“A federal district judge lifted a stay on his decision on same-sex marriage, but he delayed implementation of the order until Aug. 18.” …Uhhh…anybody understand whu’tat says? A judge decides on sumpm, then decides t’delay whut he decided, then undelays it, then delays the undelay? Duhh!

“Members of Congress who once won voter loyalty for sending money back home are now being punished with election losses.”  …Ding dong! Y’mean people are finely figgerin out they’re bein’ bribed with their own money?

“A retired dermatologist’s promise not to accept a salary if elected governor is credited with helping him win the Republican primary in Alabama.” …Well now. Thairs a idea at’ll git under yer skin. Free governors. Why not free senators an congressmen? Don’tay git enough under the table anyhow? Like ‘ey go in pore an’ come out rich, an’ nobody could git rich on whut we pay politicians above the table. Like Bill Clinton made 35G a year as governor uv Arkansas, an look at’im now. At boy’s come right far ain’t he?

“India indicated it would block corporate e-mail and messenger services if authorities were not able to monitor (Blackberry) service before the end of the month.” Hey! Them Indians are the the fokes y’git when y’call y’credit card cumpny fer some a’their customer disservice. Well of course ‘ey need t’be able t’monitor communications stuff. How else could ‘ey find out all our secrets? An don’tay deserve at least at fer all the trubble ‘ey go to while disservin us? Duhh!

It’s like at ole philospher David Hume said back air in the ole days, “It is never possible to deduce judgements of value from matters of fact” —Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1751)

At’s it! Why am I so brilliant? Why don’t we jis go ahead an call iss game and declare BP the winner, an all go on about our bidness? We could git one’a them World Cup refs t’make it official. Ey’re so good nobody could ever question ‘ey’re call, an we could all git t’see sumpm’ important like a celeb gittin’ out uv a car or sumpm. I miss at with all iss ugly oil takin’ up my screen time, don’tchu? Yay! Bring back Britny. I don’ know bou’tchu, but I miss seein’ at.

Turnin’ to politics now… don’tchy jis love the way i move frum one thang t’another? Turnin’ t’politics, the House has approved a low at says everbody’s gotta be truthful about who’s financin’ election campaigns. Hot Dawg. Now everbody in politics has got t’be honest. Ey’ve passed a law at says so. Now, we jis gotta git the Senate t’make it official an git DaddyO t’sign it. At’s a breeze! Everbody’s honest an don’t nobody lie in Washinton, so ‘ey’ll go right along with the program. Ain’tchy jis so proud uv’em?

An’ now we got ourselfs a mystry. At new iPhone is droppin’ calls when y’hold it a certain way. Ain’tchy glad we brung at news flash t’yore attention? I mean you thought the new iPhone wuz perfec didn’tchy? Now everbody at so enjoys dropped calls on ‘ey’re old iPhones can go right on with confidence at’ey’ll still have a perfect excuse f’not returnin’ the wife’s call at came at a inopportune time. “Remember, dear… I have an iPhone, y’know. An it drops calls ebm before I gittem…” See? Y’can relax now, men. At new iPhone’s perfec, jis like yore old one.

An speakin’a smart phones, whut ever happmd t’DaddyO’s Blackberry? He wuz fightin’ so hard t’keep it, but have you seen him use it lately? I know I ain’t had the pleasure. I’ll jis hafta git my cracked staff on at, an’ git back to ye.

Til then, remember whut Siggy said when he was developin the slip we all so enjoy: “…we men… find reality generally quite unsatisfactory” –Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalysis (1910)

Roger Miller said in a song, “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd.” Seems obvious. But people try. Not literally, but they do stupid stuff that amounts to about the same idiocy.

Like they go on social sites, type in vital info on themselves, even secret stuff they would never want their parents or closest friends to know, then they’re surprised and shocked when their secrets go flittering through cyberspace like confetti on a New York parade. Duh-h.

Why do people do that? Because they’re herd animals. Intelligence doesn’t seem to matter. They all follow the herd. It takes that to be accepted… they think. But like human predators in the old west preyed on buffalo herds and big cats prey on wildebeest herds, human predators prey on the human herd animal everywhere.

But the prey keeps on doing what attracts the predator. Over and over. Buffalo, wildebeest, human. Makes no difference.

Herd people get little cards at Supermarkets and Drug Stores. Cards they use for alleged discounts. They’re not getting discounts off regular prices. but off inflated prices. What are they really getting? The chance to share their personal buying habits with the stores and with manufacturers who supply the stores… otherwise known as predators.

So whatever happened to privacy? Stolen? Nah. It hasn’t been stolen. It’s been given up willingly.

Remember the pay phone? It used to be in a private booth. You could get in the booth, close the door and have a private conversation. Now people use cell phones in the middle of crowds, and talk about private stuff as if they were alone. Now when you do see a pay phone it’s out in the open with just enough cover to cover the phone, not you.

Share on Myspace and Facebook? Myspace isn’t your space, people. It’s their space. Facebook is your faee alright, but somebody else is using your face for whatever pleases them, not you. And what pleases them is money and power.

Sellers of junk of all kinds have been sharing information on their suckers… er… customers for longer than anybody can remember. You buy something from one catalog, you strangely start being bombarded with other catalogs. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that your name and address has been sold. And not just your name and address, but your buying habits. What you’re buying, how much you’re spending, anything else that can be extracted from the info you’ve given up freely.

Now you think you’re going to go on a website, give up your deepest, darkest secrets, photos, videos, life history… and nobody else is gonna know what you said, wrote, spilled out of your soul? Duh-h.

But there’s hope, herd. Time to try again. Four college guys have come up with a new, encrypted, super-private way to share your deepest secrets, but still keep them secret. So now we have… aha! The solution! It’s called Diaspora…4478 backers, $168,019 pledged of a $10,000 goal. Because of what? Pay careful attention. These guys want to share their lives, their vital info, and help others do so, but don’t want to be controlled by a giant corporation. That means Facebook. And unlike Facebook, their new way will keep your shared stuff secret. They promise.

We can hear the hoof beats of the herd already. Roller skates are being oiled. The herd is already donating money to these four guys they don’t know. Just can’t wait to line up and share their secret information.

Cause this time… This time, they’ve found four guys they don’t know who’re gonna keep their secret stuff really secret. Duh-h.

Well y’probly found out by now that none’a that stuff works. So since everbody’s lookin’ fer it, we went’n found it f’everbody. Here it is: technology. Ding Dong! We got it now! Who says? The BBC fer one. Jis’ look at whu’tay say:

“Technology linked to happiness, study claims

“BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, analysed the results of a survey of 35,000 people around the world. Access to communication devices was found to be the most valued.”

See? there’s y’happiness. Jist pick up y’iPhone an shout hallaluya!

Then they’s this’un:

Celebrity Twitter messages show happiness
“Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have been analysing celebrity Twitter messages in a bid to find out how happy the senders are.

Basketball player Shaquille O’Neale was said to be the happiest tweeter, followed by cyclist Lance Armstrong and television presenter Jonathan Ross. The rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg was the least happy.”

Now don’tat make sense? We’re on t’sumpm here. Also, BBC wonts us t’know that Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right. ‘Ey foun’dat out by takin’ another survey.

But hold on. Ey’s always somebody messin’ thangs up. Readers Digest pokes its head up an says iss:

Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert has made happiness his lifelong pursuit an he says happiness is walkin t’work an goin to church. The church part is not about religion, he says, it’s about holdin hands ‘n singin’ an knowin’ somebody there would bring you soup if you got sick. We needed at Harvard psychologist t’come up with ‘at? Duh-h.

Then Forbes really messes it up for everybody when ‘ey predict that by the year 2020 tech will be so commonplace that we won’t even notice it. KILLJOYS! Whut’ll we do fer happiness then?

First thang, they’s all ese i thangs. Pods, pads, phones’n stuff. Aye got all ‘ese apps on’em. I was gonna git me one’a them apps t’fix m’breakfast. Bu’tay only got ones at make franch toast. At’s sissy stuff. At stuff’s made with store-bought aigs. I wont real vittals. Like a big ole slab a’country ham an goose aigs’n stuff. An I’m not spendin’ my hard-earned 99 cents ’til aye got one at’ll do it.

But hang on. At’s not my point. My point is apps ain’t the problem. Powerpoint is. At’s whut the genrals actually say. An’ I thought Powerpoint was old tech. But if it’s confusin’ our genrals, it’s gotta be high.

Here’s whu’tayer sayin’, an it says so in the NYT, so it must be true. ““PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

But thair’s hope, cause ‘ey say, “…the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters. The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”

Now at’s purty smart!

One more thang. Member how we use’ta say when we didn’t unnerstan sumpm, “At’s Greek t’me?” At’d mean y’thank it’s so strange nobody could understand it. Actually I thank Latin is stranger, unless it’s Pig Latin. But Greek gits blamed fer strange. Anyhow it turns out that the Greeks ain’t so strange after all. ‘ey’re jis like everbody else. They’ve run up They’re gummint credit cards t’the point they caint pay’em off jis like our gummint has.

Only difference in tnem an us is they’re gittin‘ bailouts, but our gummint is givin‘ bailouts. An’ we ain’t got the money t’bail nobody out. We jis got credit card cumpnys dumb enough to let us keep our cards. Now we can all understand at cain’t we?

Whut is it Siggy says? Here it is: Sigmund FREUD: “…we men… find reality generally quite unsatisfactory” Psychoanalysis (1910)

“The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, criticized the Democrats’ plans to regulate Wall Street as arrogant and partisan, echoing the recent health care fight in which he accused Democrats of carrying out a government takeover…”(1)

Now would they do this?… Executives Trade Blame at Toyota? Now come on. They’s intelligent people ain’t they? I mean ‘ey been sellin them cars to us for years’n we jis caught on to’em. We caught on to Bernie, didn’ we? But these boys killed us for years ‘fore we got it. Now they’re dumb enough to fight amongst th’selves?

Well at’s fine. Now we got another fight t’watch. Hot dang agin! The WSJ sez they’re all sayin I didn’t do it, HE did. Less all set back’n watch is’un…

“Toyota’s quality crisis is exposing—and exacerbating—a long-simmering internal feud. The battle pits the founding Toyoda family against non-family executives, each blaming the other for the auto maker’s woes…”(2)

An’ here’s a dude ‘at definitely ain’t got nuthin t’do: Cthuugle Ph’nglui Search Fhtagn!.

(1)via McConnell Criticizes Democrats’ Financial Regulation Plan – NYTimes.com.
(2)via Business News, Finance News, World, Political & Sports News from The Wall Street Journal – WSJ.com.

To wit: CUPERTINO, Calif. — “Apple, the maker of popular gadgets, is getting into the business of selling advertising, ratcheting up its rivalry with Google.

On Thursday the company gave a preview of a new version of the basic software for its mobile devices, including the iPhone. The software has a built-in advertising system, meant to be used by the developers who have created the more than 185,000 applications in Apple’s App Store.”(1)

And haven’t we all noticed how when Apple speaks the press leaps to lap it up? Yea Jobs! You’re the man! You keep us focused on the important stuff! Next, Mac Cob will introduce ads on coffins.

What? Class distinction in a classroom? Using the Internet? And the teacher didn’t see that coming? Duh-h!

MILPITAS, Calif. — “When Kevin Jenkins wanted to teach his fourth-grade students at Spangler Elementary here how to use the Internet, he created a site where they could post photographs, drawings and surveys.

And they did. But to his dismay, some of his students posted surveys like “Who’s the most popular classmate?” and “Who’s the best-liked?” (2)

Happens on the Internet all the time. Predators express their love for children. Anonymous people are all over the thing, posing as experts and being regarded as such, by the naive millions. And have you watched lately? What your kids really do on the Internet? Seen any secret passwords lying around? Hmmm?

And have you heard the latest most important stuff? About Twitter, Tweets, Chirp, Tweetie, Twitterific and UberTwitter? Well, let us inform:

“Ahead of Chirp, Twitter’s first developer conference next week, developers have been getting nervous that Twitter plans to build or buy more apps for itself, which could put them out of business.”(3)

Where’s that cat when we need him? The one who was always trying to catch Tweetie?

But why are we wasting time with paltry stuff like this, when there’s so much REAL time wasting stuff on the Net? Check it out: Forty Ways To Waste Your Time

It’s surely time for Siggy again: “…we men… find reality generally quite unsatisfactory” Sigmund FREUD, Psychoanalysis (1910)

(1)Apple Moves Into the Ad-Selling Business – NYTimes.com.
(2)Teaching About the Web Includes Troublesome Parts – NYTimes.com.
(3)Tweets Twitter: Is It War?

Well, Bubba, if you want to claim the invention, it’s your business, but didn’t the God we both claim start the whole business by pulling a few nasty tricks on the Egyptians so they’d kick your people out of Egypt? And then what do Jews do? They make a permanent celebration out of it. Call it Pesach or Passover, add food and drink! A must for a celebration.

And if it’s a celebration, Christians gotta have it, so they come up with one that times out at about the same time as the Jewish version, add bunnies and eggs to go along with the Pagans’ rites of Spring, call it Easter, a name taken from a Pagan celebration, and we all got us a holiday season we can all be proud of!

With a happy whatever to you, some Americans also add the following comments:

“As a wavering Christian and occasional rationalist, I’ve always found Easter (which I sometimes think of as the New Testament’s Passover 2.0) a singularly problematic holiday, both in its cheery, secularized aspects and its grisly, credulity-straining religious form…”

via The Way We Live Now – Great Expectations – NYTimes.com.

Nice Jewish girl to Goyam boy friend: “So, what does the Easter bunny have to do with the holiday?

Well, that’s a good question, and I’m glad you asked. You see, we Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. He died for our sins, you know. Anyway, he was crucified and then, three days later he was resurrected and ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of God…”

via Y.P.R.: Trying to Explain the Easter Bunny to My Orthodox Jewish Girlfriend.

And smack dab in the middle of it all, Apple drops its latest cult-follower magnet, the iPad. Never mind that the sheer numbers of iThis and iThat gizmos has become as thick as the locusts God used to smite the Egyptians – So thick we can hardly bear to dot another i, much less sort out all the iNames they’ve been given. The cult MUST have another iSomething to cling to.

And so we get stuff like this: “I have no idea what he’ll do with it,” said Jessica Panzica, 30, waiting in line at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco for her husband, who could not pick up his iPad because he had a ham-radio class. “I’m sure he’ll use it a lot, whatever it is. He told me I’m not allowed to open it.”

via Across U.S., Apple Fans Buy the First iPads – NYTimes.com.

Anyhow… happy Easter, happy Passover – what’s left of it – and happy whatever that name is that all you Pagans allowed the Christians to clone.

From The Washington Post: “On the most solemn day in the Roman Catholic calendar, a senior Vatican priest ignited a fresh chapter Friday in the debate over the priest abuse scandal by comparing criticism of the Church and Pope Benedict XVI to the historic persecution and ‘collective violence’ against Jews.” (1)

So the biggest religious gang in the world is having one of its major-leagers compare itself to one of the smallest. Jews are complaining. Wait, people. It’s OK. we’ve been assured that this guy speaks for himself, not the church. Even though he is preacher to the Pontiff, who was in the audience. Duh-h

We’re told the economy is adding jobs at a modest clip. Some 190,000 or so last month, compared to 4 million or so LOST in the past year. So that’s not nearly fast enough to bring down an unemployment rate still hanging around 10 percent.

But worry not, flock. Your president, who unlike the Pope, was not present when a certain preacher he knew made certain obnoxious comments is preaching about the problem. And we know that’s all it takes. Besides, he says (again) “we’re turning the corner.”

Governors threatened? Wow! More than 30 governors have received letters from an anti-government group demanding that they resign within three days or face removal from office.

The letters from the group, Guardians of the Free Republics, do not threaten violence, according to officials. And we’re all very fortunate, because the WP tells us that no arrests have been made in response to these citizens petitioning their government. Duh-h

But wait! Hang on, people, for breaking news from the FBI. The FBI is warning police across the country that an anti-government group’s call to remove governors from office could provoke violence.

So there. Beware. Speakest thou softly when it’s about thy gods, lest thou provokest much awesome anger.

Hah… now here’s what we’ve all been waiting for: Daddy-O has explained the new cure for our health he’s so graciously giving us. In what he called point three of a 17-minute answer to a subject’s question he let it all hang out. “Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you’ve got health insurance, you don’t always know what you got.”

Remember, people. You now know what you got. Just keep remembering. And remembering. And remembering… Close your eyes, repeat for 17-minutes and it’ll all become clear. (2)

But hark. Here’s the REALLY important stuff. It’s iPad day. Apple’s curious new people-companion that’s been called too big to carry, therefore not too big to fail, is finally here. And, just in time, we’ve figured out its main reason for being: with a case to carry it in, men will finally have a reason to carry a purse. One that they can finally explain without having to grumble, “NO, it’s not a purse and no, I’M NOT GAY!”

(2) Obama’s 17-minute Answer

(1) via Vatican priest likens criticism of church on abuse to anti-Semitism – washingtonpost.com.

What? Ya gotta need it to buy it? Nahh! Ya gotta know Americans always buy what they want before they buy what they need!

Like all the buzz about Apple’s new iPad, which you get your first chance at tomorrow. The NYT drug up some guy who used to work for Apple in the ’80′s (that’s sure authoritative) and according to him, ““The first five million will be sold in a heartbeat,” said Guy Kawasaki, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who was a marketing executive at Apple in the 1980s. “But let’s see: you can’t make a phone call with it, you can’t take a picture with it, and you have to buy content that before now you were not willing to pay for. That seems tough to me.”

Seems like just the thing to me. Ya don’t need it, ya already got stuff that does what it does, it’s expensive, so what. Where’s the line? Le’me in it. Duh-h

And how ’bout the Toyota thing: Toyota snapped back in March from one of its worst months ever, offering generous buyer incentives and boosting U.S. sales 41 percent, compared with the same month last year. How quickly we forget. When you show us the money. That even gets NASA in the game. Regular budget cut? Give’m some of our dough to check out the electronics in all those Toyotas. Duh-h.

About this census thing: New Yorkers are supposed to be smarter than the rest of us, huh? Then how about this from a source who spoke only on assurance of animosity? “By Wednesday, 32 percent of the surveys mailed to New York City addresses had been returned, compared with 52 percent for the country as a whole. Stacey Cumberbatch, the city’s census coordinator, said she was disappointed with the rate so far, adding, “It should be higher, and we have to work to get it higher.” Duh-h

And then there’s Frog Jump:

FROG JUMP, TENN. — But for one important detail, Stephen Fincher could be a perfect “tea party” candidate: a gospel-singing cotton farmer from this tiny hamlet in western Tennessee, seeking to right the listing ship of Washington with a commitment to lower taxes and smaller government.The detail? Fincher accepts roughly $200,000 in farm subsidies each year. –NYT

We’d make that the final stab, on the grounds that we couldn’t top that, but there’s an even bigger Duh-h:

Imagine… Lawmakers on the Senate Agriculture Committee are crafting new rules to oversee the vast, unregulated derivatives market, legislation that could become a central element of a larger regulatory overhaul effort currently headed to the Senate floor. The rest of our guys in Washington are trying to outsmart Wall Street, and they bring out the Agriculture Committee? To try to outsmart the Wall Streeters who figure out the most complicated of the complicated? Double Duh-h