Innes's Favorite Videos

Here are three FUNNY videos that come to mind these days when I think of funny videos.

This is a an instructional video on how to worship (in a charismatic church). You know that's going to be funny.



If there were a youth pastor on "The Office," this guy would be him.



From Christianity (more or less) to Kung Fu (so to speak). If you haven't met him before, you will never forget this Kung Fu Hillbilly.



Speaking of religion, here is John Pinette, the man with the Gleasonesque voice, on what he seems to love above all things (at least for comic purposes): food!



Of course this does not include the eTrade baby commercials! More fun stuff on my "humor" tag.

A Low View of Politics

Mark Steyn, one of the world's funniest and at the same time politically insightful Canadians, reports this little gem in his "Weiner's Twitter Tweak" column.

"According to Christopher Hitchens, politics is show business for ugly people."

It's not Aristotle, but there's something to it.

No You Kahn't

Rich and powerful guys often to think they can just have anything they want. There must be a feeling of omnipotence when you are Domenique Strauss-Kahn or a big actor or rock star. It offends our belief in human equality, whether democratic or Christian.

So it was with some anger that I received the news that the head of the International Monetary Fund and soon to be candidate for the French presidency pounced on his New York Sofitel maid as though she were a amenity like the mint on his pillow. And it was with some pleasure that I thought of the man in leg irons, eating prison food on Rikers Island (A Frenchman eating prison food! American prison food.), and doing his privacies in full view of the prison guards. Ha!

It was even more entertaining then to read an April 16 article on Strauss-Kahn, "French Presidency: Yes He Kahn." As in America, people are beginning t put themselves forward for the highest office to challenge the incumbent president, though for the Socialist Party. Strauss-Kahn was widely suspected of gearing up for a run, though because he was president of the IMF (he has just resigned that post) he was contractually forbidden to discuss French politics.

The irony of these speculations a few weeks before the big man's humiliation is hilarious.

"A source close to the IMF says that Mr Strauss-Kahn’s diary is busy in May, but clear after that."

"The best guess is that Mr Strauss-Kahn will quit the IMF and declare in late May or early June."

"While out of the country, Mr Strauss-Kahn has been able to glide above the grubby business of French politics."

"With his years on a big salary in Washington, not to mention a rich wife and a house in Marrakech, Mr Strauss-Kahn needs to show that he is in touch with ordinary folk."

That last one is particularly precious.

For a little more fun, here is Jon Stewart. Much of the first clip pertains to the discovery of Osama bin Laden's pornography indulgence, gets around to other stories that tragically overloaded Stewart's comedy agenda for that show, Strauss-Kahn's faux pas included. S-K shows up at the 4 minute mark.

The Daily Show - Daily Show: Whackistan
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

This one came after Strauss-Kahn posted $1 million in bail.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I hope that a certain African hotel maid presently hiding from the media somewhere in New York is taking some satisfaction in her (alleged) assailant's torment at the hands of professional clowns.

Obama killed Osama. Got it?

I'm glad that I'm not the only one. I think this is why Fox News has started referring to bin Laden as "Usama." I thought it was out of kindness to Obama, but it's more likely it was to protect against these slips of the tongue.



I got this from Worldmag.com.

Happy Children and Slave Children

Here is a remarkable video not only for it's cuteness and hilarity, but also for the way these two twin diaperados appear to be communicating with each other like a couple of Pentecostals in conversational glossolalia.



Now look at this video of North Korean slave children playing Spanish guitars like grown up pros. It's unnatural. I cannot imagine what cruelty these children must have suffered to be able to play like this at such a young age.



No doubt, the North Koreans thought this would impress us and confirm for us the superiority of their "system." But it's just creepy.

Our Wise and Gentle President

Our president is deeply concerned for the country, especially for ordinary Americans. So it should not surprise us that, at this time when unemployment and uncertainty are high and the country is going through fundamental changes, he has his gentle and benevolent finger on the pulse of the people. He hears us and he knows us. He may even know us better than we know ourselves. But that's why we trust him.

He recently told us* why we are so upset going into this midterm election. (His heart! His fatherly heart!)

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does [sic.] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country's scared.

I felt that his words were like a presidential hug. I was both warmed and calmed by them.

He then offered this poem. (Any resemblance between this and Robbie Burns' "To a Mouse" is entirely coincidental.)

"To the Voter" -- by Barack Obama

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi' Tea Party combustion!
But I wad be loath to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' humble contrition.

I'm truly sorry Bush's dominion
Has broken America's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, to come who was the One
and seems immortal!

We're unworthy! We're unworthy!

*Carol E. Lee, "President Obama: 'Fear and Frustration' Drive Voters," Politico.com, October 16, 2010.

A Bad Earworm

When a German has a song in his head that keeps playing and playing, and will not stop, he calls it an Ohrwurm, an earworm. That expresses the problem well.

At the moment I have Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" running around up top, and it's taking up valuable mental real estate. But there is good reason for its being there.

I am not equipped to analyze Bad Romance articulately. But emotionally it is a remarkably arresting song. Her soaring vocals and pathetic tones complementing the pathetic theme, the alteration back and forth between Berlin cabaret and Broadway tragedy, and even some classy French at one point to cleanse the listener's ear before returning us to the singer's unhealthy involvement with her lover's "ugly" and "disease" confront us with an immediate awareness that nothing like this has happened in pop music since Michael Jackson released Thriller in 1982 and U2 came out with War in 1983, or possibly since Nirvana's Nevermind showed up in 1991.

But I have not been following popular music closely the way I did when I was 18, and what do I know anyway? That's why I'm going public with these thoughts.

I won't post her video because it is vile, but consider this stunning performance of the song.

It brings to mind this earlier classic of dance and song.



It is true, we are living in a golden age of creativity. I can hardly keep up with it.

Rhetoric 201

This man's problems go far beyond his failure to master the art of rhetoric. He seems like a good man, but he's way out of his depth. What's worse is that his son is his campaign manager, and thus evidently hasn't any more practical judgment than his father does.



He is so ridiculously entertaining that the entertainment media is passing him around like a sideshow act, but this poor man clearly doesn't understand that they are holding him up for ridicule. But, of course, if he could see that then wouldn't be running for office at all.

A note on his promise to ban "gold fringed flags." His complaint is that it adds a color to the flag without the people's consent.

As for the flag itself, he tells another interviewer that he "hates" the flag, and would like it replaced with the three bar flag. Of course, I had to research that. It appears that what he has in mind is the first Confederate flag. It's a different world down there. That's sometimes good, and sometimes not.

Here he is on Jimmy Kimmel Live.



Kimmel invited him to move to California and serve as governor there. Marceaux's response? "I'll be the governor of any state so long as I can fix it." His heart's in the right place.

Read the Washington Post story on his candidacy after it ended. It's quite a tale.

Rhetoric 101

The tradition of a Western political rhetoric is a great one, dating back at least to Demosthenes and Pericles in fourth and fifth century Athens. The Greeks developed it into a science, and Aristotle can tell you all about it in The Rhetoric. Our own day is not a golden age of moving political speech (though Chris Matthews may disagree). But Councilman Phil Davison's nomination speech before the Stark County Republican Party's executive committee meeting for the office of treasurer is a textbook case of what not to do. See if you can spot the errors. They're subtle, but unmistakable.

Okay, they're not subtle. In fact, it's painful to watch.

Just a couple of things. He both does and does not want to wander from the podium. You can give a good speech from notes, but if you do, you have to stand in one place and deliver it. If you want to do the dramatic pacing, you have to know the speech or know your thoughts well enough to deliver it extemporaneously. I thought it was particularly humorous that when he came to his favorite Einstein quote, "one of my most favorite quotes in the history of the spoken word," he botched it and had to return to his notes to get it right.

Final irony: he has a master's degree in communication. He boasts of this.

Davison was denied the nomination.

Thanks Richie for the clip, and for this related one.



The Huffington Post was pleased to report on the Stark County spectacle here.

E-Trade Baby-o-Rama!

These are the funniest commercials in a long time. I'm putting them on the blog so I can have them all in one place, and help brighten my spirit under the awareness of the fiercest conflict raging in our civil cold war.

If you find too much of the left hand side of each video cut off, likely because of my three column format, go to my Townhall version of this blog: principalitiesandpowers.blogtownhall.com for a more complete experience.

First E-Trade Baby



Shankopotomus



It's Not the Venue



Shocked Face



Haunting



Milka-what?



There are others, of course, but these are what I think are the best.

Yogi Berra Quotes

I was listening to "Car Talk" on NPR, and for some reason they started off with Yogi Berra quotes, and that got me going. Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra is said to have been the greatest catcher in major league baseball history, and one of the greatest non-pitching players. Some refer to him as one of the greatest American philosophers. American philosophy hasn't a high reputation, but judge for yourself.

"I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early."

"It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much."

Concerning Coney Island: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded."

At times, there was indeed great wisdom in his nonsense, such as when he said, "You can observe a lot by watching."

Once, Yogi's wife Carmen asked, "Yogi, you are from St. Louis, we live in New Jersey, and you played ball in New York. If you go before I do, where would you like me to have you buried?" Yogi replied, "Surprise me."

On the subject of funerals, Yogi held that, "You should always go to other people's funerals, otherwise, they won't come to yours."

Asked for the time, he came back with, "Do you mean now?"

His surprising turns and comebacks remind me of Groucho Marx who for example once mused, "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." A little more biting and personal was, "I've had a wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." Berra, who must have grown up under Marx's influence, quipped in the same league. When the wife of New York City mayor, John Lindsey, told him he looked cool, he responded, "Thanks, you don't look so hot yourself."

The Yankees might have had this thought in mind before last night's season opener against the Red Sox. "The other teams could make trouble for us if they win." That one reminds me of something Barney Frank (D-MA) said during a legislative defeat for his party when they were out of power in the nineties: “The Republicans,” he complained, “are just using their votes to win.” But he was serious.

He is perhaps best known for his reflection, "It ain't over till it's over." But some of these sayings may be apocryphal, because Berra himself claimed, "I really didn't say everything I said!"

Yogi Berra still walks among us. He is 84.

Commie Choreography

This came to mind recently, so I am reposting it just for the fun of it.

If you haven't seen The Roots of Breakdance, you must do that now both for cultural literacy's sake and for laughs. The original is Dance of the Soldiers, featuring the Red Army Dance Ensemble ("the Academic Ensemble of Song and Dance of the Soviet Army" under the direction of Alexander Alexandrov and established in 1928). The song is Run DMC's "It's Like That."

Progress and Its Discontents

This semester, beginning next week, I am leading six exceptional students at The King's College in a seminar on Francis Bacon's Invention of Modern Politics. We will be exploring Lord Verulam's plan to conquer nature for the relief of our estate, the benefits that have come of it, as well as the problems inherent in it. We will look closely and critically at Bacon's writings--The Great Instuaration, New Organon, New Atlantis, Essays--and then students will research the benefits and moral complications of subsequent technological developments.

Robert Faulkner, in his penetrating work on Bacon's artful and revolutionary project to reshape and redirect Western civilization, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress, expresses this sober assessment nicely: "Now it seems that a thoughtful citizen of a modern country must be prepared to defend the benefits of progress, or at least to reconsider them while being aware of the defects as well as the advantages" (p.3).

For example, consider email. Most of us depend on it because we find it useful, and so we use it all the time. But we also sense a downside. What is that disturbing impulse we feel to be constantly checking our inboxes. That's not good. John Freeman explores the complexity of the technology in his book, The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox. "E-mail might be cheaper, faster and more convenient, but its virtues also make us lazier, lonelier and less articulate."

Also have a look at "Louis c.k." claiming that Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy. Warning, this is very funny, and you may see yourself in one of the "spoiled idiots" he describes.



He's entertained by the fact that conservatives and Christians find his routine resonates with what they believe. What they like is clearly the call to moderation and contentment. Louis just despises them, but that's a sign that he doesn't understand either what he's saying or the conservatives and Christians. He himself is incoherent. He meant to condemn capitalism in this routine. He explains this to Opie and Anthony. (The second clip is better than the first, but blasphemous at points.) Yet capitalism is the economic system on which he depends for his lucrative career and high flying lifestyle. He also explains that he is not against technology. He just thinks we should chasten our expectations for it and have a little more peace while using it. This thought has clearly hit a nerve with people given the video's "viral" popularity. People are uncomfortably aware that while technology is good, it affects the way we see the world in ways that are morally unhealthy. And that is a subject worthy of study.

The Terminatrix Peace Prize Theory

The end of the year is busy for professors, so things have been slow on the blog.

But I ran across this interesting reflection:

Slowpoke Comics by Jen Sorensen

This theory makes sense of Barack Obama's Nobel prize, but the Terminatrix part doesn't seem to fit the data.

It may be most interesting as an expression of liberal discomfort with the Nobel Committee's 2009 choice for the peace prize.

Pelosi's America and the Promise of Harmony

I have noriced that everyone is better looking when they smile. A smile beautifies any face. But Nancy Pelosi appears to be an exception. Her smile is frightening, and she is smiling a lot these days. The reason for it is far more frightening. She is gleeful because her plans for a New America are being realized.

Think of it this way...



Consider other Narfbuscuit insights.

P.S. Well-earned smugness for anyone who got the allusion to Samuel Huntington.

Big Government Needs Big Laws

Big government requires big laws. It seems appropriate, therefore, that the House health care reform law (HR-3962) requires 1,990 pages to cover everything that needs to be put right.

Back when it was HR-3200, but only about half the size of the present bill, Jimmy Fallon had this fun with it.



Incidentally, the law is sponsored by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich) who takes a withering blow in Time magazine's cover story on "The Tragedy of Detroit" by Daniel Okrent (Oct. 5, 2009). "Dingell has in fact played a signal role in destroying Detroit," that is, his own constituency. With proven judgment like that, the longest serving member of the House of Representatives lends his good name to the Congressional effort at reforming one sixth of the U.S. economy.

Two words: buy gold.

Justice

I teach Introduction to Politics. The topic of ultimate concern in political life is, of course, justice. The morally serious students at The King's College are eager to know what this is.

This is justice.



Now you know what justice is.

Funny Foreign Song

I've been busy these days with a grant application and children's swimming lessons, so I'm just going to post this video that my wife and I think is both hilarious and infectious. Five and half million YouTube viewers think so too (of course, there are repeat views; we have seen it many times).

There's nothing to be learned in this (is that ever true?). It's just fun.



The song itself has become surprisingly popular. Since when did Americans listen to foreign songs? These guys must be the richest guys in Moldova.

It was first released in 2004 and became a hit all over Europe. Its foothold in America apparently started with this utterly pointless waste of time on YouTube, although 31 million viewers disagree with me. Truly, man knows not his time, whether for raving popularity or for death.

Wisdom For Our Times

Someone I have recently friended on Facebook has been collecting political quotations. I share these with you.

Here are two from Ronald Reagan, the wisdom of which are being reconfirmed in our day by the Obama-Reid-Pelosi government.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help. ~Ronald Reagan

The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.~ Ronald Reagan

And let’s add the wisdom of Milton Friedman who was much more politically astute than many of his libertarian followers are:

A society that puts equality... ahead of freedom will end up with neither. ~ Milton Friedman

Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter before him, has mastered only half of the following advice.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. ~Will Rogers.

Turning now to our Democratically controlled Congress:

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer. ~Will Rogers

“The country,” i.e. its economy and moral fabric, is complex. This Democratic Congress seems to think it can easily and quickly rearrange everything so that justice will reign unsullied and with no significant unanticipated evils that will result from it. These only liberal bulls have learned nothing from the destructive social experiments of the sixties.

The last word goes to our great second President.

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress. ~John Adams.

Would that they were only useless.

Funny Flair

I don't accept "flair" on Facebook (buttons that say and depict things, and you collect them) because I think they are a waste of time (along with "poking" and personality tests). But I just read my wife's flair, and I found these ones really funny.

"War never solved anything...except fascism, communism, genocide, slavery, tyranny..."

"Silly liberal, paychecks are for workers."


"No thanks, I already have a Messiah."


"If guns kill people, do pencils misspell words?"

"Sarcasm: it beats killing people."

"I notice that everyone that is for abortion has already been born. -- Ronald Reagan