Happy Friday. Our clip begins after Attorney General Eric Holder addresses Rep. Louie Gohmert in a House Judiciary hearing. Holder says something like ‘You, congressman, are unaware of the domestic intelligence on Tamerlan Tsarnaev . .’

“You don’t know what the FBI did. You don’t know what the FBI’s interaction was with the Russians. You don’t know what questions were put to the Russians, whether those questions were responded to. You simply do not know that. And you have characterized the FBI as being not thorough, or taken exception to my characterization of them as being thorough. I know what the FBI did. You cannot know what I know. That is all.”

With that, Louie grows furious. He literally turns red. He wants the AG’s head but – NO! – Louie’s time has expired. So he attempts to counter-attack Holder using a parliamentary procedure, the “Point of Personal Privilege.” Unfortunately the “Privilege” can’t be used to act like a Texas derpass. But Louie doesn’t know it, or doesn’t care, so on he blindly rants while the committee members ask him repeatedly to shut it. Finally, after growing fully crimson and unhinged, he blurts out the most magnificent defense of a dumb-dog congressman ever:

Clown college professor emeritus and sorta historian Niall Ferguson spoke to 500 businessmen in Carlsbad recently to demonstrate that he’s dumber than his critics said:

Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of “poetry” rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. . .

Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it’s only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an “effete” member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson’s world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society.

And that’s where Jonah Goldberg dove in. Which is like drowning in the shallow end of a pool and hearing “CANNONBALL” followed by the splort-splort of walrus feet:

Still, I am a little surprised that so many people have never heard this idea before or that the mere mention of it is now a potential career killer . .

Haven’t you heard of this before? The ‘No Kids Makes You Dumb’ Academic Theory of Ideas? I thought we had read up on this already. There’s the Frankfurt school (‘idiots’) and the Syracuse rejoinder (‘morons’), and both arguments are well-respected among the People Who Shoot At Ivory Towers.

. . it’s hardly as if it’s unheard-of in academia to speculate that one’s sexual orientation (or race, or gender, etc.) can influence a person’s views on public policy.

IIRC Jonah was once childless and too stupid to read, or count. He just sat and ate his I.Q. in Hot Pockets which left him reedy like Fred Astaire and very handsome. Then Mrs. Goldberg pooped a baby. P00p. That’s when he began to tinker with the space-time continuum. But not dangerously so because that might be bad for the future mini-Goldbergs. If that’s possible (mini).

I understand that our Debutante of the Lake District, Miss Calumny Moonpower, is now frustrated. Disappointed. Upset. She points a particularly vicious finger at my fellow scientists. They’ve been sandbagging their careers apparently. I’m not exactly clear on all the details. The allegation goes something like this: You guys get millions of dollars from the government for Alzheimer’s research but what do you do? Not cure it. On purpose.

This makes very sense. We get the NIH’s money, then we blow it on not curing things. Frivolous is what we do. Dry ice for the Black And White Cotillion. Hand-stitched leather for the tubes and wires. A maple dashboard for the symposium. And a brand new jaguar for the bottle washer. A full-grown 300 pound Coastal Peruvian jaguar.

But think. Just what if we . . tried?

“By the way, there is no known treatment for Alzheimer’s on the horizon . . a much smarter strategy would be to develop a cure. That’s caring. Scientists tell us that we could have a cure in 10 years for Alzheimer’s if we’d only put our mind to it. So why aren’t we seeking to cure diseases like Alzheimer’s? Or diabetes, juvenile diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease?”

What if we . . cured things? We’ve been researching the likes of cancer and heart disease, sure, for years. We know all about them, absolutely. Why now can’t we use this knowledge? To . . cure them? Hmm?

Turns out there’s an answer for that. Diseases seem to be getting better on their own without us. A little at least, without our yet having lifted a finger. You wouldn’t want to screw that up, would ya? Naw.

“How did we possibly get to the point of this political malpractice? Because our government, proclaiming to care so much, has created a cadre of overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators. That’s not caring.”

And then, right when I’m about to cure brain cancer, the attorney taxes me.

I’m picturing Jimmy the Greek rising from the dead. Jimmy sees Usain Bolt run a 9-flat 100 meters on Hades Cable and he arises from his sarcophagus. Bloomberg News gives him some column inches because he’s click-bait. “I Told You They Had Big Thighs” he thunders. Can’t blame the guy for trying.

Dow 36,000 Is Attainable Again
By James K. Glassman | Bloomberg.com

The Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record this week, but it’s still far from the mark that economist Kevin Hassett and I forecast in our 1999 book, “Dow 36,000.”

You thought Glassman died with the likes of eToys dot com. But no, he’s alive. And he’s giving us a scenic tour of his professional Waterloo:

We wrote in the introduction that “it is impossible to predict how long it will take” to get to 36,000. Then, in the same paragraph, we rashly made a guess anyway: “between three and five years.”

Today, the far edge of that time frame is clearly in reach.

Five years is within our reach but let’s just see after the first four. The workings of time favor the numeral over the douche-fiat. But is it at all possible to know? Who can say? I wouldn’t hazard a guess — let’s just call it “Noon Tomorrow.” I see the French Emperor is on a tear and it’s anybody’s guess where Belgium could end up. Bill Buckner grabs it and, hey, the World Series is over.

Women woke up today to the old news that Republicans know squat about them.

[Celeste] Greig is the president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, the state’s oldest and largest GOP volunteer organization. Ronald Reagan once called it “the conscience of the Republican Party” . .

Greig, however, went on to say: “Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it’s an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don’t know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don’t know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act.”

A female wingnut. Knowing nothing of her own self. Beautiful. Conservatives spend their whole lives whispering their meathead thinkings to their pals so any time a bit of it deflects into the public square, I’m happy.

Right on top of the “Gabrielle Giffords is a retard with a liberal hand up her ass” post. Ann spots something interesting on the internet. Did any you hear about this Sunday?

“Forget Beyonce. It will be Bob Dylan entertaining us at Super Bowl half-time.”
posted by Ann Althouse at 3:31 PM

That’s what Tim Heidecker says:

[Dylan] is replacing Beyonce who dropped out after her inauguration lip synching scandal.

“Running Out The Clock” is a previously unreleased song from Dylan’s 1983 “Infidels” album. I guess it makes sense… the football metaphors and references. Song audio at the link. I find this a tad hard to believe. I love old Bob, but I don’t picture him in this setting, and I can’t imagine Beyonce is so easily embarrassed.

“Running Out The Clock” is all of a lousy parody. We have a Super Bowl of derp. Should the idea of Bob getting millions of fat slobs to sing along with “Ballad of a Thin Man” not tickle Ann, maybe Heidecker’s being a comedian could give her pause. Cuz’ it’s a little weird, I tells ya:

BDNYC said…

His music is soporific and thus completely unsuited to Super Sunday. Is halftime for quiet meditation? After a few beers and some potato skins and chicken wings, I might just take a nap.

Nonapod said…

I have this image of Dylan surrounded by nubile dancers and as a pyrotechnic display goes off just as Nicki Minaj walks on the stage rapping.

mccullough said…

I love Bob Dylan, but this is a horrible decision.

I pray he lip-synches.

Shouting Thomas said…

Dylan’s voice is completely shot. Nothing left.

Steve Koch said…

I hope Beyonce performs at the super bowl, not Bob Dylan.

rhhardin said…

That’s a nice piece. The secret is that the instruments have to be in tune.

The voice is allowed speaking space.

Kelly said…

Hopefully he’ll sing something from his Christmas album.

ndspinelli said…

Althouse will have a stroke when the general public, used to singers who actually can sing, rip her hero a new asshole. There’s going to be blood in the water. He’s going to make the Who’s performance look good. Maybe Dylan will have a wardrobe malfunction and flash his johnson.

carrie said…

I just can’t imagine this working out very well!

bardseyeview said…

Her agent may have told that there’s a real chance of her getting booed.

Former Italian P.M. Silvio Berlusconi loves him some media. Loves him some attention. Loves him a lot of former Italian P.M. Silvio Berlusconi.

“It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then,” Berlusconi said of Mussolini’s support for Hitler. “Certainly the government then, fearing that German power would turn into a general victory, preferred to be allied with Hitler’s Germany rather than oppose it.”

Who doesn’t like a winner? Can you blame a country for that?

Berlusconi added that “within this alliance came the imposition of the fight against, and extermination of, the Jews. Thus, the racial laws are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good.”

One mistake. Other than that, a decent guy. Misunderstood.

I hear whispers in the wind that Republicans are trying to re-make themselves. Maybe it was the feckless prosecution of a Romney rout that fell their crests. Obama never did break a sweat. The President could have slept through 2012 and still destroyed the challenger. That’s probably a sizable part of it. There are alternate theories for the re-do: Someone looked in a mirror. Somebody noted America no longer looks like Bumfuck, Oklahoma. Someone else wondered about the continuing devotion of the KKK long after the Selma riots. Whatever the case, Republicans are thinking about change. So the rumors go.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called on the Republican Party to “stop being the stupid party” on Thursday as GOP leaders promised fundamental changes to help stave off future losses.

This is Bobby Jindal trying to help. Bobby Jindal?

“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults,” he said. “We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m here to say we’ve had enough of that.”

Bobby’s had enough of politicians spitting their binkies seconds before appearing on national TV and mewling like Kenneth the Page. Bobby can’t take any more of you legally forcing Science teachers to teach creationism in the same manner high school French teachers would approach Klingon. Bobby will not tolerate you idiots abolishing state income and corporate taxes just to drop a crippling sales tax on the heads of the poor. What are you people, morons? And for those of you who aren’t sure this makes any sense, it’s not the time for discussion. Bobby Jindal in 2016.

The year 2012 in the United States was blistering hot. A seemingly endless drought took hold of Texas and the Midwest. Crops withered away to hard husks, and cattle by the thousands were quick-sold to slaughterhouses because they weren’t going to get any fatter chewing on hot dust.

March was the warmest March on record by far, and this caused 2012 to leap out way ahead of the pack. We had the warmest spring on record, the warmest July on record, the third warmest summer on record. All of these together helped 2012 maintain a huge lead throughout the year.

So it became the hottest year ever recorded. Nothing to brag about. Across the globe, 2012 did only a little better.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranked 2012 the 10th-warmest on record, with an average temperature of 58.03 degrees (14.46 Celsius). It was the 36th consecutive year to exceed the 20th-century average of 57 degrees, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina.

You see the trends. Hot, hotter and hottest.

There’s another trend making its way around the realm. This one comes from the disastrous world of politics, not science, or at least the respectable part of it. You’re probably aware of it by now. This is where some idiot gets himself caught in blanketing snow, or a February heat wave, and he pronounces global warming a grift. Mayor of London Boris Johnson takes a crack at it:

The snow on the flowerpot, since I have been staring, has got about an inch thicker. The barbecue is all but invisible. By my calculations, this is now the fifth year in a row that we have had an unusual amount of snow; and by unusual I mean snow of a kind that I don’t remember from my childhood: snow that comes one day, and then sticks around for a couple of days, followed by more.

. . I don’t think I have seen that before. I am all for theories about climate change, and would not for a moment dispute the wisdom or good intentions of the vast majority of scientists.

If Boris weren’t here to bury you in humble bullshit, he’d quit now. The vast majority of scientists do not dispute global warming, they’re only trying to figure out how exactly it’s happening. But Boris shrugs off his fear of disputations and gets to the point:

But I am also an empiricist; and I observe that something appears to be up with our winter weather, and to call it “warming” is obviously to strain the language.

There we have it, another conservative clown yukking it up for the science illiterates. Boris assures everybody that this planetary disaster isn’t real. Also, any of them can get a better grip on global warming than all of thousands of eminent scientists by staring at their flowerpots. That’s how he did it, and he runs the capital.

I merely observe that there are at least some other reputable scientists who say that it is complete tosh, or at least that there is no evidence to support it.

If you’ll take your eyes off the barbecue, Boris. Hotter temperatures drive more water into the atmosphere. Heavier snows in London are exactly what scientists expect.

There’s just no stopping some fools.

The Clinton clot plot thickens… or thins… with anti-coagulants.
Ann Althouse | January 1, 2013

So we were just talking about the oddities of the Clinton clot story. We noted that no sooner was it said that Hillary Clinton would testify, as Secretary of State, on the Benghazi attack, than there came an announcement that Hillary Clinton had entered the hospital with a blood clot. The coincidence raised suspicions of an effort to engineer an evasion of this testimony.

Oh please.

Later, Clinton’s doctors released a statement saying that the clot was in a vein inside her skull, and that she’s “making excellent progress” and likely to “make a full recovery” . . You may remember that the analysis I discussed at that first link contained the assertion that “anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain.”

The Secretary of State assembled her staff. “I’m going to New York Presbyterian Columbia Hospital to fake a blood clot underneath my skull. Tell the university physicians I want a trumped-up MRI within an hour. Let Public Relations know I’ll need a rough draft of their release before dinner. I expect everybody to jeopardize their licenses and careers so I can dodge a 2012 scandal that the public slept through. Now where did the digito-cerebral black satellite interface and controller go?”

That is what Ann Althouse suspects Hillary Clinton of doing.

And, by the way, I’ve gotten some pushback in email and on the web, saying that it was “shameful” and “appalling” for me to tie Clinton’s health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I’ve been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming.

Althouse is just dumb. Trifling details are her professional obsession, and they never fail to transform into devastating attacks upon public figures. As if her disastrous bleating could have any consequences in real life. As if there’s any karmic balance between some impotent imbecile and the Secretary of State.

When people say “Shame on you,” it’s as much for disgracing her adulthood as anything else. But this is not right, why no, how dare you! The liberals are bullying her from Secret Truth. Ann knows it, she knew it. She’ll not be turned away!

I’m glad that this performance of outrage was directed at me. I know it when I see it, and it fires me up. You want silence? You want backing down? You want me not to dare say a thing like that? That’s how you want to control political debate in the United States? Thanks for reminding me once again how deeply I hate that and for giving me an (easy) opportunity to model courage for the more timid people out there who are cowed by the fear of shaming.

As if demonstrations of stupidity were powerful orgasms. I’m in love with BLOG, Daddy! You can’t stand between us!

Legal tinker dink Associate Professor Cornell Law School William A. ‘Buttbruise’ Jacobson lofted amount his thunder stallion point o’ the battalion LEGAL INSURRECTION RAAWR (roach trample, watch your tootsies) memo: Aww No!

Nation running out of ammo
Posted by William A. Jacobson Friday, December 28

Reaction to threats by Senator Dianne Feinstein and others to ban certain weapons and serverely [sic] restrict ownership of guns generally has caused a run on gun stores, as is widely reported.

Less reported is the run on ammunition, leaving ammunition inventories down 93% since election day.

How will my attorney militia depose the government? Without bullets? Atomic rockets don’t just get shot and explode themselves, mister.

“Ammunition Stock levels have fallen by more than 90% from the pre-Election Day levels. Less than 10% remains available. Available Ammunition links will be updated throughout the day.

Handguns are down by 80%, Long Guns by 63% for an overall 72.2% reduction in firearms inventories.

AR pattern rifles are becoming particularly difficult to source.”

Gomer! Counselor? Fire up the smelter! Lead for the rounds, copper for the jackets! RIGHT AWAY! After I warehouse the arsenal!

Revolution Monday. I take this screed to be some sort of counter-threat meant to stop the cheering of Obama’s mocha millions. Blogger Vox Day, Mensa member and self-described “Internet Superintelligence,” warns they shouldn’t get too full of their ethnic selves. If you keep pushing white people around, we’ll start another civil war. Now that I think about it, would that be so bad?

But first, let’s cheer Britain’s far-right United Kingdom Independence Party. They have despised the variety pack of foreign faces and tongues known as the European Union, and good for them.

Whether it is politically sensible for the prime minister to attack the only party defending British sovereignty against the technocratic fascists of the European Union will, in time, become clear. But it does point to the way in which the ridicule of the major political parties and mainstream media is manifestly impotent when it comes to defeating a growing desire for secession and self-determination in a democratic society.

The tsunami of nativism in Britain has grown so large that the UKIP may someday win a seat in the House of Commons. Ignore this at your own peril.

There can be little doubt that Cameron’s opinion of UKIP is but a pale shadow of the U.S. bifactional ruling party’s hatred and contempt for white Americans who still hold to traditional values, believe in their constitutional liberties and derive their sense of identity from historical America. They mock the secessionist petitioners in Texas and other states, celebrate the infestation of even the smallest American heartland towns by African, Asian and Aztec cultures, and engage in ruthless doublethink as they worship at the altar of a false and entirely nonexistent equality.

Is that a great paragraph or what? Living in L.A. I can tell you about the infestation of Aztec culture here. My next door neighbor wears a big headdress and carries around a beautiful unconscious lady all day. I can’t pronounce his name because ‘X’s are bowling scores, not sounds.

And yet, they are afraid and they threaten every American who dares to think the unthinkable and speak the unspeakable. Why? Because they know time, history and socionomics are not on their side.

Is the secession of several American states truly unthinkable? Is the breakup of the United States of America really outside the boundaries of historically reasonable possibility?

Secession is not unthinkable, no, because it was tried before. And it failed, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, blind, and amputated. What a good sales pitch. I’d be interested to see how Vox’s patriots stacked up against our federal forces, with their rockets and jets. Talk about superintelligence.