The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

For most of human existence, progress has moved slowly. It took quite a few generations of hunter-gatherers, to figure out that mastodon seared by lightning or grilled in a grass fire tasted better than mastodon tartar - at least until a nice Cabernet arrived a few millennia later. But progress being what it is, humans got smarter and new technologies grew in parallel with human evolution. In other words, for hundreds of thousands of years, shit happened - and therein lie the roots of our many problems.

We’ve now reached the point where our ability to adapt to change is approaching nill. We live in an era where wars start in the blink of an eye, the world’s complex financial system collapses virtually overnight, and any buckethead with a computer and the ability to type can shovel shit with unprecedented speed to a global audience. Look at Michelle Malkin and me. Aside from one of us being a total and complete asswipe, we’re exactly the same. Of course, I leave it to you to decide who’s the asswipe.

The perfect example of humans struggling to keep up with technology is the high-tech industry itself. Even though they’re the inventors of new technology, they’re just as unable to master it as Ted Stevens and his Tubular Theory of Internet Design^TM. Technical obsolescence isn’t planned, shit just happens.

Thus Spake the Prophet Greenspan
During the heady days of the dot com boom, thousands of entrepreneurs started Mom and Pop companies in their garages. However,  only a microscopic number ever needed to move the minivan into the driveway to make room. Hundreds of people with more cash than brains threw money at anything with a domain name. The Prophet Greenspan used to refer to this unfortunate tendency as “irrational exuberance“, which is like saying light moves exuberantly fast. Lots of people became paper millionaires, many of whom are now selling their paper at about $0.00000009 per sheet.

Fifteen years or so on, some of the dot coms survived stupendously bad ideas (can you say Webvan) to now find themselves in arrested adolescence. The garages may have become big shiny buildings in the Silicon Valley sun, but the way they do things isn’t all that different from the way people have always done things - lots of mistakes, miscues, overreaching, and downright silliness. Technology is a human baby after all. Microsoft isn’t late with releases and half-assed products because they’re stupid. They’re just trying to crawl through the modern day techno-tar pits at a human pace. Yahoo may have fallen from its once-heady heights, but the days of Google being a verb are just as numbered.

The last defense humankind has against complete technological collapse is that state of arrested adolescence. If technology didn’t “act” human (meaning slow) things would move so fast that no one would know enough about anything to adapt and continue our evolutionary struggle. Instead of change happening in nanoseconds, it would be happening in some exponential fictional unit of measurement still to be determined - say “kissyourassgoodbye seconds”. As it turns out, human ineptitude is the evolutionary counterweight to human creativity. Who knew?

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After eight years of shooting Bushfish in a barrel, many comedians and pundits are wondering what they will poke and prod when Team Obama settles in. I’m sure the Obamans will have their share of screw-the-pooch moments - Biden, the Turkey Mom, and both sides of Congress will provide a target-rich environment too. As a citizen, I’m hoping there’ll be less comedic relief, but as a pundit I’m anxiously awaiting the inevitable comedic gold. I’m sure I’ll not be disappointed.

Aside from who I can annoy, there are other things I’m looking forward to in an Obama administration. Despite the tenor of this blog, I’m normally far more centrist than I may appear. Eight years of relentlessly insane Bushian policy dragged me, screaming and kicking, farther left than I ever thought possible before the tyrant’s Reign of Error^TM. I’m hoping that won’t contiune, but only time will tell.

There’s a lot of gum flapping about bipartisanship right now, but the battle lines are already being drawn. It’s when the ideological foes close in outright battle - as they surely will - that the fusillade of asshatted comedy will rain down upon us all.

The Numbest Numbskulls
On the right, Republican mandarins are meeting on luxury yachts to identify the ideologies that will “save” the Republican party. Apparently it hasn’t occured to them that calling people terrorists ala the Palinator or calling for McCarthyism like well-known nut-case Michelle Bachmann might be the tiniest bit responsible for their election day spanking. They’re leaning more toward “new initiatives” like courting religious zealots and representing themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility while throwing money around like a fireman sprays water. They’re proving they’re the numbest numbskulls since Moe, Larry, and Curly/Shemp.

Over on the left, strong liberals - now upgrading to “progressive” instead of the dreaded L-word - fell for the Republican fiction that Obama is a true-blue, plunge the nation into communism lefty. He is, and always was, a centrist who places a high value on pragmatism over ideology. As proof, his “progressive” base is already carping about retaining largely centrist SecDef Bob Gates while praising the selection of hidden conservative Hillary “The Drama Queen” Clinton.

Invisible Government
People can charge that Mr. Hope isn’t sufficiently left or right. They can complain that some of his cabinet selections are too bold or not bold enough. They can even look at individual actions that simultaneously confirm or deny his calls for bipartisanship and centerism. But the fact that both sides of the aisle are already squawking is proof he’s somewhere close to the center.

It’s the overwhelming desire many politicans have for “winning” via slash and burn that will bring out the funny. America is neither center-left nor center-right, it’s dead-center. Amemricans prefer an autopilot government that will allow them to drive insanely wasteful SUVs and enjoy a litte egg nog around their pitiful, giftless, and unemployed (insert politically correct holiday here) trees. The less they hear about politics and issues that directly effect them, the better they like it. Any politician who doesn’t see that is going to be in deep guano. The goal politicians should shoot for is making politics as invisible and smooth as humanly possible. If they don’t, the great unwashed will find them riotously funny. Exhibit A: Sarah Palin. It just goes to show that if you don’t laugh, you’ll be crying.

Not much humor in that, is there?

The Poobah is a featured contributor at Bring It On!

When Turkeys Attack - Giant flying turkeys, machine guns, and Christopher Columbus, what better way to say THANKSGIVING!

Um, Yeah, That’s It - Boom chicka wa wa. SLAP THOSE GIBLETS!

Are You Sure… - …that’s a cake?

Team Obama’s Turkey - Poor Rahm, he can’t even flip off Karl Rove.

Gimme Some Uh Dat Sexy Gravy - “First, you add three cups of finely chopped weed yo…”

Eeeeek! - Just when you thought it was safe to go into the kitchen.

Plymouth Rocked - The touching tale of the first T-giving. (NSFW)

That’s Just Soo Cool - Tune in for your favorite episodes of As the Leftovers Return.

I Love the Smell of ‘Coon A-Cookin’ in the Morning -  The Canadians next door never did get the hang  of Thanksgiving dinner.

Saving Grace - The Poobah offers some suggestions if you come up empty for the Thanksgiving dinner prayer this year.

Why T-Giving is My Favorite Holiday - Fast Fact: Americans will eat more turkey today than the combined weight of all the citizens of Belize, Turkmenistan, and Lichtenstein combined.

Let’s Talk Beaver - In tonight’s va jay jay news…

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