For the Record. II: God Bless America

Irving Berlin in 1906 (18 years old), already unable to play in any key other than F#, via Wikipedia.

The whole point of sports is to be a diversion and since the NFL refuses to to let this be the case, what's the point of watching football?

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) September 27, 2017

It's revolting not only for us atheists but Buddhists and Hindus, and for monotheists like this Methodist minister https://t.co/Pt25NAeomG

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 28, 2017

So we might kvetch and we might refuse to stand up and sing and we might ask them to stop it altogether. https://t.co/BumAw3nrQP

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 28, 2017

If you really like baseball you just don't give a fuck about this silliness. Let them make fools of themselves according to Matthew 6:5!

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 28, 2017

Then you weren't really meant to watch football in the first place. Go ahead and turn it off. It won't miss you.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 28, 2017

And "America The Beautiful" is such a better song!

— Thornton Hall (@ThorntonHall1) September 28, 2017

Too environmental! And everybody knows the text is by a lesbian. America the Beautiful is a liberal conspiracy.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 28, 2017

Anthematics

Breitbart complained about the ghastly Coca-Cola entry in the Superb Owl commercial stakes:

Executives at Coca Cola thought it was a good idea to run a 60 second Super Bowl ad featuring children singing "America the Beautiful" – a deeply Christian patriotic anthem whose theme is unity – in several foreign languages. The ad also prominently features a gay couple....When the company used such an iconic song... to push multiculturalism down our throats, it's no wonder conservatives were outraged.

I'm not very clear on how deeply Christian the anthem is—God comes into it only "shedding grace" over the fruited plains and alabaster cities, as if He were a long-haired [jump]

The Fix-the-Debt is In

Drawing, for Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand (1938), by Robert Lawson. Via Geocache.

The "Campaign to Fix the Debt", a self-publicizing organ created as a kind of benefit performance by and for the old vaudeville team of Bowles 'n' Simpson, has been sending me the occasional email ever since I attempted to troll them by honestly answering a fake "survey" on my feelings about the prospects of fixing the debt. There was one of those scrolling-response windows where you can watch your own little post appear at the bottom and then rise, magically, in the surging tide, and finally rapture out of the box; and glory hound that I am, I wanted to see mine there. I didn't: Fix-the-Debt had some kind of censor working that department, and negative things never showed, but back in the email department they still saw me as a customer and kept me on the list. So, in today's mail:

As fans prepare for the upcoming rivalry games, let’s all root for a victory over one of our biggest rivals, the national debt.

Take a look at the graphic and then share it with your fellow fans!

Big Fat Sports Analogy

A week of Obama Bafflement as the president failed to carry out his diabolical plans to invade Syria and appoint Lawrence Summers as Federal Reserve chairman. What on earth went wrong? Why does Putin care who runs the Fed?*

One of the reasons our pandits and political color commentators have so much difficulty understanding Obama, I think, is football. No, really. The belief that late-capitalism NFL football is a valid analogy for human life distorts people's views of human life to the point where they are incapable of interpreting it correctly.

Disclosure: I don't like football, not just because of the way it exposes players to the dangers of steroid abuse, early-onset dementia, and who knows what other kinds of  [jump]

*My guess: in this era of strange bedfellows, Putin is with James Pethokoukis in pushing the imaginary candidacy of Greg Mankiw. Then again perhaps  Putin was holding out for Edward Snowden. But seriously, folks.

Ponte Vedra High Powderpuffs from Jacksonville, FL. Florida Times-Union.