumanising racism directed at members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith."

I was similarly distressed by the trailer for The Phantom Menace, which promised me a Star Wars movie.  Although I am not Jewish, it is not an exaggeration to say that after two hours of The Phantom Menace, I felt like an Auschwitz survivor, and I hated George Lucas as much as anyone ever hated Hitler.  Still, I have not sued over the experience.  Maybe one day, when I've recovered from the trauma.

So let me be the first to congratulate Sarah Deming for having the strength to vindicate her rights, and the rights of all Jewish people, against the makers of Drive.  Ms. Deming has filed a class action over the misleading trailer, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated in the State of Michigan.

While a class action seeking only a ticket refund for everyone in Michigan may seem trivial in light of the virtual Holocaust Ms. Deming suffered, let's remember that it took the Israelis sixteen years to put Eichmann in the dock.  If Ryan Gosling hangs within the decade, it will be in no small part due to Sarah Deming's willingness to fight the good fight.

And let's not forget to congratulate Ms. Deming's attorney, Martin H. Leaf of Farmington Hills, Michigan.  It takes a man of rare courage to stand up to the anti-semites of Hollywood.  In fact, based on the court's scant records concerning this case, I wasn't certain that Martin H. Leaf of Farmington Hills, Michigan was the tireless warrior for victimized Jews who struck a blow on behalf of that beleaguered race.  I had to resort to the internet to be sure, but I have no doubt that the Martin H. Leaf who wrote this warning to America in 2010:

Most Israelis no longer care what this Arab or that Arab leader promises, because it is all hot air. Israelis no longer want to give land for peace or anything else for peace: They have been there and done that. The only thing that makes sense now is peace for peace, but that won’t happen either.

Imagine where the US would be had Israel not had the guts to take out the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981? Hint: There would be no independent Kuwait, and oil would now be over six dollars a gallon, since the US does not fight nuclear powers. That is a best case scenario.

America’s death wish, manifest by Reagan and Carter allowing Pakistan to go nuke, Reagan allowing Iraq to go nuke, Bush allowing Syria to go nuke, and Obama allowing Iran to go nuke, will soon come to fruition. A nuclear Iran is going to make this world a very terrible place to live in. However, by the time America realizes this, it will be too late.

is the same warrior against Ryan Gosling's 21st century Kristallnacht who represents Sarah Deming.

In 2010, Martin H. Leaf was censored by the editors of Commonweal Magazine for writing that wake-up call to America, just as, he warned, Hamas censors and murders Israelis.  One can only pray that the circuit court of Oakland County Michigan won't join the scoffers and mockers who have silenced this man in the past.

Washington, D.C.: Citing the Norwegian Committee's decision to honor Tawakkul Karman for her "leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen," United States President and 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama offered "heartiest congratulations to Ms. Karman for her tireless work to bring peace and justice throughout the entire Middle East," and announced that a coordinated assault by Navy fighters operating from the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, operators from the Army's secretive Delta Force, and a fleet of CIA Predator drones had leveled a suspected base of operations for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula outside the Yemeni capital of Sanaa this morning.

2009 Nobel laureate Barack Obama congratulated Tawakkul Karman on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize

"I recall the day I learned that I had won this honor, and how humbled I felt.  I can only say to Ms. Karman, welcome to the club. Let me be clear: Tawakkul Karman is a warrior for peace," Mr. Obama enthused at a dawn press conference, flanked by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, CIA Director David Petraeus, and newly sworn Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey.  "It is my privilege to offer her the respect and esteem of the entire American people on this occasion."

"I am also pleased," the President continued, "to announce that in a daring pre-dawn raid our forces attacked a major Al Qaeda stronghold, which had been cleverly disguised as an orphanage in Yemen. Our brave men and women were successful in bringing the terrrorist Abdul Al-Hazred, also known as Leon Phelps, to justice.  Mr. Al-Hazred, who was a resident of Seattle before he joined Al Qaeda, was sought for questioning in connection with the propagation of  Al Qaeda-linked videos on Youtube.  Before his death he was ranked eighth on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted List."

Mr. Obama went on to announce that an undisclosed number of militants sworn to the destruction of the United States of America had also been brought to justice, and announced a new policy initiative.

"In honor of Tawakkol Karman's long struggle to bring democracy to the Middle East, we will be stepping up our efforts in Yemen and surrounding nations," the President declared.  "I have instructed the United States Air Force to supplement our targeted strikes against Al Qaeda and those who would derail the Middle East peace process with high altitude aerial bombing against suspected militants, in order that the people of Yemen may live free of the scourge of terror.  I have also warned Prime Minister Gilani of Pakistan that the United States will no longer tolerate his country as a safe haven for terror, and that Pakistan must turn over all suspected militants for fair trial before a military commission, at a location to be disclosed, or face the most severe consequences."

Tawakkul Karman stated that she was inspired by Mr. Obama's efforts to bring about Middle East peace

Asked about reports that a number of civilians had been killed or wounded in the orphanage strike, Mr. Obama replied that, "No price is too great to pay for peace."

Give a cop an inch of discretion, and he'll abuse a mile right into the ground.

Instead, the traffic offender said he was transported from the precinct to another holding cell in the basement of a separate courthouse. His detainment lasted hours. Confused, at one point he asked an official whether the department processes a lot of people for registration violations.

According to his account, after the official replied yes, he made a crack about "hardened criminals." The official then snapped that he wouldn't be saying that if someone he loved got hit by someone else with an expired registration.

Let's make this clear up front:  There is no correlation between timeliness of vehicle registration and vehicular negligence.  A driver with an expired registration is no more likely to kill than a Kennedy with four manhattans in his stomach.

But if you drive a car with a tag expired by ten days on the streets of our nation's capital, the District of Columbia police reserve the power to jail you.  As the linked story shows they exercise that power, all too often, busting moms as they pick up kids from school, friendly neighborhood ice cream truck drivers, and grandfathers as they drive, with an expired registration, to place flowers on the graves of beloved grandmothers.  I suppose.

Anyway, I can guess the "rational" explanation for allowing the Barney Fifes of DC to imprison citizens for something as simple as an expired license plate, and you can too: OMG 911!!!

To a bureaucrat's mind, the policy makes sense:  the nation's capital is the prime target for terrorists, and when Muhammad McVeigh is found on Pennsylvania Avenue in a darkened, idling panel van, burnt out cigarettes piling on the street, we don't want the local beat cop wringing his hands over whether he has the power to act on an expired registration.  Give the police the opportunity to exercise their discretion, sensibly, and it will all work out for the best.

Except it doesn't.  The cops are busting widows and orphans.

Policing is hard work, and I'm not about to suggest some harebrained solution like "negative discretion", keeping cops on a tight rein but permitting them, always, to choose not to exercise their power.  The people who write expired registration laws in DC and elsewhere, who have no more experience with the criminal justice system than I do (and often less), would just write new laws requiring arrest for trivial offenses, again trusting cops to exercise their discretion and do the right thing.  No, the best solution is an informed citizenry, one that views the police, and their masters, with suspicion, so that they'll think twice before writing foolish laws and policies in the first place.

Have you called a cop a pig under your breath today?

(Via Radley Balko)

This saturday, from 2-5pm United States eastern time, I will return to the radio station I blogged about earlier for a short, free-form radio show.  Readers interested becoming listeners, in hearing my Lord Humungusesque voice, or simply a collection of rather unusual music strung together with a logic unique to me, are encouraged to listen live at 89.3 fm (if you live in a the Research Triangle area of North Carolina) or online by clicking here.

As mentioned in the earlier post, I will take requests, either by telephone (I announce the number frequently during the show), or here in comments.  For instance, a song from Marian Call's new album will be played in the opening minutes of the show.  As a bonus, I won't be as technically inept as I was last time (when I hadn't played DJ for almost ten years), because I've done five shows in the past two months. Radio DJ'ing is not like riding a bike: you do forget, but I've knocked off the rust.

Request rules, since I wasn't clear enough about them the first time:

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As Derrick has shown, the Tea Party movement has upset the Republican Party establishment, ruthlessly Zerging their way through the 2010 primaries and elections into 2011.  Whether the Tea Party's Zerg tactics have the stuff to match [DEM] in the 2012 Diamond League remains to be seen.

On paper, [DEM] would seem to have all the advantages: an energized clan base coming out of the 2008 general election, no primary opponents, and a wizard clan leader [OBM] who demonstrated his micro to flawless effect, easily defeating [HIL] and [MCN] to top the ladder.

But how have [OBM] and [DEM] spent the past three years since revolutionizing the way politics is played?  Have they neglected the essentials in favor of booming toward the end game?  That may well be.

Ask any veteran Starcraft player and he'll tell you that it's a different game at the top of the ladder.  You have to know not just the common strategies, but to be prepared, in advance, to adjust to patches and changes in game balance.  And in order to react, you need to have the funadmentals memorized to the point where they're second nature.  This means balancing offense with defense where required.  And defense means towers at the base perimeter, else how are you going to survive that newbie Zerg rush as you boom to battlecruisers?

A solid Terran bunker defense

Before [OBM] came along, the [DEM] clan had been hurting.  They'd lost track of the fundamentals, which had been drummed into their heads by former clan leader [BIL], in favor of easily countered stunt attacks like those favored by ANSWER and Code Pink, or been distracted by what they should have seen were feints, like the time in 2004 when Swiftboat microed [DEM] into wasting the entire midgame chasing one Protoss Zealot half-way around the map.  By endgame Cheney had built a wave of High Templars, and it was no contest.

While [BIL] could be erratic in the endgame, his mastery of fundamentals, and of defense, enabled him to survive everything [GOP] threw at him.  Defense, in politics, means a strong economy.  So how is [OBM] set for 2012, compared to where [BIL] sat in 1996, the last time the [DEM] clan defended a Diamond League level tournament?

Not too pretty.

Where [BIL] enjoyed a sound economy, with a balanced budget and unemployment at or below 5%, in other words, a strong base ringed with towers and lots of resources gatherers at the close of the early game, [OBM] has squandered a good start in an attempt to boom straight to battlecruisers.  He passed an extravagant health care law that the country can't afford while already engaged in two wars.  He pushed for a stimulus plan that was wildly unpopular, hoping that it would allow him to jumpstart his tech. He's left his base wide open and undefended, and utterly neglected his economy.  Where [BIL] could afford to stunt around with Lewinsky in the endgame of a second term, [OBM] will be lucky to have an unemployment rate below 9% in 2012.

With no economy and no defenses, [DEM] is in serious trouble.  A fleet of six battlecruisers can annihilate a ground attack of twelve ultralisks, but they can't kill zerglings any faster due to slow rate of fire.  And [GOP], amateur as they are, will be sweeping through the [DEM] base with dozens of zerglings.

Why has this happened?  It's a dirty little secret that  [OBM], who demonstated pro-level micro and mastery of the fundamentals when we were all playing original Starcraft, didn't get around to buying Starcraft 2 until September 2011.

He's been fucking around with World of Warcraft instead.  And he's an awful WoW player.

Naturally, as a member of a minority group, Obama gravitated to Horde. No pussy night elves or shit-eating gnomes, thank you very much.  He started strong too, leading a raid into Stormwind on a pvp server that killed the human king in 2008. This happened hours before Wrath came out, when the city was packed with veteran level 70 Alliance players trying to form or rejoin guilds or auction off herbs before the rush on Northrend.  He got a lot of recognition for it too, because the raid ganked so many old-timers who'd griefed Horde n00bs in the past, like John Kerry and Al Gore. He even earned a title for killing George W. Bush in record time.

But he hasn't moved his game past that. While the raids these days are focusing on new content in Cataclysm, Obama is STILL hanging around in Orgrimmar, typing "/strtin raid 2 kill gwb – no n00bs!!! – checkin gearscore!" every thirty seconds, and getting no replies.  The Horde has killed GWB hundreds of times since 2008.  They've moved on to new content.

Maybe the most pathetic thing about Obama is that as he doesn't realize the reason he gets so few replies in Orgrimmar is that lots of Horde have dropped out of the game. He's convinced the reason is that he's schooled the n00bs, like Kosguild, into silence, and Horde who aren't srsly hardcore, like the Bluedogs of Thunder Bluff, onto carebear servers.

In fact, they've given up on WoW entirely, in no small part because they can't enjoy the game with Obama shouting LOLNOOB! any time anyone says anything in /general, /pvp or even /trade. They won't be playing mmos at all until the Diablo 3 beta ends, in November 2016.

Can Obama be bothered to stop bunny-hopping in the Orgrimmar auction house, and dust off what used to be ninja-level Starcraft skillz? [DEM] had better hope so, because they only have one other top-level player: [BIL] has retired and [HIL] has made it clear she's waiting for Diablo 3.