This is the third and final post in my series on America post-apocalypse.

This week a Wyoming representative introduced a bill to prepare Wyoming for the coming apocalypse. Seems like everyone thinks the apocalypse is right around the corner. There are survivalist magazines, books and TV shows. Indeed, bookstores have entire sections devoted to books about the end of times—fiction and non-fiction. In Dallas, bulk food stores have discovered a whole new market segment of people filling their basements with 50 lb. sacks of flour and enormous cans of baked beans.

It’s the one topic on which both far left and far right agree, although they are not together on the reasons.

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Recently, a left-wing colleague described his vision of where America is headed over the next forty years–breakdown of government, mass starvation, roving bands of marauders, etc. It’s interesting that this is exactly the same vision shared by those on the far right who star in the new TV show Doomsday Preppers, about people who are stockpiling cases of beans in their suburban basements, while asking themselves, “What load would Jesus shoot?” Maybe the visions of both left and right are so similar because that future has been portrayed so many times in movies.

Of course, we could end up like that. But we probably won’t.

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I don’t know, this might sound a little too familiar and if anyone comments on this, i’m sure that someone will chime in to tell me that none of our candidates are like Nazis because they don’t have plans to kill every Jew, Slav and person of color on the planet. And that may be true. Nonetheless, on February 20, 1933 a certain mustachioed Austrian met with a list of German luminaries, mostly from industry but perhaps also a board member of Allianz AG. He needed to win an election. You see, Communism could only be stopped if he won. In fact, his pitch to the cigar smoke-filled room blamed democracy for Communism.
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“I will be with you on your wedding-night.” – Frankenstein’s Monster

Well, it looks like Romney has caught up with Santorum in one way.

The website www.spreadingromney.com is working to introduce a new word into the language. Just as Santorum in now best known as the frothy fecal matter accompanying anal sex (or something like that), this group is now proposing the following definition:

romney (rom-ney) v.1. To defecate in terror.

One part of me hopes this doesn’t take (the part that predicted Romney would win the nomination. The other part doesn’t give a santorum.) It’s hard to feel sorry for Romney, even though we have a mutual friend who swears he’s a great guy and would make a great president, because he deserves some punishment for the deliberate distortions and outright fibs he’s told trying to cozy up to the Base. But today the AG of Ohio switched his endorsement from Romney to Santorum, which could be nothing or it could be the first rat running down the hawser. Full story »

So, let me get this straight. Mitt did well in Nevada because he is a favorite son because he’s from nearby Utah. And until this morning he was expected to win Michigan because he’s a favorite son there. Then he will be expected to take Massachussetts because he’s a favorite son there? Sheesh, poor Barry doesn’t even have one birth certificate and it sounds like this guy has a drawerful. Maybe Mitt can loan Obama one.

Maybe, but whatever you do, Mr. President, don’t take one from the Massachussetts. Full story »

Almost a year ago, Scholars & Rogues took a shot a predicting the Republican presidential race. From over a dozen contenders, including Trump, Palin, Pawlenty, Thune, Pataki, Cain, Barbour, Roemer, Daniels, Christie, Huntsman, ad infinitum, we predicted three would emerge as serious contenders—Santorum, Gingrich and Romney.

Thank you.

At any rate, our prediction success says less about our brilliance as political analysts and more about the sad predictability of a party that has lost the ability to discriminate between principles and prejudices or ideas and idiocy. We also predicted that Romney would emerge from the scrum as the designated challenger to Obama, a prediction we are sticking with. Romney’s sitting on a mountain of cash and has the backing–however tenuous–of the GOP establishment. Also, as bad a candidate as Romney the Robot is, “Frothy Fecal Matter” Santorum and “Jabba the Hutt” Gingrich are worse.

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I read a lot of books, which means I also read a lot of book reviews. And some are classics. They’re essays of a certain type, after all, and there are great essays, so why not great book reviews? John Banvilles’s take-down of Ian McEwan’s Saturday in The New York Review of Books several years ago is already legend. Going back further, it’s hard to imagine a better piece of essay writing than Paul Fussell’s review of The Boy Scout Handbook (to be found in the collection of essays bearing that same name). And perhaps topping the list of all-time classics is Peter Medawar’s well-deserved destruction of Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man (collected in a book of Medawar’s essays, Pluto’s Republic), back when people actually read, or claimed to read, Teilhard, in 1961.
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When you come down to it, we’re surrounded by morons and fools, many of whom are our leaders–political, cultural, media, whatever. Opening a newspaper or turning on the television in modern America often is like diving into an oil spill. So it’s time once again to remind ourselves of their transgressions, which we have the Buffalo Beast to do for us, so we don’t have to waste time trying to keep track ourselves. Once again, here is their annual list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans in 2011. It’s got Megyn Kelly (pictured, number 45) on it, and all the Repubican presidential candidates, and Rupert Murdoch is way up there at number 2, bless his heart. And The Donald, of course.

Yesterday I attempted to shed a little light on the PR crisis strategy behind the Komen Foundation’s sudden Planned Parenthood “backtracking.”

Contrary to what Komen’s highly-paid PR crisis hacks and gullible headline writers at newsdesks around the nation would ask you to believe, The Susan G. Komen Foundation does NOT promise to fund Planned Parenthood in the future. They promise to let PP APPLY for grants in the future. Applying and receiving are different things, as anyone who ever applied and got rejected for a job ought to know. Full story »

#25: The Land of Lincoln: Travels in Abe’s America by Andrew Ferguson (2007)

The Lincoln Memorial looked like frost tonight. The flurry that had blanketed the lawn white earlier in the day had been glazed with rain and then turned to ice, so the whole landscape shimmered under the Memorial’s lights.

Frost or no, the Memorial still has that beacon-in-the-dark look, which is, I suppose, its main purpose. It is, as I’ve noted before, as close to a temple as we have in America. The man who sits inside has become such an icon he’s lost humanity.

I’m here because I’ve just finished journalist Andrew Ferguson’s Land of Lincoln, an exploration of the man and, in the end, a defense of that icon. I’m here for the icon, too.

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Today is a national holiday to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the famed civil rights leader.

Government buildings are closed, the post office is closed, most K-12 schools are closed and many universities cancel classes for the day.

The idea behind the holiday was so people could focus on the good works of Dr. King.

Years ago, when I was a faculty member at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, students had protested the fact that campus remained open and classes, except for two hours midday, met, as usual. Top level administrators responding to student pressure decided to change the calendar and cancel classes. The only one objecting was then-Vice President Wilma Ray Bledsoe, the only African American (and, I believe, woman) on the cabinet at that time. Full story »

#21: A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson (1998)

I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and had a burning urge to go hike the Appalachian Trail. Of course, that might also have something to do with the fact that my girlfriend is heading there today to hike part of it. But whatever.

My experience with the AT is pretty limited, although the few places I’ve crossed its path are places I’ve crossed it a lot. The spot that comes to mind most is a foot bridge that crosses over I-90 in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. I’ve never stepped on that leg of the AT, but I’ve driven under it about a thousand times.

By foot, I’ve encountered the AT most frequently at Harper’s Ferry, WV. The trail crosses the Potomac River and rises up to Maryland Heights where it vanishes into the woods before climbing even further to run along the crest of South Mountain. In fact, my favorite stretch of the AT heads into the woods at the northern border of Gapland State Park several miles north of Harper’s Ferry. I remember a misty afternoon Full story »

#18: Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg by James McPherson (2003)

Most Civil War historians in the Park Service feel a little battlefield when it comes to Gettysburg. It’s the great Granddaddy of All Battlefields in North America, marked and monumented with enough granite, marble, and bronze to sink Rhode Island into the sea. Pennsylvania, being bigger and more landlocked, isn’t in such danger. In fact, Gettysburg’s location in the Keystone State, so relatively close to the major metropolitan areas of the east coast, ensured its place as Hallowed Ground—not because it represented the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy” but because it was certain to attract tourists. Lots and lots of tourists. Full story »

A famous saying reads “Home is where the heart is,” and day two of our road trip brought new meaning to this phrase for me.

Wednesday morning, my sister, Julie, and I woke up in South Bend, Indiana only 95 miles from Chicago, Illinois. Though we grew up in Rochester, New York, Chicago has been the next closest city to offer me that warm and welcoming feeling of home. The city was finally within reach, and I couldn’t have been more excited.

Julie and I began this day of our trip with a leisurely drive through Notre Dame’s campus. We saw the university’s football field, snapped photos of “Touchdown Jesus” and awed over the grand and expansive size of the campus. We had both seen the university before, but it appeared just as beautiful the second time around.

Though we had both been within miles of the Michigan border on several occasions, neither Julie nor I had ever stepped foot in the state. Full story »

#17: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (1998)

If there’s one book I’ve wished I’d written, it’s Confederates in the Attic. Of course, Tony Horwitz already wrote it, nearly two decades ago (I can hardly believe it’s been that long). Here’s a guy who wandered around the South, talking to people about the legacy of the Civil War. He asked questions, had conversations, observed, listened, and explored the landscape for himself. He immersed himself in the story.

This, I tell my students, is what good feature writers do. They take the time to do the story justice—and a story as complex as this one requires a lot of time if you’re going to be thorough and fair. That’s what I respect most about Horwitz’s work on the book: he takes the time to make an honest attempt at trying to understanding that which, I suspect, can never fully be understood.

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Have you seen the vid on Youtube called “Iowa Nice”? If not, let’s start there.

The producer of the video, Scott Siepker, is an Iowa State University grad and host of Iowa Outdoors on Iowa Public Television. Full story »

I think the educated, informed and politically active electorate on all sides get the three-ring circus metaphor for our government. There just needs to be more of them, on all sides. Let’s see what happens, though, when I look, with beginner’s eyes, at the nuts ‘n’ bolts under the hood of the the Klown Kar in the lead-up to the featured act. For this exercise, I’ll use a bit of legislation currently up for debate, S.1726, Withholding Tax Relief Act of 2011, a bill to repeal the imposition of withholding on certain payments made to vendors by government entities.

I first became aware of this issue by following Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) on Facebook. Full story »

Citizens across the country are embroiled in battles to keep developers from destroying the character of their cities and towns, and now one such fight has made its way to my neighborhood, the Denver West Highlands. Here’s the note I just sent to the mayor and city council. I suspect a lot of our readers know exactly how I feel.

_____________

Dear ______________:

I know you’re aware of the issue so I’ll keep this brief. If the developers are allowed to blight the Highlands with high rises I will work aggressively for your opponent in the next election. Full story »

Ala. GOP leaders have 2nd thoughts on immigration
By PHILLIP RAWLS

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Republicans who pushed through the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigrants are having second thoughts amid a backlash from big business, fueled by the embarrassing traffic stops of two foreign employees tied to the state’s prized Honda and Mercedes plants.

The Republican attorney general is calling for some of the strictest parts of it to be repealed.

Some Republican lawmakers say they now want to make changes in the law that was pushed quickly through the legislature.

Sometimes I think the problem is Democrats see the likely results of Republican policies ahead of time and argue against them  rather than just letting these fools go ahead and do dumb stuff and see what happens. Full story »